Terminator: Salvation - review

I love the Terminator movies. They are SF, apocalyptic, have big robots, and Arnie, the question should be, "what is not to like?" Well unfortunately Terminator: Salvation makes that question an easy one: no heart. I looked forward to this film more than any other this summer and while it was at times awe inspiring, at others it was...Waterworld. Waterworld is of course one of the biggest budget flops of all time. It was beautiful to look at, but had no heart (and the acting made me want to tear my heart out). This new Terminator was every bit as frustrating as that film, because of the wasted potential.

The Terminator storyline (and I'm not going to go into its complex history here) is so rich, the only problem would be figuring what to focus on. Director McG apparently decided to cop out by focusing on nothing (well, except big machines). And poor Christian Bale, post-infantile outburst, is getting all the blame. Hey, at least he tried to do something with the word-vomit he was given (Mr. Costner!!!) This film relied far too heavily on the previous films to provide background to these beloved characters and none of them were fleshed out enough for me care if they lived or died, no matter how cool and intense the action was.

Speaking of the action: If there was one thing that McG proved he can do well its staging action, and there was a lot of it. If there was a story to match, I feel that these action sequences could have gone down as some of the most memorable ever. Other positives were the cinematography and the overall post-apocalyptic look of the film. It was for the most part breathtaking, which makes the films failures seem even more tragic.

The bottom line is that if your like me and can't resist a film like this no matter how many negative reviews you read, then go experience it's many explosions on the big screen (preferably wait for the budget theater). I give it a generous 60% out of 100%, just because its beautiful post-apocalyptic world, and some action sequences that try their hardest to make you forget there is no heart.