TERMINATOR SALVATION

Terminator Salvation

Terminator Salvation was pretty good, but it wasn't the movie I wanted to see. At all.
Back in 1984, an unknown director named James Cameron introduced us to a low-budget science fiction film simply called "The Terminator." It told the tale of a post-apocalyptic future war between an evil supercomputer called Skynet and the remnants of humanity, devastated by a nuclear holocaust the survivors dubbed "Judgment Day." The eponymous Terminator was a flesh-covered robot send back in time to the year 1984 by Skynet to kill the mother of the leader of the human resistance, John Connor, before he was even conceived. The film was a huge surprise hit, and served to launch the careers of both Cameron and a certain Austrian bodybuilder named Arnold Schwarzen-something-or-other, who played the unstoppable T-800 Terminator (well, he was eventually stopped, but you know what I mean...). Among the film's highlights was Cameron's dark and unique vision of the future: cities blown to rubble, human beings reduced to little more than rats living in dirty underground bunkers, starving and frightened of the killer machines hunting them down. And yet these poor souls still possessed the courage to rise up and fight back against the robotic Hunter-Killers and Terminators, eventually driving Skynet to the brink of defeat. This nihilistic conflict was dubbed the "Future War", and audiences found themselves hoping for a sequel set in this dystopian future.
Come 1991, and a sequel to The Terminator finally became a reality. While it wasn't the futuristic battlefield movie everyone was hoping for, it certainly was the next best thing. Cameron and Schwarzenegger re-teamed for Terminator 2: Judgment Day, and this time Arnie played a GOOD robot, re-programmed and sent back to the past to protect a young John Connor from an advanced liquid metal Terminator called the T-1000. Like the first entry of the series, T2 was a massive hit and raised the bar not only for action films, but character and storytelling as well. Again, Cameron teased us by showing another glimpse of the Future War between Skynet and humanity in a flashback scene (which was originally supposed to be longer, but was cut back due to budget constraints), and again, we all hoped that the talented and creative director would eventually give us the big payoff in a third film.
Alas, this was not meant to be. After another hiatus, a Cameron-less Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines hit theaters in 2003 (directed by Jonathan Mostow), and AGAIN it featured a good Arnie-bot (Schwarzenegger's final film before becoming Lord and Master of California) being sent from the future to protect John Connor from a bad Terminator. Can you say "re-tread"...? Anyway, while T3 was a competent action film, it otherwise lacked everything that made the first two installments so memorable- a strong storyline and characters, an original plot, and most notably, the Future War! Sure, T3 had the obligatory flashback sequence of that much sought-after event, but it was annoyingly short and appeared to have been inserted almost as an afterthought.
Both The Terminator and Terminator 2 became cultural phenomena, becoming engrained in popular culture and generating millions in merchandising. Terminator 3, in contrast, failed to match both its predecessors in terms of cultural significance, and was seen more-or-less as an inferior cash run, tarnishing the brand. With James Cameron having no interest in re-joining the franchise and Arnold retired from acting to govern California, The Terminator again went into hiatus, its future uncertain