A "modern" version of about 10 minutes of film.

Rating: 7/10 (8 March 2014)

Terminator Salvation is at least, in its simplest sense, an interesting film, and one that is certainly, and very, watchable. It is created from, in a tonal sense, about 10-15 minutes of footage from the classic original Terminator. That is all the viewers of the Terminator films (not the series which I never viewed) have really seen of the war in the future. It was dark, bleak, only really seen at night and consisted of a feeble human race fighting against a larger robot race. Yet, Terminator Salvation is a film that is set entirely in this world. And it is an amazing world to behold. If the entire review was just about the world shown - or hell, just about the experience of watching it, then this film would be an instant classic. It changes up the world seen previously, yet portrays it, in a way, exactly how Terminator explained it to be - hell. But we can't just look at it by the world, we have to sum it by all of its parts. And some are pretty faulty. For example, it was written by the writers of the excellent David Fincher movie "The Game". They also wrote the not so excellent "Catwoman". Yeah. The story is good, but leaves a huge amount to be desired. The acting is good, but just good. Not excellent. People talk, and are believable, but only just believable enough to pass. The set pieces are pretty incredible at points, and provide some good, tense action. Plus, the film itself is super entertaining on a basic brain-switching-off level. It has many good points, and a few bad. It isn't perfect, but lets be fair, it wasn't meant to be. Hell, the guy's name is "McG". He wasn't here to make a statement about life and machines and what makes us human or any of that, and if he was, that was a failure. He was here to entertain and man oh man did he get that right. If you're stubborn and cannot flex your views on Terminator and what you think it "should" be based on the first two amazing movies, then you won't like this movie. But you knew that. But if you go in with an open mind, then maybe, just maybe, you might even enjoy yourself.