I was really excited about the prospect of a new Terminator movie back in 2003.  Gray Davis was still governor of and was as chiseled as ever.  However I had my doubts.  Could they pull off another movie with the same premise as the second one?  Well, that movie was not as good as the first two and made some mistakes that I feel anyone who was a real fan of the Terminator would have been able to correct.  Also Nick Stahl looked short and had a weird looking head.

This movie has an interesting plot but not the one I would have chosen for this movie.  It revolves around John Connor still trying to establish himself as the leader of the Resistance and figuring out that Skynet is after Kyle Reese, his daddy from the first film.  Along the way he meets this terminator/human hybrid thing that was once a guy on death row right before Judgment Day.  Somehow he becomes a new type of infiltration unit and no one really trusts him.  So he and John team up to try and save Kyle Reese.

For this movie, the most important thing is the action and in a word, it is great.  The movie provides you with new and old terminators that fit well into the series of movies.  There is the mandatory chase scene between the target and the terminators.  Though the overall violence is toned down from the first movies.  You don’t see anyone impaled, or at least not in the way you saw in the first 3 movies.  And lots of explosions and gun fire between the terminators and humans.  And the movie has its moments of tension where you really think that someone important is going to die.

I think Christian Bale is a great choice to play John Connor, because he exudes that toughness that you see from the guy in the first scene of Terminator 2.  Though I thought his voice was pretty one dimensional, as if he never stopped acting for Batman.  Others like Sam Worthington as Marcus Wright and Anton Yelchin as Reese were good choices and show the chops to hold the story up.  did his part and of course was the best actor in the whole damn movie.

The movie does not have the same charm and wonder that the first two gave someone, but it is gritty and full of despair, and it really makes you wonder at the end, how the hell can they win this war?  You know they win, otherwise there would not be the first 3 movies since Skynet would have to be losing to be desperate enough to use a delorean.  It is pretty much what I wanted out of a movie about the future, except it is not as cool as the future scene in T2, there are no plasma weapons and no fighting in the dark against those HK tanks.  Hopefully they do something more like in the next one, hope there is a sequel.

So the movie moved along great, really didn’t bullshit with the lore and there was plenty of fan service in it.  The action was decent and while the violence and gore was toned down, you got some suspenseful moments.  3 out of 4 stars.

Being Giant Bomb and the fact that was in it, 4 out of 5.