Hardly A Terminator Movie At All

Rating: 5/10 (14 June 2009)

As a big Terminator fan, I've been waiting for the post-apocalyptic Terminator movie since the first Terminator came out. Even back then, I expected it would be heavily action-based, but would at least keep some of the horror-movie charm that the first Terminator had.
I was mistaken.
Terminator: Salvation is really nothing more than an average summer action flick. Complete with minimal story and little background explanation for newer characters, the only thing that will keep you interested are the fancy explosions and occasional references back to what should be called "The Original Series," because I hardly consider this part of the original trilogy.
The references to The Original Series are one of the few things this movie did well. John Connor's background in his conflicting trusting in the Terminators and being immediately skeptical of ones that claim to be "on the human's side" or something to that degree, is very well expressed, even with Christian Bale's angeringly poor depiction of the John Connor we all know and love. I've always figured the future John Connor would be *more* of a military leader than the John Connor we've seen before, but Christian Bale is ridiculous. He seemed to care too much about how loud he could roar and how bad-ass he would appear in the final product. I'm not exaggerating, at least 70% of his lines are screamed. I'm reminded of how his Batman-voice became more of a growl than a human voice.
Overall, the film isn't worth seeing, and it certainly won't be added to my collection of T-DVDs.