Whatever the case may be

Today I saw the new release 'Terminator Salvation' at the cinema. I'd been looking forward to the flick for a while, being a big fan of the first two Terminator movies, and to a lesser extent the television series. Despite this though I went in with fairly low expectations, but strangely quite high hopes.

Was I disappointed?
Well no. But not completely thrilled either.
The film, as an action film and a war film was quite good. The story was feasible and fit in with the Terminator mythology and I was reasonably entertained. Christian Bale was pretty good as John Connor but at the end of the day wasn't much different from his portrayal of Bruce Wayne/Batman (which isn't too much of a bad thing). He barked orders and fought machines with impressiveness and did his job well. More impressive though in my eyes was Sam Worthington, the cyborg whose body was taken by Cyberdyne Systems after his execution in 2003 and made into what he is in 2018. His performance was intense and fun to watch, although was marred by the odd cheesy cry and moan of pain. The kid who played Kyle Reese was a good watch also and I hope he gets even more character development leading up to his time traveling in future installments.
McG has done an ok job, he's no Cameron but nobody could argue the end-product and the film itself don't look great. Visually the film looks impressive and seems to keep moving.
It was also nice to see the little nods to the previous installments such as the T-800 CG Arnold look-a-like.

At the end of the day I was entertained by this movie. It was enjoyable to see this war that was talked about for all these years in the previous movies and the rough style in which it was filmed, but I was slightly put off by the other types of machines that were more transformer-ish and looked like they existed only to be made into toys.

If I were to make this film into formulaic terms it would be:

Terminator Salvation = (Terminator/Saving Private Ryan + The Phantom Menace + Transformers)

On another visual note, this movie introduced me to the hot looking Moon Bloodgood who I'm going to be actively seeking more of in the future....
(although after looking her up on IMDB I've just realised she was an excellent character in a favourite show of mine 'Journeyman')