Terminator Stagnation (kudos to Ken for the title)

Rating: 4/10 (24 May 2009)

I really wanted to like this film. I truly did. I'm a big fan of the others (even the oft criticized T3), and was really looking forward to this one. I gave it some time (about 20 minutes) before the "ughs" came out. First of all, the writing was horrid. I felt that I was watching the equivalent of a decently made fan-film. Terminator Salvation though doesn't have the excuse of a super-low budget YouTube production. To the contrary, it has fantastic special effects and a Hollywood casting.
The first Terminator was, aesthetically, an influential film. Like Blade Runner, Terminator has shaped the look of Sci-Fi films following it. What's tragic about Terminator Salvation, is that it (whether the writers were conscious of it or not) stole so much from other movies: The quiet little girl was Newt from Aliens. The old lady with the long gray hair, Common's character, the Terminator machine "fish", and the SkyNet computer providing a sloppy explanation of the "meaning-of-everything" to Sam Worthington's character reminded me of items out of Matrix Reloaded.
There were other quirks too:

The little girl was a completely expendable character in the script. She became an annoyance. She had zero impact on this film. Not to give away to much, but she does push a button at one point in the film. However, another character could have completed the task.

Sam Worthington is Australian. However, I honestly didn't realize this until about halfway into the film when his American accent slips and he sounds very, very Australian for part of a scene. This was distracting, to say the least.

The ending was completely ridiculous. However, at this point of the film it didn't matter for me, it was already a bomb.

To be fair, the few things I DID like:

The mega-sized Terminator with the detachable Terminator motorcycles.

The digital overlay of Arnold near the end of the film. Very impressive technical work. It was as if they brought the young Arnold of 1984 to the movie set in a time-machine.

Sam Worthington (minus the accent slip) as an actor. He did really well. As did the actor who played the Kyle Reese character.

The scene where Connor hot-wires the Terminator motorcycle. Cool scene.

In short, my advice to would-be watchers of the movie is to wait for the DVD/Blu-Ray release or just re-watch T1, T2 or T3.