Terminator Salvation Review (minor spoilers)

On Sunday, I saw the movie "Terminator Salvation" with my friends Tim and Alan.

I did enjoy it. I did. But.

I found the movie unrelentingly grim. I don't need my science fiction happy-happy positive all the time, but there's a limit of how much darkness I can enjoy. The recent movie "The Watchmen" for instance, was also quite grim, but also contained a good bit of humor, and laugh out loud humor at that. Not so the new Terminator movie, and that's too bad.

In fact, the whole movie was fairly colorless: nothing was particularly bright, not even the blood.

Things that have been pretty fun or at least interesting just seemed to fall flat, as in the signature line which was simply delivered wrongly. It also seemed to be missing something vital about it, something that the other movies had, but this one didn't. I can't define it, but it wasn't there. I had the same feeling about the last "Aliens vs. Predator" movie.

There were also several things that seemed to stretch the credulity limit. Are we really supposed to believe Conner could just grab a motorcycle-bot, stick some handle bars in, and then be able to control it like a horse? Really?

The interplay between the two men, John Conner and Marcus Wright, was pretty interesting, and I wish they'd done a bit more of it. I would have also have liked see more of Marcus dealing with his ... special problem.

I also enjoyed seeing all the new robots, especially the giant one, which reminded me of my favorite Playstation game "Wander and Colossus". The special effects were quite good as well.

Overall, a solid if dull-black installment in the ongoing story. I look forward to the next one [I just hope it's better].