I gave it an 8 out of 10. It was a great movie, but knowing all of the things that McG wanted, but rolled over on just makes me have to dock some points.
Bale was just playing Batman, Worthington should have been Connor, I would've preferred him back for the next movie, not Bale. McG should have stuck with the original casting.
Just cutting the wet t-shirt scene with no attempt at all to make up for it's purpose to the scene was just odd(they were horny becuase they watched her put some anti-biotics on a wound?), besides that, the scene just jumped, like they physically cut the film out and scotch taped the two pieces together.
Third, the end was totally lackluster, I agree whole-heartedly that McG's full ending would have been horrible, but the one with Marcus becoming Connor and remaining good would have worked, instead he just bastardized his movie in a very predictable, lackluster, and unrealistic(a heart transplant outside in the middle of a desert?) way. I'm not necessarily saying that he should have gone with the re-skinning idea, just that the heart transplant thing was just too predictable and emotionless; there has to have been a better way than this, it seemed like a cop out.
If McG had stuck to his guns he would have had an epic movie that earned him some respect, instead he sold out and I suspect he will just be the guy we complain about for ruining good ideas by pandering to suits, like Singer. I was reminded of the commercial before the trailers start about how it only takes one call to ruin a movie, in this case it took three.
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The Good/Interesting Stuff
The T-800 looked frickin monsterous! Who knew that Arnold was 7' tall? The dude that body doubled for the governator looked badass, I actually hit it harder at the gym today with that as inspiration. The work on the face was really good too, I was surprised, I expected a brief shot of his face in passing, but we got a pretty good fight with the full face intact.
I had read that Friedman said that Salvation "borrowed" coltan from T:SCC. It was obvious that they did by the ineffectiveness of the molten metal on the T-800, but it was never verbalized; did the Salvation people cut something out when they realized where the idea came from?
One thing I thought was funny was that dog's were replaced by a little mute kid with a fro. The resistance is supposed to use dogs to warn them of coming Terminators, but it seems that Salvation couldn't figure out how to have a dog sneak out the detonator.
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Questions
There was something that I thought was a mistake, but then I was not quite sure, I want to see what you guys think. The vehicle that Marcus hotwires at Griffith Park was a Jeep JK, the current generation Wrangler that started in '07, pretty obvious product placement. Is it's presence just another example of McG's pandering, or can we take it to mean that Judgment Day didn't happen until '07 or later?
How did Skynet know that Kyle Reese was worth killing? I thought that Kyle being John's daddy was a secret? Why did Skynet have him as priority one, yet John couldn't tell the generals that that was his dad?
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