"Terminator Salvation" ** (out of four): This ambitious redefinition of a franchise is also loud, clumsy and, in the end, doesn't make much sense.
Ever since the first "Terminator" movie (and, for the record, it's called "The Terminator", not "Terminator"), fans have been waiting for the day when the future would be revealed. In James Cameron's 1984 touchstone, we see brief glimpses of a bleak, decimated future ruled by machines - red-eyed, metal-framed robots prowling the landscape gunning down the few remaining human resistance fighters. In Mr. Cameron's sequel, 1991's "Terminator 2: Judgment Day", we're introduced to a more family-friendly Terminator (Arnold Schwarzenegger's T-800 was updated to go along with his image), as well as a nasty "liquid metal" version (thank you, Robert Patrick). All along, the future loomed. Baby steps were taken, but could anything stop the inevitable? Sure enough, 2003's unfairly-maligned "Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines" culminated in an apocalyptic coda, like something right out of "Dr. Strangelove".
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I have to agree with you BPBS, I saw a showing of this film on Monday and it was dissapointing. You pointed out most of where the movie went wrong, but here is my biggest beef; you are a Terminator, a robot with one purpose, to kill humans. Why in the name of fuck is your #1 move when you have a human in your metal grip a toss across the room. You have metal fucking hands! Crush their skull, their larynx, snap their neck! It is so ridiculous that these machines that took over the world cannot kill a single human because they prefer to throw them across the room and then slowly walk over to them.
I do not want to give away the plot, but Kyle Reese is Connor's father, if you kill him, his little sperm never get all up in Linda Hamilton and Connor ceases to be, why in the name of Havanna sluts would you not kill him the second you made an ID on him. I can buy the premise that machines will one day be our overlords but I cannot accept the fact that they are completely inept.
P.S. I was(am?) extremely hungover when I wrote this.
If nothing else, you are a pretty coherent drunk.