Good and yet something much better could be in there

Rating: 7/10 (30 April 2012)

Let's start with the basics, if you watch the Terminator movies just for large machines blowing up and smashing other machines then this film is excellent.
But ... if having watched the others you've realised that there is a fascinating study of what is the difference between a man and a machine and what does it truly mean to be the former then I think someone accidentally deleted all the key bits of the script in favour of another explosion.
Christian Bale and Sam Worthington are good actors and both can show emotions beautiful in a restrained, understated sort of way. Here there are really only 2 or 3 scenes where they almost get the chance to explore the deeper meanings, and then the director must have got bored and decided that more than 10 seconds without an explosion was too long.
Marcus's confusion at the beginning is matched by ours, which works well as a way into the film and the interaction with the young Reese is good but please couldn't he have been allowed to react when his part in the plot is explained by Skynet.
And at the end, there is no true explanation of the sacrifice as there is in Terminator 2. It's rather sad really because this could have been so much better.