A disgrace to the franchise, but not a bad action film

Rating: 4/10 (28 November 2009)

OK here is what the movie would have been like if it were true to canon (if we exclude the fact that Skynet did not know who John Connors father was):

Skynet finds Kyle Reese - Terminator instantly kill Kyle Reese, no more John Connor - End of movie. End of war.

Seriously - that was the whole premise of the T1-3 movies, so why oh why do we see:

Skynet finds Kyle Reese - Skynet transports Kyle Reese to a cost prison in some base - Skynet lures John Connor into said (non-heavily defended base), so they can kill him - Skynet sends one, yes one Terminator to kill John Connor. However instead of the terminator simply squishing JC's skull the instant he gets hold of him, he spends 15 minutes lobbing him around. Note in the original, the Terminator punched his fist straight into some poor guys chest - and then he only wanted his clothes!

That said, if it had been made as a standalone "evil robots take over the Earth" movie, it would have have OK. It's just they have taken no care whatsoever about sticking to the plot.