Salvation was....okay.
My issues with it:
-The whole "New guy is a terminator without knowing it" would be a lot cooler if it hadn't been given away in the trailer.
-The Human heart symbolism was incredibly heavy handed. And no....I didn't see every plot "twist" invovling that coming a mile away....particulary the one at the end.
My major gripe:
-I know they changed the past from all the time travel shenaginans in the previous movies, but throughout most of the movie, I kept thinking of Kyle Reece saying
Kyle Reese:.... Most of us were rounded up, put in camps for orderly disposal.
[Pulls up his right sleeve, exposing a mark]
Kyle Reese: This is burned in by laser scan. Some of us were kept alive... to work... loading bodies into dumpsters and incinerators. The disposal units ran night and day. We were that close to going out forever. But there was one man who taught us to fight, to storm the wire of the camps, to smash those metal motherfuckers into junk. He turned it around. He brought us back from the brink. His name is Connor. John Connor. Your son, Sarah, your unborn son.
That coupled with the few snippets of the future gives a much different picture of what I expected from this movie.
The original and even the 2nd shows a rather desperate humanity, hopelessly outclassed, living in tunnels, herded into concentration camps, paranoid of terminator infiltration, tired and hungary. John Conner ends up inspiring them to rise up and make a desperate fight, eventually, through long, hard struggle, finally winning and prompting all the time traveling. You know, a really epic, from nothing to finally victorious struggle.
The new movie....well, humanity doesn't really seem that desperate. I mean, they've got at least one airbase with transports, A-10's, a small fleet of helicopters, not to mention all the infrastruture, supplies and technical support to maintain them. Oh, and electricity and computer screens.
THat's a far cry from living in shitty tunnels and dodging giant tanks all the time. Hell, the fact Skynet can't even locate a friggen airbase(despite the fact skynet probably has satellites available) implies it's kinda stupid. Hell, after all those flares and explosions at their base, skynet apparently never bothered to send a couple HK's to investigate.
And instead of John being the leader? Well, he's just the head of a local base.....after his officer in charge gets blown up and playing second fiddle to a group of douchbags on a sub(who are apparently really surprised that skynet figures out where they are despite their continued broadcasting).
It's not a good sign when I'm watching the movie and having nostalgia for the first two before the movies even over.
On the bright side, I was rather pleased that the T-800 takes at least as much punishment, if not more, then the terminator in the original before going down. I was beginning to wonder when the terminators in most of the movie went down with just a dozen assualt rifle bullets.
