Wonderful character development!

That was an excellent one.

Brilliant and touching

At first rather annoying in its heavy emphasis on reenactments, this movie ultimately proves fascinating, simply because the complicated, highly dramatic tale it tells still almost defies belief.

McG. Really? That was the best director you could obtain to act as your salvation for this franchise? Mc-flipping-G!? Christ. Let me clear something up, Salvation isn't necessarily a bad film. If it wasn't attached to a franchise it would work quite well, but alas it's got the old Terminator name magnetically attracted to the title and so was doomed from the start. Set after 'Judgment Day', John Connor leads the resistance and encounters Marcus, a miraculous survivor who was condemned to a death sentence, who claims that John's past father Kyle Reese is captured by Skynet. Blah blah blah, convoluted convoluted convoluted, makes little to no sense. Ever since the third chapter, the whole paradoxical storyline is illogically derivative that each instalment just adds to the complexity of the plot. Instead of focusing on John Connor, which is clearly the strongest element to this story played aggressively by Bale, we are introduced to Marcus. A character, that was utterly destroyed by the terrible marketing (I mean that trailer...), who's sole purpose is to convey the message of the film. Illustrating the boundary between the end of humanity and the start of artificial intelligence. Good intentions, but executed heavy handedly. Plus, considering he is supposed to be a conflicted personality, my word is he ridiculously uninteresting. Worthington, Yelchin and Bonham Carter all give fine performances, but the expositional script prevent them from shining through the rusty apocalyptic environment. Bleak, dingy and dull, nothing here has life. The action set pieces, again, were fine and completely watchable. The visual effects for the most part are decent, where the sound mixing of robotic noises really elevate the futuristic world. Despite these "fine" neutral points, it's a generic film that feels generically generic in all its full genericism. It serves absolutely no purpose other than to consume your time with flashy futuristic action set pieces. Salvation, you've been terminated.

Terminator Salvation is a good action flick, with two great lead actors. It is just a little bit more detached than the last one.Like most action flicks, this film lacks emotion and heart and is fairly cold, except in the last moments. To compare it to a similar film like "War of the Worlds," where the machines controlled by aliens are taking the humans like cattle, there is a sheer intensity and determination of Cruise's character to rescue his daughter along with the quality action. I got absolutely nothing but annoyance out of the Kyle Reese and Star characters. Yelchin can act I've seen it, but half his screen time is spent yelling STAR! STAR! Worthington's character's story line is superb and the moment John gets him to look down and see that he isn't human is the highlight of the film. All the various machines and battles are terrific and Bale and Worthington excellent. I liked it.

Once upon a time three great movies were made but unfortunately a fourth was made. The first time I watched Terminator Salvation I had great difficulty getting through it. Five years after I made the bad decision to buy this movie new on DVD, I watched it again. You can guess it is a cheap movie when the settings are mostly very dark and show little except destruction. Now I know that Christian Bale can act as I enjoyed his performances in Treasure Island and 3:10 To Yuma but I despise every Batman movie. It is my opinion that Christian Bale did NO acting in Terminator Salvation and I think there was very limited acting in Terminator Salvation. My favorite two performances in Terminator Salvation are by Moon Bloodgood as Blair Williams and Jadagrace as Star. I forced myself to watch the entire movie. Well, that will be the last time. I totally disagree with the way the plot is written. This movie makes John Connor look like some total failure of a person who couldn't lead a cockroach. Sam Worthington gives a bit better performance as Marcus Wright the executed man who comes back as a man-machine. But this performance is still fractured. That is a good word for this movie = fractured. Actually, when I compare Terminator Salvation to the first three Terminator movies, I am totally disgusted that such a mess was made = Terminator Salvation.

Ever since Kyle Reece explained to Sarah Connor what the future would look like when the machines ruled the Earth, Terminator fans have been desperate to see more of those dark, gritty, laser-filled scenes that James Cameron dropped into the first two movies. Now, we finally get to see a whole movie showing us what the future world would look like. And it basically looks about as much as James Cameron's original vision as Christian Bale looks like Edward Furlong, not bothering to retain either the look or feel of what has gone before.'Terminator: Salvation' is the film that fans asked for, but didn't ask for the way they got it. While it was made, the Terminator himself was busy running the state of California, so couldn't really reprise his role (and don't get me started on any CGI work used to correct this – it really isn't up to the 'Rogue One' standards we're now used to). However, that's not so bad, as the story isn't just about the indestructible machine of metal, but also the Connor family, so most people were relieved that a decent actor like Christian Bale was going to be playing John Connor. Unfortunately, the film takes the weird route not to follow him, instead choosing to be mainly about Sam Worthington's character – a death-row inmate who somehow wakes up in the future and also helps trash a cyborg or two. I won't spoil too much of Worthington's character, especially as the trailer basically did that for me. However, I will say that this film would have been a damn sight better if it simply omitted his character completely. I'm not having a go at the actor. He did all he could with what he was given. It's just people weren't going to watch this film based on ANY new character – they wanted to see more of the old ones (even if they had been recast!).I could pick out various personal annoyances that I had with this film – the helicopter pilot who wears sunglasses at night, the silent child who's used as a plot device to show how caring our central characters are, or the fact that the end battle completely rips off T2 beat for beat. All of these I could have overlooked if it wasn't for the fact that 'Salvation' completely ignores various plot points that have been clearly stated in previous films. Maybe those not so 'up# on Terminator lore won't notice, but for me I found myself asking too many questions as to why things were happening this way. I know you could say that timelines got changed here and there so things are now different in the future, but, in my opinion, that's just lazy writing and a cop out.There were at least a couple of stand-outs, namely Ashton Yelchen's excellent take on how Michael Biehn portrayed Reece, Skynet City looking pretty cool and the nod to T" by playing Guns and Roses again. However, this film was almost damned before it was released as much of the publicity surrounding it was directed at Christian Bale's bizarre outburst on set at a fellow crew member.I guess that 'Terminator: Salvation' isn't as bad as I'm making out. It's an okay sci-fi/action film. However, because it has the Terminator name attached we – the fans – are just hoping for more than we got. And, if you're interested, you may want to Google it's alternate ending, as it is much darker and interesting than what we got.