Terminator Salvation (2009)

“If you’re listening to this, you are the resistance.”

This is it, then: the moment the Terminator franchise leaps headlong over a large carnivorous fish of the genus carcharhinus.

So what’s so awful about it? After all, it’s inoressive the way they briefly manage to get a T-800 looking like Arbus for a few seconds later on, and there’s a nice little fourth-wall breaking moment later on where Marcus uses a song as terminator bait, and it’s You Could Be Mine by Guns ‘n’ Roses, straight from the T2 soundtrack. Indeed, the first scene, with Marcus signing away his body in return for a kiss an hour before his judicial killing,  is dramatic and interesting.

And yet the film is a crashing disappointment, a generic action film with no time travel and bland CGI terminators that look like nothing special. Even the various air, sea and giant terminators don’t manage to excite; it’s all just a soup of bland CGI dullness.

There’s a glimmer on interest in the decision to set the film in 2018(!), Much earlier than the usual 2029 (although the year Skynet assumes control, after all the times-windy ness of earlier films, is kept wisely vague) so we get a John Connor who is not yet in charge and a young Kyle Reese, played charismatically by the sadly late Anton Yelchin. Trouble is, the part of John Connor absolutely requires a charismatic actor... and they cast Christian Bloody Bale.

Annoyingly, this is a film you probably need to see if you’re a Terminator completist. It won’t be much fun, though. Full, full, full.