Terminator: Salvation

Another installment in the interminable Terminator line. Sometimes it makes one wonder if the series of movies will ever end. Of course, this being Terminator, my expectations of the movie have been watered down somewhat. After all, this is meant to be a "cultural" show with lots of special effects, and it doesn't fail to deliver.

Oh, did I mention that the show's got the hunky Christian Bale and Sam Worthington in there? Now, while it would be rather satisfying to see them duke it out, sometimes it's just sufficient to have 'em showing up. Pity about the absence of washboard abs this time round, but hey we can't expect every movie to be 300.

I suppose what pleased me the most about the show was that it was full of boss fights. Now, most movies nowadays revolve around massacring wave after wave of enemies to get at whatever it is to blow it up. Simple enough. However, in Salvation, we've got the typical virtually indestructible terminator bots, which while few in number, can really dish it out before going down.

I also liked the Bioshock twist in the show, though of course that would be a spoiler so I shan't include it here. Suffice to know that Arnie's obligatory appearance is somewhere in there. Anyway, one thing I never got about the Machines is that, unlike in The Matrix, they never seem to get down to using swarm tactics. One would think that if people had such difficulty with their small number of T-bots, they'd be totally overrun if say 3 T-bots decided to show up all at once. Moreover, why doesn't machine city have like loads of super long range, hyper-accurate sniper rifles to take down infiltrators?

Nonetheless, the movie is a bit more "realistic" than the usual stuff out there. For once, not every vehicle's a pinto. Things actually take some effort to blow up, and not every enemy blows up in the resultant explosions (where's the fun in that? =p). Overall, I'd say the movie gets a 8/10, which is fairly generous for any other movie, but this...is Terminator.