And yes, you hit a really good point: It’s not that hard to kill terminators in this movie, and that really sucks the menace out of them.

I really wish I hadn’t seen this movie.

First read this, and I think it will explain some of the plot issues like: why in hell would they be collecting people up rather than just killing them?

http://chud.com/articles/articles/19577/1/EXCLUSIVE-WHAT-WENT-WRONG-WITH-TERMINATOR-SALVATION/Page1.html

Okay, so beyond what the movie could have been before Bale made them cast him as John Connor:

The motorcycle terminators have this super advanced object recognition and avoidance programming that allows them to avoid even small bits of debris traveling at high rates of speed and do acrobatics to avoid them. But somehow that programming doesn’t work on a rope stretched across the road.

Apparently t600s didn’t get this advanced object recognition tied into their targeting systems because they can’t hit the broadside of a barn with a fucking gatling gun.

I guess the same molten metal used to make the t800 somehow isn’t hot enough to actually melt one, despite the fact that in the second movie, they destroy one with molten steel. Not only is it not hot enough to melt its frame, it’s also not hot enough apparently to melt any computer components within the frame, or destroy any hydraulic fluids, lubricants or seals.

It is nice to see that skynet has standardized around USB though.

Apparently any terminator in a hundred mile radius will hear a loud stereo, but I guess its no big deal to fly around in fucking planes. I guess there’s been enough jet fuel left over from judgement day that the resistance can afford to just have a couple of military aircraft randomly patrolling. Skynet was just stretched too thin to go out and secure the remaining military assets that weren’t destroyed in judgement day despite ostensibly having records of where all of it was stored or deployed.

Also, I guess skynet only really has about 5 hunter killers and none of them were on duty around skynet central when the resistance decided to fly in and pull out connor.

Apparently skynet thought the best course of action for killing john connor was to send just one unarmed beta model t800 against a person who has killed or reprogrammed every other killing machine you’ve sent against him since he was a teenager. I guess their whole army of t600s were out in the wastelands shooting at stuff and missing.

A heart transplant, from a donor of dubious qualification, in the middle of the desert, without a sterile operating theater or bypass machine (Is heart disease still the #1 killer of humans? I thought it was nuclear weapons). I hope there’s enough anti-rejection meds left in the world to last the most-important-human-alive for the rest of his life.

I watched T1 again the other day, and remembered what was so great about it: hopelessness. Not only was Sarah confused and scared for her life watching this machine tear through a police station (if a building full of heavily armed police can’t protect you, who can?), but Kyle Reese, the dude who’s been sent to save you, who’s used to dealing with these things, is completely terrified of it. It will never stop until you’re dead.

A future where John Connor has been killing terminators for most of his life, and where 16 year olds kill them by dropping masonry on them just sucks all of the menace out of the movie. We know they can be killed, and it’s not really even all that hard. In a way, the terminators have become the bumbling bad guy who just got lucky with those nukes, but by golly, humanity in all its awesomeness will prevail. In T1, it was really just dumb luck that they managed to kill it, not humanity’s undying will to overcome adversity.