Salvation – Hardly.

Rating: 6/10 (6 September 2010)

For a movie made in 1984 Terminator was a revelation – and its sequel T2: Judgement Day was also give the credit by most of being superior to the first – of course this all went to *&@% when the third movie was made which was simply a rehash of the second film.
The flash forwards in these movies showed glimpses of the 'possible future' the groundwork for Terminator Salvation had already been set and with the knowledge of what to avoid from Rise of the Machines Salvation should be a gem of a movie... unfortunately it wasn't.
The movie had free reign and a host of opportunity for this machine led future but instead of creating a new vision of this post apocalyptic future... this movie decides to continue the legacy of T3 and plays it safe by rehashing and hacking together parts from the original movies.
It feels the need for all of the characters to reuse all of the famous lines from the original movies (in case you forgot you were watching a Terminator movie) the action scenes are repetitive (the final battle looked as though it was set in the same plant as T1 and used the same battle tactics as in T2) which became tiresome as is the storyline. Unfortunately when the movie was trying to be original you're left with John Connor catching a Harley Davidson Terminator and riding it all the way to Skynet.
Even though Christian Bale is becoming increasingly synonymous with Batman he is a good choice for John Connor – but rather than focus on a man who already knows his future and how he becomes humanity's saviour this movie concentrates on the Terminator hybrid who suffers from a case of moral issues and poor one liners... to add to the cheese he doesn't know he is a Terminator at first... but when he does realise conveniently becomes super strong and a force for good....
The movie is watchable... it just feels as though it was a missed opportunity (especially if this is the first of many) and an opportunity Arnie is probably glad to have missed!