Inevitably, we are to be reintroduced to that self-defeating concept already rolled out in T2: the 'nice' Terminator, the Terminator we're sort of supposed to be rooting for.įundamentally, Connor and Wright utterly cancel each other out all the crash-bang action is entirely uninvolving, looking frankly less exciting than the chase scene at the beginning of Walt Disney's Bolt. But as we have already seen this same character in the pre-credit sequence on death row, pledging his body to science, it isn't hard to guess his tragically conflicted secret. Where, oh where, can this chilling prototype be? Meanwhile, a mysterious warrior hoves into view, insinuating himself into the resistance fighters' ranks: one Marcus Wright, played by the Australian actor Sam Worthington. Because Connor has chanced upon evidence that the machines have developed an all-new, human-looking super-duper, so-unstoppable-it-makes-previous-Terminators-look-stoppable Terminator.

They certainly need all the help they can get. Connor and his comrades discover what they think is a kryptonite-type weapon which will win the war: a signal transmitter that appears to immobilise the robots. Connor, you will recall, is the resistance hero whom the machines tried to wipe out by sending California's future governor Arnold Schwarzenegger back in time to whack his mom. The star is notorious crosspatch Christian Bale, playing John Connor, the freedom fighter battling robot-machine tyranny.

It is set in that post-nuclear future of smoky wreckage, CGI ruination, battered bridges and buggered buildings prophesied in James Cameron's original 1984 film. Look closely in the battle scenes and you can see one of the red-eye Terminator robots yawning, leaning over to another robot and mouthing the words: 'I actually voted for Stavros Flatley.' W ith much buzzing, beeping and whirring, the Terminator franchise comes to an absolute creative standstill, or even goes clankingly into reverse, with this fantastically dull fourth episode.

Terminator salvation