John Connor is the man fated to lead the human resistance against Skynet and its army of Terminators. But the future that Connor was raised to believe in is altered in part by the appearance of Marcus Wright, a stranger whose last memory is of being on death row. Connor must decide whether Marcus has been sent from the future, or rescued from the past. As Skynet prepares its final onslaught, Connor and Marcus both embark on an odyssey that takes them into the heart of Skynet's operations, where they uncover the terrible secret behind the possible annihilation of mankind.This is another tough summer movie to review. Is it entertaining. Absolutely. Is it a good movie. Not really. The special effects were awesome. They really went all out with trying to make new variations of the terminators. The water snake ones literally had my mouth hanging open with awe at how they did that. The motorcycle ones were pretty bad ass too. Sam Worthington was great, but Christian Bale was pretty much completely wasted in this movie. The preview didn't do the movie any favors by pretty much giving away the only story of the movie. If they wouldn't have given away that Sam Worthington was actually a terminator, the first half of the movie would have been a lot more intriguing as they led towards the big reveal that again was shown in the trailer for the movie for the last 3 months. Outside of the build up to Sam Worthington being a terminator and not knowing it, there really wasn't any susbtance to the story whatsoever Its just more of man fighting against machine. This was completely not a stand alone movie. It was just another add on full of special effects to the other Terminator movies. And there was no attention paid to continuity at all. About half way through the movie, I started asking myself how the hell the machines knew about John Connor. I know that we know about his prophecy but how do the machines know? Kind of lost on that. All of those negatives being said, the biggest problem I had with the movie was the editing. There were scenes where I actually though I must have blinked for really long because it was as if chunks of the movie were left out. At one point, two characters are alone in the rain and the woman tells the guy to get firewood. The next second, the rain is over, the ground has dried up and the woman is about to get assaulted by three other guys. Something like this happened a couple more times throughout the movie and was very annoying.
Even with all the knocks on the movie, it still is watchable and entertaining as a thoughtless summer popcorn movie because of the effects and Sam Worthington. As long as you go in to it letting go of any hopes for continuity and/or quality - I would recommend watching it. If you are looking for a great movie - don't waste your time with this though.
