Los Angeles Times
"In McG's new world order, the machines now rule with enforcers of every shape imaginable roaming the the land....[T]here are enough pyrotechnics and heavy artillery to feel like Armageddon squared.... 05/20/2009A.V. Club
"The first two-thirds of the film features an array of impressive setpieces that bring the trademark TERMINATOR action sensibility -- quivering flesh and fragile machingery versus the pitiless approach of unfeeling circuits -- into a dusty, post-nuclear hellscape on loand from THE ROAD WARRIOR." 05/20/2009 New York Times
"[The movie] has a brute integrity lacking in some of the other seasonal franchise movies....[The action is] loud and blunt, a symphony of screaming gears, anguished torque and thumping collisions of metal and flesh." 05/21/2009 Washington Post
"The world McG presents to us is scorched and hostile, and the action is startling and visceral. Significantly, TERMINATOR SALVATION takes itself far more seriously than its predecessors." 05/20/2009 Wall Street Journal
"Mr. Worthington's specialty is taking command of the camera. It's fascinating to watch him dominate scene after scene with his coiled energy, compelling voice and quick intelligence." 05/22/2009 Entertainment Weekly
"Bale brings the role his usual stylish, seething edge..." 05/29/2009 ReelViews 8 of 10
Terminator: Salvation does not seem like a Terminator movie, at least when compared to what we have experienced from filmmakers James Cameron (The Terminator, Terminator 2: Judgment Day) and Jonathan Mostow (Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines). This fourth Terminator is a different breed with a divergent feel, almost as if director McG (n?e Joseph McGinty Nichol) had decided to fuse Cormac McCarthy's The Road with Transformers. Gone (at least mostly) are the time travel paradoxes and the concept of a single, indestructible villain. In their place is a futuristic war movie. With its idea of an insurgency striking against an implacable evil empire, there's more than a little Star Wars in Terminator: Savlation, although not even at its Empire Strikes Back bleakest was Lucas' series this dark...By radically destaturating color, sometimes to the point where scenes are almost black-and-white, McG develops a strong post-apocalyptic aesthetic. It's a lot like the (recent) TV series Battlestar Galactica, where everything was dark and grimy, and bright colors rarely made appearances. One could argue that McG overdoes it a little, but he's clearly not averse to traveling down potentially unappealing roads. The faux note of hope injected at the film's end does little to dispel the fact that, if the humans win the war, the price is going to be astronomical...Perhaps the ultimate problem with making more Terminator movies is that the entire story was told by Cameron in the first two movies and the subsequent sequels, including this one, have been struggling to explore corners where the time travel contrivance allows for flexibility and interpretation. Terminator: Salvation, like its immediate predecessor, is enjoyable and contains some top-notch action sequences, but it seems extraneous. This is everything a good summer movie should be and, while it does not dishonor the Cameron chapters of the saga, neither does it prove to be an indispensable adjunct to them. - James Berardinelli
Variety 8 of 10
Darker, grimmer and more stylistically single-minded than its two relatively giddy predecessors, Terminator Salvation boasts the kind of singular vision that distinguished the James Cameron original, the full-throttle kinetics of Speed and an old-fashioned regard for human (and humanoid) heroics. Only pic's relentlessly doomsday tone -- accessorized by helmer McG's grimy, gun-metal palette -- might keep auds from flocking like lemmings to the apocalypse. The fourth in the celebrated sci-fi series, Salvation opens and closes with humanity at war with the machines. In other words, this thing isn't going to end soon. Nor should it, if it keeps on like this...Christian Bale, playing the "prophesized leader of the Resistance" John Connor, may have traded in the Batman body armor for Road Warrior-style outerwear, but one thing hasn't changed: He is, once again, a movie star playing second fiddle. Heath Ledger stole The Dark Knight away from him and Sam Worthington (who will appear in Cameron's Avatar this Christmas) heists Terminator Salvation from Bale, for the most ironical of reasons: In a movie that poses man against machine, Worthington's cyborg is the far more human character...McG's direction is always intelligent. (He does seem to have a thing for The Great Escape, which is referenced several times.) The script by John Brancato and Michael Ferris occasionally goes off the rails. Certainly, their insertion of an existential dilemma for Marcus -- "I need to find out who did this to me," he says, his chrome-plated plumbing having been exposed to the open air -- feels very late-inning...And the obligatory borrowing from the previous movies ("Come with me if you want to live," "I'll be back ...") tend to upset the mood created within McG's bleached-out world, which is very deliberate and doesn't need the comic relief...There are great bits though: The thrashing, centipede-like, killer-snake thingie, which has the personality of a wolverine, is a neat invention. So are the biker Terminators, which molt like malignant pinecones off their towering mother 'bot. A Schwarzenegger lookalike -- it isn't clear whether it's the ex-actor CGI'd or a complete fabrication -- is funny, but in this case apt - John Anderson
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