Movie Review
Terminator Salvation (2009)

Thar be Spoilers below:

There is that great scene where Kyle returns to resistance "hide-out". He is exhausted. The humans are, by and large, NOT soldiers. Old people, young people, all of them dirty and sickly and looking like hunted animals. We hear people weeping all around. Then the Terminator shows up and just lays waste to the to the place. The scene is bleak and horrible and drives home how desperate everything is in this future. Terminator: Salvation never gets close to that. Most everyone is a soldier toting around full special forces gear. They have jets and hangars and submarines. Instead of feeling like humans are on the brink of extinction, we get what looks like GI Joe fighting Transformers in the desert.

Christian Bale a grimacing, smoldering, action-cypher for most of the movie. The problem is that the guy who plays Marcus is much better at doing the same thing. John Connor has become a quasi-mesiah type figure who gives fireside chats like FDR did during the war. The notion that he's seen as a false prophet by some (including a sadly misused Michael Ironside) doesn't ring true. The mythology of the first film indicated that humankind was near extinction when Connor took charge and brought things back from the brink. He thus presumably organized the resistance himself--he didn't rise to leadership after other, less effective leaders were killed. And the masses didn't follow him because he was a "messiah". As far as they knew, he was just an everyman who rose to a potion of greatness because he merited it.

I did kinda like Connor's "fireside chats", though. I can totally see that working in the context of what we're told about him in the first two movies. While John was not really a commander in the movie, he was a big deal in the alliance resistance as a communications personality, a consultant, and as the leader of his own outfit that had A-10's assorted helicopters, and experience in overwhelming machines and rescuing human captives. The actual commanders seemed to think he was nuts and a loose cannon but they did value his participation and contributions in the war against Skynet. By the end he is in a reasonable position to assume command and probably tighten the organization up and formalize it into the force that would eventually defeat Skynet.

Sam Worthington is pretty solid, and his character's arc is interesting, but the whole notion of this elaborate infiltration plan is utterly absurd. I would have preferred he stayed a mystery but overall the movie gives the audience enough to be satisfied. Marcus is a tragic figure part machine-part man. A man out of time. He finds a cause in his new life that he seems a little too eager to give up his heart and get out of this future that he never should have seen. (I guess that in 2018 there is no available artificial heart technology.)

The young Arnold CGI is really impressive. The T-800 battle at the end is pretty darn good, and is a solid reminder of just how cool the original Terminator was--who needs the gimmicks of the T-1000 or T-X? That classic design still works. Of course, Reese (from 2029) said in the first movie that the T-800s were new, but here, we see that they were developed 11 years earlier. Also, Reese said that the T-600s had rubber skin, but here, they just wear rubber masks and tattered clothes.

There are many visual references to the previous films: The origin of Connor's scar, the T-800 struggling to walk as it's being frozen, "I'll be back", etc. To the filmmakers' credit, some of these are more subtle than they could have been. Others aren't.

The problems

It's not clear whether SkyNet knows that Reese is Connor's father. At the very least, SkyNet seems to know that Connor has some kind of vested interest in Reese, and therefore uses him as bait. If it does know that he's Connor's father, then the movie is completely and utterly stupid, because SkyNet should have taken the opportunity to kill Reese and change the future instead of crafting elaborate plots to lure Connor to SkyNet Central or sending Terminators back in time.
Also, why would Connor be stupid enough to tell anyone about his knowledge of Reese's eventual role as his father? That's a major tactical boo-boo, since that info could possibly get back to SkyNet. The first two films make it clear that Connor knows everything about Reese and the paradox, and has to keep quiet so as to allow Reese to live and volunteer to be sent back in time and complete the circle.

I have a hard time believing that the resistance command didn't consider that Skynet might have a really simple defense against the shortwave shut down code like rotating the codes, having a time period in which shut down was not accepted, or jamming the shortwave signal or whatever. No one seems to really know how radio signals and tracking them should work in this movie. Subs broadcast theatre-wide short wave signals while under water? Why was resistance command directly involved in the operation at all? Have they never heard of compartmentalization? And wasn't it established that John is a super computer geek. He shoulda at least known. It just seemed like a really lame plan. Sure it was a ruse but who'd fall for it? The Resistance is an informal and voluntary as it seems to be. "Sir, the bombers won't launch until Conner gives the order" is kinda odd in this harsh realm.

Why was Skynet using the captured people held in the hole under the radar site as nuke bait for Conner's Tech-Com force or for T-800 style cyborg tissue/behavior research ? Was skynet hauling people to its Tower/T-800 production base as bait to draw out Conner, as human shields for the expected Resistance bombing mission, for research purposes, or to train them to work in extermination centers? Maybe they needed some people for the T-800 to hang out with to see if they'd notice he wasn't one of them? Kyle was supposed to have been a super commando at an extermination facility where he got his barcode brand. That doesn't seem to have happened yet. He just got picked out, tossed into a cell, and rescued. I also note that no mention was made of his having a brother named Derek so I guess that's a signal about the importance of the TV show. A real missed opportunity in my opinion.

Did John, by mouthing off to the unknowingly wired Marcus, make Skynet AWARE of him and his destiny and the upcoming time travel capability ? Why would Skynet believe him ? It seems like Resistance Command already knew about a Skynet kill list that had Kyle at #1 and John as #2. If the TV show didn't happen then how does younger Skynet even know about John Conner ? Are Conner's Tech-Com buddies a threat because they are so effective or does Skynet already know the future?

The movie is very choppy, without a genuinely engaging through-line. It doesn't have the same emotional pull that the first two movies had. It feels more like a story constructed around setpieces and plot twists, and looks like a video game. As many reviewers have said, the humanity so crucial to Cameron's films is missing. And we really don't even get any good Terminator action until the end. So what's the point, besides setting up a few more lifeless sequels?