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Terminator Salvation
The problem with making a new Terminator film is that in order to be better than 'Terminator 2' it has to be, by default, the greatest film ever made. Luckily, in order to be worse than 'Terminator 3', fourth film '...Salvation' would have to be the most disappointing sequel ever made, so there is a level playing field of sorts for our man McG, who up to this point has honed his epic sci-fi action extravaganza chops through his work on...erm...the Charlie's Angels trilogy. Well, the good news is that 'Terminator Salvation' is better than 'Terminator 3'. Of course the bad news is that it's definitely not the best film ever made.
Considering how much of a loud, mindless, SFX-reliant mess of a war film McG could have steered himself towards, there's actually a great plotline running through the heart of 'Salvation' that allows it a unique identity completely rejected by its predecessor. Sam Worthington puts in a decent shift as an unwitting cyborg (a twist that would have been fantastic had it not been made glaringly obvious in every trailer for the film ever), and his story is by far the most interesting one to be told as he struggles to find his origins and battle against his creators. Christian Bale phones in a suitably intense performance as Batm-sorry, John Connor, while Anton Yelchin just about pulls off a young Kyle Reese.
There are strong action sequences in abundance and a cheesy yet undeniably exciting appearance from a Schwarzenegger-model Terminator, but it's difficult to shake the nagging feeling that this could have been a truly great film had the original cast returned and, in all honesty, if part 3 had never happened. The scandalous plotholes left in the entire Terminator mythos by 'Rise Of The Machines' still loom large, and although 'Salvation' is a solid action flick in its own right that leaves great potential for the rest of the new trilogy, serious fans of the original Cameron films will continue to wish that they'd just left this sleeping robot lie.
Review by Merlin Alderslade