It was good, but not great.

| Original Score: B | Sep 12, 2017

Missing is Cameron's signature action modification, best exploited in Aliens: the strapping female heroine. McG's testosterone-juiced world feels a little doomed without her.

| Original Score: 2/5 | Nov 17, 2011

It brings me very little joy to report that this version of the popular Terminator franchise is silly, obtuse, and pointless.

| Original Score: D+ | May 6, 2011

Terminator Salvation leaves me thinking it's a rock solid post-apocalyptic action picture that bends over backwards to make itself fit to a pre-existing mythology.

Full Review | Original Score: B+ | Aug 11, 2009

For once I found myself hankering for Arnold Schwarzenegger.

| Original Score: 2/5 | Jun 12, 2009

McG has sparked a moribund franchise back to life, giving fans the post-apocalyptic action they've been craving since they first saw a metal foot crush a human skull two decades ago.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5 | Jun 5, 2009

Who cares what it means? Just make it loud. This is the way the series ends, not with a whimper but a bang. Except that it will probably go on, a shade of its former glory.

| Original Score: 2.5/5 | Jun 5, 2009

It's easy to see why Bale was attracted to this role, but this often fascinating actor gives one of his least interesting performances.

| Original Score: 2/5 | Jun 5, 2009

Terminator Salvation looks, sounds and tastes like a 2.50 fairground ride. There is nothing human about it. McG feeds you the sort of thrills that can be had on Clacton pier.

| Original Score: 2/5 | Jun 5, 2009

Terminator has been smothered in quasi-religious symbolism and primary-school philosophising.

| Original Score: 2/5 | Jun 5, 2009

With much buzzing, beeping and whirring, the Terminator franchise comes to an absolute creative standstill, or even goes clankingly into reverse, with this fantastically dull fourth episode.

| Original Score: 1/5 | Jun 5, 2009

It's a catastrophically bad movie whose aggressive dullness and dumbness can best be reproduced by picking up a brick and slamming it against one's forehead for two hours.

| Original Score: 1/5 | Jun 5, 2009

The main difference between this and the earlier Terminator films is that it lacks a sense of danger.

| Original Score: 2/5 | Jun 5, 2009

Underscripted, under-energised, a triumph of formula over flair, it stomps on for two hours in a nightmare of self-important inconsequence.

| Original Score: 0/5 | Jun 5, 2009

They have equipped Terminator Salvation with so little heart or personality that it would be no surprise to learn that computers had put it together.

| Original Score: 2/5 | Jun 5, 2009

A few in-jokes will amuse Terminator fans but this is best viewed as an entertaining add-on to the franchise rather than a promising reboot.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5 | Jun 5, 2009

The film is emotionally soupy and it insists too much on its own pyrotechnics. Christian Bale hasn't an ounce of comedy in him, which takes the whole thing some distance away from Arnie's ridiculousness.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Jun 5, 2009

Is Salvation worse than Terminator 3? Well, T3 stank but at least it felt like a Terminator movie. This is more like The Matrix: Revolutions-effects-heavy background sketching and no relevance to the two brilliant originals.

| Original Score: 2/5 | Jun 5, 2009

The ingenious plotting of the first two Terminator films, and the skill and visceral energy with which James Cameron directed them, are a thing of the past.

Full Review | Original Score: 2.5/5 | Jun 3, 2009

Terminator Salvation is a confused, humorless grind, with nobody, from the stars to the set designers, prepared to prick its self-importance.

| May 26, 2009