Reviews

So yeh... its not better than the first 2 but the issue isnt that it wasnt exciting to watch. for me it was entertaining to watch, had some moments of warmth and humour, action was big and the fight was compelling and thats what i think a lot of us really want from a terminator movie, the enemy has to be feared, it has to be frighteningly powerful and appear unstoppable and they get that right here with the REV 9, its a dangerous machine our ''hero'' characters must run from.

anyway, the issue is it still lacked some of the horror we were hoping for, especially as it attempted to take a darker route it simply isnt dark enough, it is absolutely still aimed at the slightly younger than adult audience, it only really earns its R (15) rating from a bit of bad language and a little blood, nothing comes close to the brutality of arnold ripping out a heart at the start of T1 or even the punching through the chest scene in T3. as a fan of the franchise this was an issue for me because there has to be an element of brutality to the ''evil'' terminator. gabriel luna did a great job, i think he played it spot on but given a bit more freedom to really do some visual damage would have gone a long way.

my other couple of issues are - the CGI is a little weak at times, and absolutely fantastic at other times, (spoiler - already spoiled) theres a scene at the start of the movie of john conner as a child and sarah conner in her younger years and well sarah looks pretty spot on but john is wayyy off, its not close at all, also arnold is here blasting him away and well, he looks like an actual artificial robot, he wouldnt pass as human very long looking like that for sure. At other times in the movie the CGI is just mind blowing, theres a scene near the end of the movie when arnold is pretty shredded up, metal all exposed and the lighting and reflection off the metal work is the best in the series by far, its really unbalanced like that and kind of offputting.

one last complaint, its a bit of a biggy (and a spoiler again), the REV 9 gets its hands around the neck our new savious of mankind and well.... this is a huge no no, never put the enemy terminator and most fragile hero character in contact like that unless the hero is going to die, she survives and that just should not happen, i said this to the wife when leaving the movie and she said ''well the rev 9 was pretty banged up and clearly weaker at that point''.... this is a fair statement but we are talking about a machine here with hydraulic pressure in its mechanisms enough to crush human bones in one squeeze, it just does not sit right with me she can survive that encounter and simply makes the rev 9 less believable as an unstoppable killing machine.

despite all the negatives i really quite enjoyed it, i think the performances were solid, the action was relentless if a little CG heavy and i didnt feel too let down, part of the issue i feel is we are moving into 2020 and CGI is getting so good its the natural thing to use these days but we are also too smart as humans and can pretty easily spot it and that breaks immersion.

i think some of the hardcore terminator fans are going to curse on this film because it breaks away from the traditional lore of the franchise but it worked out ok i feel, unplug from your feelings towards the first 2 movies and its a fun flick, but they could have made it a lot stronger and hard hitting with that R.