Watch Out, The Robots Are Coming!

There are some movie franchises from the '80s that I'm an absolute sucker for. One of these is the Terminator franchise. I grew up loving the Terminator movies; my worn-out VHS copy of T2 is proof enough of that. And while I was disappointed that Fox very recently cancelled the Terminator TV show after only its second season, at least I had Terminator: Salvation. I just got home from seeing it at the local theater, and I really enjoyed it.

A lot of that enjoyment came from all the little callbacks to the earlier movies. Whether it be a line of dialogue, or a certain prop, or a music cue, or even sometimes how a particular scene plays out, there's so many fun little nods to the prior movies that it almost becomes a game to see if you can point out what the references are. And with the exception of the "I'll be back" gag, none of them really seemed forced. It could have gone badly, perhaps into one of those "spot-the-reference" sequels that makes you feel like you should have just stayed at home and watched the other movies instead. But the movie avoids that, which is nice.

Aside from that, Terminator: Salvation is a really fun and exciting movie. McG's direction and the action scenes are both very well done, the acting (primarily from Christian Bale and Sam Worthington) is good, and the special effects are fantastic. I had a blast watching the movie, and I can't wait for the inevitable release of Terminator 5. But as for Terminator: Salvation, I'm totally giving it three and a half stars out of five. It's not perfect, but I still liked it.

And with all the references to the past Terminator movies in the movie, it's too bad they didn't make a Batman joke at Christian Bale's expense. Maybe on the DVD...