Terminator Salvation oh what could have been!

Rating: 5/10 (6 November 2019)

It's such a shame because on paper this could have worked, and you really want to praise them for trying something new, especially in the absence of Arnold and all the cast we've been familiar with. Christian Bale is the grown up John Connor and is fighting against Skynet. We know this story and it's nice to be finally seeing it, it's starts out strong. We get to see John Connor doing the stuff we've only really heard about or seen glimpses of. We also get to meet a younger Kyle Reese, great casting there too, I also love the scene with the rubber Terminator.
Tonally the film has some of the grit of the original which is welcome to see, we're in a post apocalyptic world and there's definitely a Mad Max vibe. There's some new ideas thrown in here two, with different futuristic machines, the motorcycles were cool as well as the large harvester... I liked that whole scene.
That's the big problem for me with this film, there's some great scenes that are poorly stitched together. Weaving them together is this other story about Marcus Wright, who's a hybrid human Terminator or a Terminator who think he's human or something like that. Sam Worthington turns in a fine performance but there's something missing for me here.
Do we need more exploration of what it means to be human vs a machine? It's certainly in there... or would the whole story be better without this distraction? I'm inclined to go with the latter if I'm honest. This should have been the John Connor becoming the leader of resistance story that we all wanted to see on screen. I guess the filmmakers were worried that might have not been enough and wanted some twists and surprises. I think if they'd have just given us what we wanted we'd have been better off. Then there's the T-800, on screen for 5 seconds and the worst cgi since the Rock in the Scorpion King. That's worth knocking 2 points off alone.
Should you see this movie? Yes, I think it's worth a watch out of interest alone, it certainly stands out from the other Terminator films, but not always for the right reasons. It's a shame as now that Dark Fate has taken us in a different direction, this (and parts of Genisys) are as close as we're ever going to get to the "John Connor" future war that we glimpsed in the 1st Terminator.