At The Fleapit: Terminator Salvation (2009)

Terminator Salvation is what you get if you give a child with Attention-Deficit Disorder a typewriter, some toy robots and a large supply of fireworks.

McG's new contribution to the well-loved franchise is a fast, furious and noisy triumph of spectacle over substance.

Trying to describe what went on in those two hours would be a breathless expression of "this happened, then this, then this, then this, then that blew up and that blew up, then this happened..." ad nauseum.

That's not to say Terminator Salvation isn't an enjoyable film, chock full of outrageous stunts and set-pieces, but it adds little to the already complex mythology of the franchise's universe except, maybe, a few more paradoxical headaches.

And just how dumb is Skynet? From the very first film this super-intelligent computer system was sending robots back in time to prevent the birth of John Connor (Christian Bale), the future leader of the Resistance and saviour of mankind .

In this film, the robots get hold of John's future-father, the young Kyle Reese (Anton Yelchin), who is number one on their "kill list", and instead of just killing him straight away (thus preventing him from travelling back in time and fathering John) the robots make the classic James Bond villain mistake of just locking him away in a cell.

The story of John Connor is further confused by the appearance of Marcus Wright (Sam Worthington), a murderer executed on Death Row in 2003 who walks out of the demolished ruins of a Skynet base in post-Apocalyptic/post-Judgment Day 2018 - and turns out to be a "new kind" of Terminator that thinks it's a human, but may be a sleeper agent... but actually wants to help the good guys.

Worthington's performance is great, but the need to have a new kind of Terminator in every film seemed unnecessarily forced in this one - being both slightly convenient for the limited plot and also rather unconvincing (if they had the technology - sometime between 2003 and 2018 - to make these brilliant cyborg infiltrators why was he the only one?)

This isn't a spoiler because Marcus's status has formed a central part of the movie's promotional campaign which, sadly, undermines the "big reveal" within the film. Do film companies now think audiences are too stupid to be able to handle this kind of twist and feel compelled to explain everything before hand?

The film splits its focus so much between Marcus Wright and John Connor that it doesn't really allow either to take the role of main protagonist. Although, slightly oddly, it probably favours Marcus more by the amount of screen time he gets.

McG's direction leaves a lot to be desired from his in-your-face action scenes, where you don't always know what's going on, to his odd habit of letting the camera linger over incidental characters and fooling you into thinking they might actually have something to contribute to the story when, in fact, they are purely incidental (I would cite the mute kid who hangs around with Kyle and the Old Woman, what did either of these contribute?)

Connor's role in the Resistance is also rather confusing; on one hand he is subordinate to the commanders hiding on the submarine and has yet to rise to power and take control of the Resistance, on the other he is the "voice of the Resistance", giving commands and comfort over the airwaves. Surely that position - and power - would only have come after he has assumed overall command of the Resistance (which, presumably, we will see in the next Terminator movie).

For all its flash and bang, Terminator Salvation is as cold and emotionless as its robot antagonists. Had I been more invested in the film the magical moment when Arnie actually appears, for his brief CGI cameo, might have made me whoop with delight and punch the air, but as it was I just grinned childishly and thought: "Cool!"

Except for that brief scene the movie lacks an enemy with a memorable face - for the most part it's grungy giant robots who could have strayed in from the latest Transformers no-brainer - which stands in marked contrast to the original films.

As a summer blockbuster, Terminator Salvation is an entertaining two hours of explosions and special effects that doesn't allow you a moment to get bored, but if you want character and depth in your Terminator stories look to the sadly-axed Sarah Connor Chronicles.