Cool title, but what does it mean? Salvation for the terminator? No, that wouldn’t make sense. Salvation for the resistance? No, that didn’t happen. Oh well, just another movie title that couldn’t live up to its name, like “As Good As It Gets” or “The Never Ending Story”.

The big question is whether this movie does justice to the Terminator franchise. Despite director McG, who’s name sounds like a Happy Meal and the two writers (John D. Brancato & Michael Ferris) who have churned out garbage like "The Unborn" and "Catwoman", T4 was decent; I give the film a B+.

People seem upset about two things. First that director Joseph McGinty Nichol
uses the name McG, and second that the rating was PG-13.  I could care less about names, but I have to agree with the crowd on this one. You have a McName, so McF’n use it; you’re a director not a wannabe rapper flippin paddies at the golden arches.  With regard to the second criticism, again, I have to concur.  Just because the Dark Knight made a ga-zillion dollars by getting guardian free kids to the theatre doesn’t mean it’s going to work for you. Lets see some skull crushing bloody battles, it’s called Terminator because these things kill.

The story begins with Marcus (Sam Worthington, who delivers an excellent performance) on the day of his execution in 2003, apparently the death of some police officers and his brother landed him a death sentence and condemned conscience.  Serena (Helena Bonham Carter) desperately convinces Marcus to sign his body over to Cyberdyne Systems (biosciences division); apparently it’s difficult to find healthy donors who know they are about to die; Serena wants to take advantage of the opportunity. 

Following the execution, the story jumps to the year 2018 where John Connor (Christian Bale) and team investigates an underground Skynet facility, apparently abandoned.  Here, we see Marcus laid out on a laboratory table with dozens of apparent humans behind bars. Despite first assumptions, we find that Connor is not leading the mission and against his better judgment to further review Skynets operations within that facility, he follows orders to investigate the surface teams apparent failure to communicate. Obviously the team was killed as was everyone John left in the underground facility (Connor is the only survivor of the mission).

Despite the somewhat typical pattern of this opening sequence, the flow is captured nicely with no ridiculous foreboding camera angles or music to ruin the moment.  Connor narrowly escapes what appears to be a nuclear explosion from the underground facility.  Long after Connor is retrieved, Marcus who is apparently impervious to nuclear explosions, emerges from the pit of rubble. This is Marcus’s first consciousness since his execution in 2003.  After coming into contact with his first terminator, Marcus is somewhat saved by the teenager Kyle Reese (Anton Yelchin, an emerging talent).
Reese is Skynet’s number one assassination target (John Connor being number 2).
As you might recall, Kyle Reese is the soldier John Connor (sometime in the future) sends back to protect his mother Sarah Conner in T1. Reese subsequently fathers John.

Since this little paradox was established back in 1984, I can’t be too harsh;  besides, it could be explained by looking at space time as an infinite possibility of everything that has ever or will ever happen. The problem with T4, is that somehow (in 2018) Skynet is already aware that John Connor will become the leader of the resistance and eventually defeat Skynet.  The problem isn’t that Skynet already knows this information, after all, records from Sarah Connor’s stay in the loony bin obviously turned John into some sort of prophet among the resistance and it’s not unreasonable to assume that info from the first three terminators didn’t survive. 
The problem is in the fundamentals of the concept.  If space time is laid out in such a fashion where one person exists in the past only because of that very persons actions in the future, then the story line presupposes either an exact unchangeable sequence of events (Fate) or a tangling of alternate possible universes, both of which seem to suggest a certain futility to the entire war.

One point I find particularly absurd, is that when Skynet discovers that they have captured Kyle Reese they do not immediately kill him. It seems they use Kyle as bate to lore John Connor to Skynet headquarters, but in actuality if Skynet terminated Reese, then John Connor would cease to exist; no need to trap him.

Anyhow, here we are: Marcus making friends with Kyle and his little mute sidekick Star (newcomer Jada Grace).  By the way, it was nice that they didn’t have the mute child say something at the very end, that card has been played far too many times. When Marcus, Kyle and Star start off towards the resistance they meet some hostility from other human survivors, but the interaction is short lived because somehow an 80 foot terminating machine sneaks up on everyone. The machine accomplishes its mission and captures Kyle and Star, but the increased activity in an otherwise neutral zone grabs the attention of the resistance who is already scouting the increased commotion created by the trio when they fled LA.

One of the nice concepts in this film, is that the
resistance isn’t unrealistically advanced, they use common military and defense tools such as submarines and fighter jets. After all, 2018 is less than a decade away.  This might seem like a strange contrast when you see the advanced robotics of Skynet, but the writers were working with a timeline established back in 1984.

Blair Williams (Moon Bloodgood), an ejected fighter pilot, leads Marcus to Connor at the resistance base. When a group of scavengers attacks Blair, bad boy Marcus steps in to win the admiration of the lovely maiden.  The final strides to the base are outfitted with magnetic mines. The explosives are meant to defend against machines, but a mine sticks to Marcus and blows. This is where we discover that Marcus is actually a machine with a human heart and brain. He thinks he’s human, but his endoskeleton is metal and his brain contains a microchip. The special effects here are good, but the placement is lame.  The bomb stuck to his leg, yet intermittent area’s of flesh around his body are blown clear, including the side of his face opposite to where the bomb exploded.  Also, any flesh that was recently ripped from the metal would be jagged and loose, but this is one of those cases where unrealistic actually looks more realistic.

The heart of the movie (pun intended) is with Marcus who really steals the show. The movie is more about a man coming to grips with who (and what) he is, what he did in his past, and whether he can find redemption. Christian Bale does an excellent job, but there really isn’t much to development.

The resistance makes its moves based on John Connor rather than the appropriate chain of command. When John urges the resistance to stand down so that he may conduct an extraction mission, the independent pockets of resistance do as he wishes, despite the substance lacking speech that was neither inspiring nor insightful.  This blind disobedience shows Johns influence as a respected commander, it also shows the lack of talent between the two script writers.

Connor, like Blair puts faith in Marcus, yet Skynet built Marcus as the ultimate infiltration unit and has been observing everything through his eyes.here is where the logic of the script really breaks down:
First off, Skynet reconstructs Marcus’s human appearance as if it matters to anyone but the CGI team.  Basically, lets save some cash by eliminating the need for more CGI-truly weak.  What makes the story worse, is that Skynet feels compelled to to explain to Marcus how it masterminded such a duplicitous plan and how it intends to kill Connor and crush the resistance.  Skynet is a machine!  It doesn’t have human faults, it doesn’t need to satisfy an ego.  There is no reason Skynet would explain this, especially through conversation.  Totally lame.

The writers were faced with the tough challenge of making the Terminator series more logical for today’s audience.  They didn’t touch the issue of Skynet being developed by the remnants of the first terminator or the other time issue of Johns father (except by restating the conundrum via tapes from T2); basically telling the audience to not think about it.  

Despite these and a few other problems, there was a lot of good that came out of T4.  For example, the future wasn’t just some battlefield of human skulls.  There is actually some open land, after all it’s still planet Earth and only nine years from now. 
It was also nice to see new terminators and the progress of various terminator machines, especially Schwarzenegger’s T-800 (played by Ronald Kickinger).  Through some really good makeup and computer enhancements Kickinger actually looks like Arnie.
If only they ended on less of a clich