3/4  Fun.
A pleasurable fourth installment to the science-fiction saga. The action sequences and special effects are breathtaking as well as Anton Yelchin and Sam Worthington's performances as Kyle Reese and Marcus Wright respectively; it's a good t... (read full)

3/4  Terminator: Rise of the Machines
Terminator: Rise of the Machines

(Run time: min. - Directed by: - Starring: Christian Bale)

Let me start by saying that this is the best Terminator movie in the series and that includes the original, hands down. And that’s a strong... (read full)

2/4  Not Special, but not crap
Big fan of the first two and third one was alright, but number 4 hits uneven ground. Cool action and other neat things, but not as thrilling as the others. Very different film all around than the previous ones was a plus. In the end it wa... (read full)

2/4  No dice
Well im gonna start off by saying I love the first 2 terminator's,I think they are some of the top if not the top of sci fi cinema The third one lacked alot of things but did finish with A strong ending This one on the other hand was A ave... (read full)

3/4  He actually backed.
I must tell you, that this was probably the movie that went to see with less espectations in my life. I mean. Lets be honest. McG? Part IV? Bale a-g-a-i-n? Dude. Anyway. I liked the flick more than i'd have imagined. There are a few things... (read full)

2/4  Terminator Salvation
In 1984 The Terminator gave birth to the action genre. In 1991 Terminator 2 became the best film of the action genre. With such high standards, Terminator 3 was bound to fail though it wasn't a complete disaster. Now with Terminator Salvat... (read full)

3/4  Terminator Salvation Quick Review
Is it better than number two? I'm not sure. I'll have to think about it for a little while still. But, it's pretty damn good!

2/4  Terminator Salvation Quick Review
Not worth seeing. I am a fan of the first 3 (yes, even the third one). This is just plain bad. The robots are cool and the action sequences are truly amazing. It can't save a crap script, flaws, and stupid plot points. Blah.

2/5 Weak.
  by THOMAS BRANDSTETTER (paducah, ky usa)
If you love the Terminator franchise...well, you'd HAVE to love it to endure this mess. The first two flicks were awesome, of course. The third? Not so much. T4? The downward spiral continues. Huge budget, talented actors and great story material are all majestically pissed away. The Charlie's Angels films were light and fun but McG needed to introduce a bunch of peripheral characters that would have been fine in another film but who cares? I didn't and that was the problem. Bryce Howard gets to walk around with big eyes. Christian Bale gets to play in some over-the-top effects sequences. Sam Worthington and Moon Bloodgood(sp?) get to have a romance and why do we need this or care? All of these people are extremely talented and again, the effects? More or less spectacular. But I found myself apathetic. In the earlier films you found a stake in the characters and cared. With T4 I felt like I was watching a play by Max Fisher. Well done but just not the real deal.

1/5 This is what happens when...
  by T. Coleman
You put a director who doesn't know how to handle the mythology correctly and allows the primary actor to direct from behind his back. His even mentioned that there was over FORTY minutes cut from the movie!

I find it hilarious that the "Director's Cut" only adds in a pathetic THREE minutes into the movie, what happened to the other Thirty-Seven minutes? You know why its a "R" rated release now? Inside those three minutes, you will see a actors.. wait for it... Breast!

Instant Rate R!.....

I didn't like it when I watched it in the theaters. Something there that seemed to nag at me when I walked out at the ending, and I certainly don't like it even more when I found out what was happening behind the scenes to bloat this movie into the 200 Million dollar turkey it turned into! James Cameron spent close to 120 million ('80s/'90s bucks!) to make T2 -which was an Rated R movie no less!- and made a summer blockbuster. Mgee-whiz dumped something equivalent and laid a rotten egg because he couldn't control an actor.

Typical hollyweird in action.

4/5 Lighten up folks, it's a popcorn flick
  by Marshall L. Smith Jr.
I stopped reading the reviews after a while as I was getting tennis neck. I remember the same reactions to T3 - the purists hated it and the non-fans didn't get it.

This is a popcorn movie. Check your brain at the door. It doesn't make good use of the Terminator franchise for sure but complaining about what could have been is pointless. If you are a sci-fi or T fan this is a worthy bookend just for the visuals. If you are not very familiar with the T franchise this movie tries to stand on its own with a little narration. Ironically this movie doesn't actually advance the Terminator mythology at all since it tries too much to stand by itself.

In all cases I think there is something for everyone as long as you remember: this isn't an art film.
Woulda coulda shoulda - doesn't matter. It is done, this is probably the last movie since the Terminator rights are on the auction block now. Make peace with it. I liked it for what it was - didn't hate it for what it wasn't.

It's a glass half full thing... ;-)



4/5 Good action sequences... pity about the plot
  by buru buru piggu (New York, NY USA)
As a James Cameron, Terminator and Christian Bale fan, I am disappointed with McG's mediocre treatment of Terminator Salvation. While the action sequences are solid and well-delivered, they do not make up for paper-thin character development and flawed story flow. The problem is that, with the exception of Marcus Wright (Sam Worthington), we simply don't care about any of the characters or the fate of the Resistance. McG hasn't given us much to invest in emotionally and they're little more than minigun fodder. Not having much to work with, the normally excellent Bale is wasted here. This is the shallowest John Connor by far in the series, never being more than a gun-toting, one-dimensional "blunt instrument" of military force, to quote M from Casino Royale. There are bits and pieces from previous Terminator movies sprinkled in here, along with other movies like Mad Max, War of the Worlds, and even some elements that resemble the Matrix's post-apocalyptic world, especially the mech designs. It's still entertaining, but Terminator fans could totally dismiss this version and go on with their lives. This is a superfluous summer blockbuster that brings nothing new to the Terminator franchise.

The "Director's Cut" isn't much of a director's cut. It only adds 3 minutes of brief Bloodgood boobage and more violence from the ensuing fight, not the rumored 30-40 minutes of extra footage that some fans have hoped for, which might've fleshed out the story a bit more and aided in a smoother narrative. The theatrical version is 115 min, the director's cut: 118.

The story begins in 2003 with the scheduled execution of Marcus, a death-row inmate responsible for the deaths of his brother and two cops, but I had a hard time accepting the charismatic, handsome, contemplative, and remorseful Marcus as a killer. We don't know anything about his background or crime, except the feeling that he didn't intentionally kill these men and doesn't deserve to die. At the insistence of a freakishly bald and chemo'd Cyberdyne researcher, Dr. Serena Kogan (Helena Bonham Carter), he donates his body to science. As Marcus receives his lethal injection, the scene blurs out to a text crawl about Skynet's awareness and the extermination of most of the human race on Judgment Day. Then film cuts right to 2018, to the middle of an assault on a Skynet research facility by Connor and his men. From there, it's one shoot-out or car chase after another, with little in the way of character development.

I get that the main storyline is about second chances and what it means to be human, but these two threads are clumsily handled. McG doesn't seem to know if this is the story of John, Marcus, or Kyle and Star. In here is the cliched perceptive child mute, akin to Newt's character from Aliens, and a stereotypically callous general (Michael Ironside looking a bit like Jack Nicholson) who cared about victory over all else, even at the cost of hundreds of innocent lives. Some "WTF moments" came with the mech designs, such as the towering Terminator/people harvesters (like War of the Wolds meets Matrix mechs), the robotic serpent Hydrobots, and Moto-Terminators (gun-mounted black chaser motorcycles) launched from the legs of the giant mech. Their art direction felt wrong in the Terminator post-apocalyptic universe, and really out of place, which has up until now, been mostly a 1-on-1 engagement of single Terminator vs hero. An essential story element is missing here: the strong antagonist. This time, we get 2 heroes (with John being upstaged by Marcus), and no unstoppable new super-Terminator. I also thought that there were an awful lot of people hanging around for a desolate, war-torn future. The Terminators just aren't very good at detecting people. They need loud noises and fire to be alerted to human presence. It's not very believable for a race of sentient machines with advanced weaponry.

As far as Terminator purists are concerned, the Terminator saga ended at 2, as James Cameron famously stated to the world. No one can replace Cameron (since he and Gale Anne Hurd created the original characters, and it was his creative vision that brought them to life), but that doesn't mean that fans of the series have to write off further efforts to extend the franchise. Though entertaining, McG adds nothing new here, and the ending is especially unsatisfying because it feels like he's taken us in a big circle. The character we care about has to die so that a character we don't care about can live. The humans may have won this battle, but the war is far from over and the ending crawl leaves the movie on a really pessimistic and circular tone, talking about fighting Skynets around the world so there's no closure or finality to the story. You can bet there will be a sequel.

In summary, this is an fun, action-oriented blast-fest with lots of nice CG and thrilling sequences, but very short on strong characters (except for Marcus). Terminator fans and action film enthusiasts will still enjoy it a lot. Just leave your brain at the door.

4/5 Great Action, Good Story
  by AAP (United States)
I liked this movie a lot, but I enjoy the TV series much more. It is easier to follow the time-travel elements in the TV series over the movie T-4.
I thought it was a great way to weave the transcendent mythos of:
a man/not man coming to save mankind, dying or humanity as he gives them his heart to do so.