Terminator Salvation

Terminator: Salvation Does it seem as if a review for this movie is redundant? There have already been three. First we tried to kill Sarah, then John, then John’s girlfriend. Who’s left to kill? The story-line in these movies involves time paradoxes and frankly, was never solid enough to support more than a couple flicks. Like Conan, they were just a vehicle for the world’s most muscular man to flex, and kill people. Which is totally valid, don’t get me wrong. But enough is enough already.
First, let’s get this out of the way; it’s a great action movie, meaning there’s lots of action. Fun to watch—unless (here comes the caveat) you have a brain larger than a walnut.
The story revolves (barely) around a guy on death row who donates his body to science and becomes an unwitting vassal of Skynet, the machine culture bent on eradicating humans. In the meantime John Connors father (who hasn’t gone back in time yet so he can impregnate Sarah, Jon’s mother), then a teen-ager in the war-ravaged ruins of LA, is captured by the bad robots and befriends the unwitting cyborg who thinks its human, while John is leading heroic raids against the machines and battling the leadership because only he knows the future, and a female pilot is shot down, and the resistance leadership is planning a big counter-attack, and blah,blah, blah. The whole thing collapses into a black-hole of too many so-what’s and I-don’t-cares?
Actually, I was hoping for a true paradigm shift on the order of the new Star Trek, but I was sorely disappointed. There are too many hackneyed scenes, left over from a hundred other movies, too many scenes and stunts and effects that were there just to be there—having nothing to do with the plot or the action—of course intelligent machines would have fire pots placed in strategic locations so there would be, you know . . . fire. And as usual, too many holes, and mistakes. Easy to avoid mistakes. Like, what was the point of the atomic bomb, which had nothing to do with what was going on? And why did everyone’s radio work only a few miles from the blast (and EMP) and growing mushroom cloud? And on and on. This one had the same problem as Armageddon. Not enough thought went into it to actually create a viable story worth two hours of our time. It was just big explosions and random emergencies. And bad science.
Arnold declined to be involved, but they threw in a completely unnecessary look-alike-slash-manikin to play the “Terminator” for about five seconds. Don’t’cha wonder what people are thinking sometimes?
In the end, nothing is resolved, which means these idiots are actually contemplating another one.
It was worth seeing—barely. I give it a solid but tedious ho-hum. Rated PG-13. Nita didn’t bother going, she has more sense.