Reboot or not the latest entry in the Terminator franchise fails to live up to expectations. Sure we might have already been on a slippery slope with T3: Rise of the Machines, but at least that still had Arnie hurling himself around. This time we get a growling Christian Bale and a plethora of soulless machines which also lack menace as well as heart. The biggest problem with the film is the ‘twist’ which despite much temptation won’t be revealed here (even though the trailer gives it away).

Set in the future, we follow a disparate group of survivors in a war-ravaged setting as the human resistance try to fend off the machines controlled by Skynet. John Connor is the iconic rebel leader and he appears to have found a was of disabling the enemy and delivering a fatal blow to the enemy, however he is in a desperate race against time to save one civilian by the name of Kyle Reese who’s on survival is linked to his very existence. Across this landscape a man awakens having previously donated his body to medical science (Sam Worthington as Marcus and Helena Bonham Carter get things off to an unnerving start with an opening sequence which is a rarity in this film as it captures something of the impending doom the previous films managed). Marcus (Worthington) teams up with Reese and escapes the Terminators only to find himself being interrogated by Connor when he is ‘rescued’ by fighter pilot Blair Williams (Bloodgood). John has to decide whether to trust his own instincts or do what he thinks is right for the greater good of mankind as the Resistance plan the assault on Skynet.

The special effect here are functional not spectacular. The dystopian future looks very convincing but this whole setting is one of the problems with the film. Given that we aren’t trying to stop what has already happened (unlike the earlier outings) the sense of doom is lacking. The energy therefore is sucked out of scenes where we don’t really feel like there is much to play for.

Worthington is superb as Marcus the role initially intended for Bale (the rewrites that the recasting caused are evident from the earliest moments as John Connor appears in various scenes he needn’t be present in). Marcus acts as our own introduction into this new world but it feels forced to the point that we learn crucial plot points via flippant throwaway comments or more problematically via stone-faced grandstanding. The female cast are completely overlooked with the exception of Bloodgood and you will wish that her character was introduced a lot sooner. The scenes with Howard will inevitably be observed wondering to pick out which moment led to the infamous ‘Bale Blowup’.

There are enough nods and winks to the original films but these a never important enough to stand up on their own merit. We learn the origins of the ‘shotgun on a rope’ technique and Connor still listens to Guns ‘N’ Roses as he did in T2. McG clearly loves the James Cameron films, but he’s hardly added anything of note to the mythology, except perhaps a cool motorbike and much post-Transformers giant robot stomping. The twist which would have actually made the film compelling is ruined due to the trailer and indeed early reviews which go into great depth about a certain character and hence remove the need for most of the first hour and it’s build-up to the ‘revelation’.

It’s not a complete failure with Worthington sure to move onto better things (he’s already in every scene of Cameron’s latest film Avatar and just started filming Clash of the Titans), but of all the blockbusters out so far this year, T4 disappoints the most.

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