***LOTS OF SPOILERS***
How bad is Terminator Salvation? Is it the worst of the Terminator films? Easily. Is it on the fast track towards the pantheon of forgettable summer blockbusters like The Island or Superman Returns? Definitely. Could the film just as easily have been called Robot Wars or Machine Battle and have had the same impact on the Terminator universe? Sadly, yes. Terminator Salvation, a film I've anticipated for almost a year now, is a colossal disappointment from beginning to end. It's technically inept, dramatically empty and right now, I can't think of a worse way to spend $8.50. While some individual scenes in the film are alright if taken by themselves, they ultimately add up to nothing. Terminator Salvation plays like a Uwe Boll film with good production values; nobody does anything for any other reason to advance the plot forward, and they all look as bored as we are doing it; the more you think about what actually happens in the plot of this film, the more glaringly apparent it becomes that it was assembled so haphazardly that trying to contextualize anything in it makes the whole sorry piece of shit collapse on itself like a $200 million house of cards. Why does Skynet, a system so intelligent that it becomes self-aware and is on the brink of destroying mankind, not IMMEDIATELY kill Kyle Reese when they found him, instead of using him as bait? I mean, the film makes it clear that the machines know who he is, so why fuck about? Also, why would Skynet even bother to utilize a machine like Marcus, a machine capable of DISOBEYING it, possibly even destroying it? And while we're on the topic of Skynet, what the fuck? At the end of T3, we're told that Skynet doesn't have a central location, and that it exists in the fabric of the global computer infrastructure and is therefore impossible to destroy. Why would Skynet then (again, a self-aware system), decide later to erect an HQ that, were it to be destroyed by a certain freethinkin' robot that it may or may not have under its command, would severely hamper their mission to eradicate all of mankind? Why, because the plot requires it, that's why! Also, the end of the film casually tells us that "Hey! That's just one of Skynet's bases! There's more for us to destroy, and they're conveniently located in (presumably) similar mind-fuckingly retarded sequels!" While I'm on the topic of the Skynet's stupidity, why does Helena Bonham Carter give a bad Bond villain speech at the end of the movie (a speech that lasts forever and tells the audience nothing it didn't already know from the prologue)? Why does all the acting suck? Christian Bale looks talks and acts as though he's got chronic migraines and two-plus week bout of constipation. Also, he spends most of his time yelling into a walkie-talkie and looking dour; he's supposed to emerge as the Leader of the Resistance by the film's end, The Last, Best Hope of Humanity - but how does it end? With Connor flown away in a helicopter, a wounded little pussy who just had a heart transplant successfully (!?) performed on him in a desert near the site of a nuclear explosion. Yeah. THAT'S gonna last. But Bale's remarkably uninteresting John Connor isn't the only one who sucks. Sam Worthington can't keep a consistent accent to save his soul. Moon Bloodgood takes the stereotypical Ambiguous Female Action Sub-Character role to new highs (lows?) - take that, Angelina Jolie from Wanted! Common sucks, period. Bryce Dallas Howard shows all the emotional depth of a Macy's mannequin, and she also never once mentions anything about why she's carrying a pillow under her blouse; in a film so chock full of unnecessary bullshit, her pregnancy might have been an interesting topic to talk about, but the film completely ignores it. *sigh* I could go on forever. The action sequences come right of the Michael Bay playbook. The editing was atrocious (whoever thought it was a good idea to cut the OMG, Marcus Is Totes A Machine scene together the way it was needs to be fired). There were no lasers (remember the opening scenes from T1/T2, and the totally kick-ass lasers? WHERE THE FUCK WERE THOSE?). The product placement actually made me laugh (mankind is borderline-fucked, but Sony and Sandisk seem to be thriving). Which, in retrospect, I suppose is alright, because the movie made me want to die.

Look, the story of T4 sucks, plain and simple, but it's just meant to be taken as a fun summer action popcorn flick and that's what I took it as.

What I found funny was the little girl in terminator. She never said a word throughout. People might say it's because she was traumatized. Yes, she probably was. Traumatized by the movie. No no! I'm just kidding!

I don't want to shoot down the movie. It had the effects and the action and that's really what they were going for.

f*** the Marcus "girly" terminator sideplot. I mean, could that have been anymore predictable? And what the f*** good does it do to build an infiltrator terminator (btw. I hated all the different names they had for the various terminators in this movie) that can simply take out its chip and f*** up the plans?

“I strongly suspect the next movie is going to take place in a [pre-Judgment Day] 2011. John Connor is going to travel back in time and he’s going to have to galvanize the militaries of the world for an impending Skynet invasion. They’ve figured out time travel to the degree where they can send more than [just] one naked entity. So you’re going to have hunter killers and transports and harvesters and everything arriving in our time and Connor fighting back with conventional military warfare, which I think is going to be fucking awesome. I also think it’s there he’s going to meet the scientist that’s going to look a lot like present-day Robert Patrick, talking about stem-cell research and how we can all live as idealized, younger versions of ourselves.