I’ll be back, 3.5 readers…with a review of the latest time traveling kill bot movie.
After the last Terminator movie of a few years ago, I really thought this franchise had been terminated. They made two great films a long time ago, and everything else has been garbage ever since.
Generally, they are all the same story. The robots travel through time, wanting to kill John Connor. Someone has to save John, usually Arnie in the form of a good terminator, usually with a human helper and so on.
That gold has been mined and nothing but dirt remains.
I’ll admit I was surprised as this latest installment, IMO, didn’t totally suck. It doesn’t deserve a spot next to the first two, but among the list of garbage sequels, it is the least trashy. It has great effects, at least an attempt at a plot and action that kept me riveted, even if it is all just the same story told over again.
Linda Hamilton and Arnie are given a break from the nursing home, this time to play Sarah Connor and yet another terminator turned good. While Hamilton makes the flick, the storyline that gets Arnie back into the picture causes the movie to jump the shark (he’s a terminator who learned the error of his ways and retired from terminating to start a family and um…how the hell does that even work?)
Together, they help an augmented human from the future (that girl from Halt and Catch Fire and I’m too lazy to look up her name) save Dani (again I’m too lazy to look up her name) who will become the leader of the next robot resistance if she can be saved from a new brand of terminator who is able to seperate his robot self from his human-looking self (also not going to look up his name.)
Yes, it’s the same old story jammed into a different wrapper but the best I can say it is if we rank all Terminator films, it is number three on a scale of best to worst, though a distant third from the two originals. Really, this franchise should have stopped at two.
STATUS: Shelf-worthy.
Bookshelf Battle 