“It is a very rare thing for a film to shit squarely on my open and unexpecting eyes to such a degree that absolute hatred and loathing festers out of my every pore… but McG managed to do it with TERMINATOR SALVATION” says line 1, paragraph 1 of an embargo breaking review of the new Terminator movie from AICN head honcho Harry Knowles that went live 20.05.09 at 8.52 am. 

Opening wide tomorrow in the U.S. before bowing in the U.K. on 03.06.09 is the fourth installment of the 25 year old franchise and the first of a new trilogy that instead of being a fresh new fresh start like a Star Trek or 007, it plays the dangerous Superman Returns game of picking up where a previous movie left off. 

A gamble that may hault the Terminator series, just as it did the big red, white and blue when big things were expected from future movies. 

Knowles can’t even give Terminator Salvation a pass, 

I’m astonished that anyone that loves the first two films could possibly vaguely give this film a pass. Yes, the craftsmen and the visual effects artists did their job, but the film just left me furious at it. At a professional level it is superior to WOLVERINE, but in WOLVERINE’s series – well… frankly the X-MEN movies can’t even begin to compare to how awesome the first two TERMINATOR films are. And TERMINATOR 3, is much better than X3. But in a way – I feel about this film, the way I do with Ratner’s X3.

In both cases, it feels like children playing with material of which they haven’t the slightest grasp of. They can’t conceive of what actually made the material great to begin with. To them, it’s the props, the hardware, the most rudimentary iconography. Not how the characters were LOVED by their creators. That the first TERMINATOR was a love story first and foremost. That the second TERMINATOR was a story about an overly protective mom and her son.

Knowles also hates Bale’s performance…

First off, there’s zero smartass or fun in this John Connor. Having been helped by one Terminator – well it doesn’t seem to have given him much insight into anything. And you can tell that Bale doesn’t give two shits about the first two films, or anyone that has done anything with the character before. Or how the character was described. He’s got his own take on the material and it is BORING, UNINVOLVING, and without a single iconic moment. His performance is FLAT, and this is an actor I love on film, but not this time.

Roger Ebert also cites lack of story and character in his review titled “all action, all the time”. 

Watching “Terminator Salvation,” it occurred to me that in the new Hollywood, the storyboard comes first. After scrutinizing the film, I offer you my summary of the story: Guy dies, finds himself resurrected, meets others, fights. That lasts for almost two hours.

Ebert hates Bale’s performance…

Edward Furlong was infinitely more human as John Connor than Christian Bale is in this film.

Rodney at The Movie Blog gave the movie 4 marks out of 10…

As a sequel, we want a movie that leads us to the next part, showing us something new, something exciting, something kicking something’s ass. But then as a PREQUEL we are stabbed in the eye with the lack of threat. At one point in the movie Connor sums up the Terminator’s apparent mission by saying “Kill Kyle Reese, Reset the Future” and I had a glimmer of hope that something radical would happen and we would get to see a whole new evolution of the story. But we know that as long as there IS a story to tell that the eventual end (sending Reese back to save Sarah Connor and father John) will still happen. There is no suspense. I don’t fear for Reese’s or Connor’s life at all. And where they had lots of opportunity to make us care about other characters who’s fates are not already spelled out, they drop the ball.

I am not saying I wanted McG’s rumoured massacre ending to happen, but I would have liked to have shaken things up somehow. All in all, I was left underwhelmed, and the impressive designs and incredible action just didn’t make up for it.

Cole Abaius at Film School Rejects…

On what seems like a nitpicky note that’s actually fundamental to how frustrating the movie is – there is no respect for how anything truly works within this film. Physics is left by the wayside. I’ve talked with friends a lot (my friend Anand first brought this to my attention) about how the world ofThe Matrix adds and elevates that film because the speed of the humans and the speeds of the programs are constant throughout. The need for bullet-time was to express the speed that had been seen in other ways throughout the film. But it didn’t alter how fast each entity really was. The physics might not be how things work in the real world, but they stayed consistent within that universe. Salvation is the opposite. Sometimes a machine will be stronger than another machine, other times the strength is flipped. The same machine that can snap a thick titanium neck, can also do only nominal damage when punching a human. It’s absurd, and seems like minutia, but it speaks to the cardinal virtue of adhering to your own rules within. A metal arm with serious force is going to cave a human skull in. Simple as that.

But perhaps most importantly, the movie lacks any real humanity. 

Emmanuel Levy, 

Compared with James Cameron’s, McG’s direction is mechanic and impersonal, functioning more as a traffic manager than as a director with a singular vision and a sense of mise-en-scene.  I am willing to bet that you could rearrange the special and no one would even notice because they are like stand-alone set-pieces, often beautiful to behold but serving no function other than delivering the expected goods of a popcorn summer flick.

The earlier movies contained some humor and unfolded in a more familiar contemporary world, but “Terminator Salvation” is really a war movie set in a darker, post-apocalyptic future.  In this desolate bleached-out looking American West, the bombs have damaged and completely altered the ozone to the point where the sky is of a different color, the earth has different quality, the air is polluted—and it almost always rains.

Mick LaSalle of SF Gate…

Whoever thought in 2003 that we’d look back on “Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines” as the good old days? 

It isn’t really action. It’s commotion. It can’t be action if nothing happens, and nothing can happen because the commotion doesn’t advance the story. The commotion, the explosions, the fireballs function here only to delay action, to keep the status quo in place, so as to stretch what otherwise would be a 20-minute short into an almost two-hour feature.

Going back for a second to Harry Knowles who mentions the extent of Arnie’s cameo…

Arnold’s scenes, which he had nothing to do with, other than a body cast that Stan Winston did on him years ago.

Charlie Gibson and his team at ILM did a stunning job, for the 3 shots they deliver of 1984 Arnie. There’s no dialogue. But it is cool. Although pointless. It did cause a momentary buzz of excitement in the theater. And this is really the only thing besides a few scenes of Anton Yelchin’s Kyle Reese that are even vaguely compelling in the film.

Terminator Salvation, currently holding a 38% rotten rating on RT is released tomorrow in the U.S.