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If you think that anyone who calls himself “McG” would be better off working at McDonald’s, you’d be right. And even then I’d double check my order to make sure he didn’t forget my fries.
The sad thing is that we’re not even demanding high art from this franchise; all any of us really want from a Terminator movie is good action, a mildly clever plot and a few cool moments we can’t wait to see again. Despite the previous chapter’s lukewarm reception, I actually like T3 – sure, it’s little more than a remake of T2, but it’s tightly paced, has repeat-viewing-worthy action (that chase with the crane truck in downtown LA is an all-time classic as far as I’m concerned) and it has one of the best twist endings in sci-fi cinema history.
But Terminator: Salvation has none of the above. The story makes little sense, one of the biggest action sequences in the film is a direct rip-off of Spielberg’s War of the Worlds (and I mean it is literally plagiarism) and this movie’s only surprise twist is that it makes you wish you were watching The Sarah Conner Chronicles.
Not only does T4 truly feel like a paint-by-numbers TV movie for the first two acts, it drags the Terminator franchise down to the level of Alien VS Predator, hovering dangerously close to cliche-ridden ”B-movie” territory.
— movie review: terminator salvation (spoiler-free) « Darth Mojo
