Terminator Salvation

Holland:
Here is the basic premise of T4: John Connor is searching for a young man, Kyle Reese, so that he can then send him back in time to have sex with his mother and, hence, become his father. But John Connor is already there, so he must have found Kyle and sent him back, right? So why all the stress? Time travel movies require the suspension of disbelief, and this is fine, providing the movie is funny (Back to the Future, Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure) or kick arse (T2). In T4, it is just annoying. The other annoyance is with the Terminators themselves, and this is a 2-part annoyance: 1. Why are there so few Terminators, the third act is set in a fricking Terminator factory? 2. Why do they insist on throwing people against walls, giving them a chance to escape or be rescued instead of a) shooting them dead or b) smashing their head in?

There are a couple of pretty good action scenes, and I like all of the actors (Sam Worthington is particularly good). It also has a brief surprise appearance from an old friend, which got a good crowd reaction. If it was a stand alone futuristic action/sci-fi movie I probably would have thought that it was an OK popcorn movie. But this is a Terminator movie, and I demand more, dammit!

The ending of T2 was kind of corny, but it was also perfect. The ending of T4 is kind of similar, but is just stupid. Actually, I think this pretty much sums up the whole movie. It ticks all of the boxes for what you'd expect in a Terminator movie, but it just isn't very good.

They are certainly keeping their sequel options open. Not only does nothing really get resolved in this movie, they don't even get up to the point where Reese is sent back in time. Urgh!

I don't want anybody else spending money seeing this movie. It will just encourage them to think that people liked it, and when the next Terminator movie is made (which is pretty much inevitable), we might get lumped with another mess like this. My score therefore has to be: If you really want to see it, "see it on TV".


Woon:
Let's face it. Time travel movies are a fallacy. James Cameron essentially screwed the pooch in the original Terminator when he let John Conner send his own father back in time to let him be born. There are so many plot holes to do with that side of the story that the only way not to give this movie a zero is to review it without that subplot. OK, so the baddie robots are from the baddie aliens (BA) and the goodie robots are from the goodie aliens (GA). John Conner has a unique DNA mutation that threatens the existence of the BA race. The GAs must protect John Conner because he is the ultimate weapon. Both aliens can't come to earth because it would freak everyone out and we would kill them both.

T1: BA sees John's mother as having the potential to mutate. GA recruits Kyle Reese to protect her. Cool looking robots, bit of T&A, explosions and ends in an industrial setting. T2: BA sees the mutated John, sends next model to kill him. GA sends captured old model to protect. Cool looking robots, no T&A (just male glutious maximus), explosion and ends in an industrial setting. T3: BA still looking for John, GA sends captured old model to protect. Cool looking robots, censored T (dammit), explosions and ends in an industrial/military setting.

And now to T4, well you know the drill. The look of the film was a lot grittier than T2 and T3. Scenes reminiscent of Mad Max 2 during the highway chase and Saving Private Ryan during the headquarters escape. All the old favorite lines were there as well as the T-800 (with and with out skin - spoiler). It definitely is like all the other Terminator movies, but minus the fate/can't change destiny tagline. I was expecting a John Conner centric story with his heroism finally shown, but this was not the case. I think the makers could not decide whether to focus the story on him or the Terminators and in the end it was a half arsed attempt to do both and they failed at both.

Giving it a rating of "worth a torrented DVD rip but only if you have nothing else to use your end of month quota on".


Holland:
I'm not sure that your rewriting of the Terminator mythology minus the time travel solves any of the problems with this movie. It vaguely works for the first three, but the whole point of T4 is that it is the future and John and the Terminators are looking to change the past. I prefer to leave time travel in and just not think about it too much. It got me thinking though, that the makers of T4 should have taken your advice and removed the time travel element from the movie. Then we could have just sat back and enjoyed a futuristic robot vs man (I bags being the robot) action romp.

And thanks for the reminder about the hot naked chick in T3.

Woon:
Whomever fed the knowledge into Skynet so it could become self aware should have shown it less of the Austin Power's trilogy and more of Third Riech playbook. I'm calling this as the last of the franchise.

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Next up: Hanna Montana.