KTKA

Terminator: Salvation stars Christain Bale as John Conner in the year 2018. Conner is not yet the leader of the human resistance but is gaining power through his leadership, and determination.

Conner is told about a secret weapon developed with the power to shut down the machines and end the war, but it has to be brought close enough in range to be effective. With hesitating Conner volunteers for the job with a secondary mission on his radar. He must locate the whereabouts of Kyle Reese, a younger version of his own father who has been targeted for death by the machines.

Terminator: Salvation is a dark, gritty, action packed film that provides a different journey for audience's from the previous installments.

Christian Bale is believable as John Conner, but every time I heard him scream in the film it made me think of his onset tirade heard around the world on You Tube. Sure Bale has the reputation of being a hot head but that doesn't separate the fact that he's both extremely talented and compelling to watch on screen.

The Terminator machines look meaner than ever due to the special effects wizardry of the late great Stan Winston, who passed away last fall. There are new machines in the film some are gigantic that scoop up humans for imprisonment, there are patrolling, flying versions that scope out resistance members, and all it cool and more advanced than what we've seen on the screen previously.

My biggest problem with the film is that unlike the previous movies there is no strong centralized villain and that was disappointing. You had Schwarzenegger in the original classic, Robert Patrick in T2 and Kristanna Loken in Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines, who are all villains that are cemented into the memories of fans of this franchise. Sure the machines are cool and formidable adversaries but it just seemed more intimidating when they had skin. It gave them more of a sinister personality as a whole with more believability.

Sure the movie is loud and everything seems to be blowing up all the time but that's what you get with a Mc G. film. He is a younger and to this point less successful version of Michael Bay. What I mean is the more things blow up and the cooler the toys the more they like it. It also means basically the overall story doesn't really matter. However the story to Salvation worked for me for the most part despite that fact the script went through several rewrites.

This is still a solid, well made movie and with Christain Bale signed for two more films; it looks like we haven't seen the last of the Terminator. Though I did have some problems with the movie, as a whole I liked it and was entertained by it.