I haven't yet read a good review of this movie. The best kind being it's pretty good not great. Not worth all the hype though. I disagree. I really liked this movie. Maybe that's the non-franchise-fan talking, but I thought it was exactly as advertised: the war of the future. Very kick-ass. Very actiony.
The look of the movie was something that surprised me early on (from the previews). From the earlier hints at the war, I expected near-constant darkness (I would assume from the Judgement Day explosion aftermath) and everything to be very precise and robotic. Not the case. Basically this is a war movie like Saving Private Ryan or... I dunno... Apocalypse Now... only with some Robots. Everything is very gritty and grimey. The human resistance has crappy weaponry that exists today, with some steps backwards, and most of the action happened in broad daylight. I've mentioned this before as an effect I like. Awful things happening at night is one thing it's scary. Awful things happening at noon on a nice sunny day is another thing it's terrifying. Bad stuff will happen whenever. Robots don't care if it's lunch time. Especially 100 foot tall terminators. The look of the movie was actually a big, big plus in that regard.
The story was also pretty great. Well, the overall story was great (I'll explain what I mean later). From what I understand, Terminator 3 is almost the exact same movie as T2, only with a girl terminator instead of a liquid one. And even T2 was a similar movie to the first one, only Arnold was a good guy instead of the killer. Terminator Salvation took a new angle at it. Yeah there were evil Terminators, but none that were really characters they were just evil drones who were trying to kill everyone. They were Skynet, and this movie gives a good definition to what Skynet really is. It's just a giant force that wants to get rid of humanity. Always knew that, but now we see the facelessness of that idea. Just all kinds of crazy killing machines. But, as with the last 3 movies, they need a NEW terminator. The first one was a giant strong-man robot. The second one was able to morph into simple weapons and other people. The third was able to morph into guns and stuff. What would be the silly twist this time? As was seen in the preview (so hopefully this isn't a spoiler) but it's a human-terminator hybrid. And it's a really, really good explanation too. That's a big chunk of the plot. The other chunk is trying to save Kyle Reese a teenager who will go on to become John Connor's father in the past. Yes, that annoying guy from the boring movie. The movie kinda skips the rise to power of John Connor, but that seems to be the course for all these movies. Nobody really cares about John Connor he's just what stuff happens around.
Now to explain what I said earlier. The story was great that's not to say the writing was great. The writing was, at best, average. It was pretty good for an action movie. Basic statements getting yelled back and forth between explosions and gun fights. Some stuff was left unexplained, some stuff was explained purely so the next five minutes would work. But, it's a terminator movie. That's to be expected. It didn't help that most of the b-characters were acted pretty blandly. The main characters they were done well, but characters like John's wife were pretty irrelevant and almost in the way.
Having said that there's a lot to look for in this movie amid all the action and 'splodey things. If you can remember a lot of great scenes/ lines from the older movies, odds are they are referenced/alluded to in this movie. Does that include G'N'R? Yes. Yes it does. Does that include a motorcycle flying through the window of a mack truck? Yup! Does that include cameos? You better friggin' believe it! Well, sorta.
4 / 5 - Anywho as I mentioned, I really liked this movie. It was fun and got to the stuff that Terminator fans have been waiting a really long time for and did it in a fairly unexpected way.
PS There's no real reason that John was Christian Bale other than the fact that it saved an explanation of why this guy is so tough. You can totally believe that Batman could hold his own against a 7 foot tall kill-bot.