Directing alone does not account for this failure.

Rating: 1/10 (1 June 2009)

The directing on this movie is actually fairly competent from a strictly visual point of view, the second unit directing was also not too bad, but the story had no drive and you didn't give a crap what happened to anyone. The supposed shocker moments were like 'who cares' instead of 'WOW'.
Directors with no vision always produce movies like this, they end up trying too hard to please everyone and end up pleasing no one. Its a great example of hack film making, McG learned how to make movies by watching Michael Bay movies, not realizing that that makes him nothing more than a Michael Bay hack, and Michael Bay himself is nothing more than a hack of James Cameron. So we are watching a movie made by a hack of a hack of a good director.
Good directors are like any other great artist, they only come along 1 or 2 per generation. So far for this generation the only director that can be possibly included in that list is Nolan.
Let me give McG one hint, if your movie is filled with huge explosions from beginning till end, then none of the explosions will stand out in anyones mind, they just all run together. Have no more than 2 or 3 big explosions, have the spaced out so the biggest one is near the end, and have that be FOR some good reason or else no one will care.
This movie is just a turd, I'm sure the average movie going public will just ignore it but its a real letdown for fans of Terminator 1/2 who really wanted something a little more after T3.
Basically its a really poorly thought out story with one 'gotcha' moment in it that everyone can see coming a mile away. Too many big explosions that you don't care about. An ending that seems a foregone conclusion, and its really way too long.
Bad. Avoid.