I thought the movie was great. They clearly spent all their effort on building a /very/ immersive world rather than dealing with any sort of storytelling catch... which was pretty neat. My big concern was that they were going to try to make something more than a big action movie -- that it would try to emulate Terminator 2 and 3 and have some 'smart' twist. It didn't *at all*, which was great from where I'm sitting. (The fact of the matter is there's no *story* to speak of; we know what happens to John Connor because we've already been explicitly so-told. Unless they decided to shake things up in yet another way then the choice is telling a story-by-numbers or giving their all to making the future apocalypse *really cool*. They made the right choice... it lives and breathes.)
Time-travel in this series has left it as Kirha would say "the warm leavings of a male cow." There are too many time lines to comprehend and it leaves the viewer utterly confused.
I don't know - this is stupid when Star Trek fans say it... and their franchise isn't entirely derived from a time travel story whose whole point was to leave the viewer 'confused' about the timeline.
On another note, I actually enjoyed the prequel novel a lot. It has a good story and develops Connor's lowly status in the Resistance and builds it up towards the inevitable finale.
You are onto something here. Absolutely the *best* thing about Terminator 4 was the scope of the "prequel" tie-in material. They managed to release - with the movie - two video games, a novel, a series of comic books, two series' of short videos (which connect to an ARG?) and a six-episode CGI TV show that all tell *different* stories in the movie's world.
I could have told you that was going to happen! The terminator storyline has been hacked, destroyed, rebuilt, and ripped apart. Between Terminator 3 (which I hated), and the Sarah Connor Chronicles (not TOO bad actually) I sit there wondering, "WTF is going on?"
Personally, I'm not wasting $10 on seeing this one. I'll wait till it comes out on DVD. As far as I'm concerned, the terminator series should have ended with T2, and it did in my eyes.
Okay, double-anger.
* WHO ARE YOU PEOPLE? ARGH ARGH GNAW GRABPTHTHTHT. Do you guys really believe that 'I'm saving my COMPLETELY INSIGNIFICANT AMOUNT OF MONEY' is some kind of positive status beacon that everyone lauds every time we hear it (and we hear it *constantly*)? Do you really think the brain-response to this is somehow golly, what a clever and sagacious individual, he's come up with a brilliant solution for avoiding blah blah blarhhasgasahgash HARHHGHGHGHGHG It's a damn fast food meal, go spend it on a movie and have fun for two hours/get the right to criticize it with impunity... or don't. But nobody thinks the 'I'm too good for this but I'm still here' comment is neat. You're all losers. Horrible, horrible losers. RARGH.
* 'In my eyes'. RARGRHG RARRRRGHGHGHGHGHAHSHGSHI AM JUST GOING TO TYPE LOTS OF GS BECAUSE THIS IS STUPID GGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGG.
(I like Terminator 3 because it's completely unapologetic. It's *exactly* Terminator 2 told in exactly the same way but with the opposite message. I love seeing movies do that (2010 is the best example ever). All those 'rawr, mindless action, so dumb' people need to get off the world. But I digress. I also think TSCC was just about the smartest show on TV last season... and my biggest criticism of T4 would have to be that it wasn't those characters.)