Terminator Salvation

I know, I know, the critics have all locked arms in unison around the world to bemoan the film, warn us of how terrible it is, and do their best to give us a witty remark about director McG's name. But I'm here to tell you that regardless of what you may have heard, this film is really not that bad. That isn't to say it is good but in comparison to TERMINATOR 3, this is a masterpiece.

Let me first say that I hate TERMINATOR 3. It takes the worst parts of the previous films and puts them into such a formulaic plot that it falls under its own weight. There is no sense of danger. Again, the film succeeds in making us hate John Connor and wonder why Reese would ever follow this idiot. On top of that, the girl terminator seems much less powerful than the liquid metal guy, not to mention that she gets creamed every time she meets up with Arnold. If this comes on TV on a weekend, I can't even bare to watch.

So when you look at it from this perspective and maybe go into the film knowing it isn't a modern sci-fi classic, you will probably be saying the same thing as me "this isn't that bad, in fact, it is kind of a fun one time summer action movie." Honestly, a lot of this is probably just the general hatred for McG as a director that rubbed on most of the reviews of this film. It really is about average.

What worked:

Although you could say the action scenes are more set up and filmed like a video game cinematic, than film, they are still exciting for the most part and well staged. Most of the time, the effects look passable if not pretty solid (certainly, no where near as bad as the WOLVERINE effects problems).

The guy they found to play Reese, is really solid and believable. This is important because it ties it back to the first film, and I felt like the script didn't do a bad job of showing why Reese would be so loyal to Connor and be willing to basically die to go back in time (one way trip).

Sam Worthington as Marcus Wright is solid. He's up and coming and I can see why Bale talks so highly of him. He's believable and holds a lot of the weaker parts of the plot together.

What didn't work:

Believe it or not, (I know this is sacrilege to some), Christian Bale was not that good. He was of course, intense and professional, and did his best but his Connor is boring. I would say 90% of the problem here is with the script which gives barely a shell and terrible dialog for him to work from. But at the same time, I almost felt like his heart wasn't in this. Maybe he realized this film was not turning out the way he had hoped and got a bit down about it?

The script is really poor. Lots of plot holes and the dialog is cringe inducing almost every time the characters speak. That's probably why the ENTIRE film is action, almost non-stop, to cover up the dialogue.

Overall, this is much better than the 3rd and in the hands of the right director, a future sequel could be pretty good with the set up they've done here but it ain't doing to well at the box office so this may be the last we see of TERMINATOR for a long time.