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Here we have the fourth Terminator movie – which is also the film, in case anyone has forgotten, from which an audio tape of actor Christian Bale spectacularly losing his cool was leaked on to the internet. Bale's central complaint in his epic rant was that his attempt to get into character was being ruined by cinematographer Shane Hurlbut fiddling around in his eyeline; well, we can now report that Bale gets pretty deep into his role of future resistance leader John Connor, essaying a comprehensive range of growls, yells and strange barking sounds as he hurtles around a grimy post-apocalyptic landscape.

Exactly what he's trying to do is never entirely clear; partly because, since the first Terminator film back in 1984, the convoluted backwards-and-forwards narrative superstructure has become ever more clotted and confused. Hitherto, Terminator films have generally been set in the present day, with one eye on vague future events from which time travellers are constantly popping back. Added to this, the series has always had a tenuous relationship with reality, as near-future science fiction tends to do. Judgment Day — the nuclear holocaust that paved the way for the whole machine-human war thing in this series' mythology – is now technically in the past: it was supposed to have happened in July 2004.
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Watch a clip from Terminator Salvation Link to this video
It's a tricky hump to get over, and one this film solves by basically blanking it out. Terminator Salvation is dated to 2018, where Bale's Connor is still aspiring to be the inspirational resistance leader the first three films constantly told us he would become. Essentially, we're here to close a circle; Connor's main aim is to track down Kyle Reese, the soldier he will send back in time to protect his mother from the bad cyborg played by Arnold Schwarzenegger, the storyline that forms the basis for the original. (Incidentally, assumptions that Schwarzenegger is absent from this latest one have proved wide of the mark; he has a brief but violent cameo for which he appears to have been dipped in flesh-coloured latex.)
In keeping with modern incarnations of the action blockbuster, this treatment of the Terminator has been smothered in quasi-religious symbolism and primary-school philosophising. A new character has been added to sledgehammer this home, a hybrid being (played by Sam Worthington) much given to trite reflection on the human condition. When he's not ripping Terminators' heads off, that is.
But clarity is not this film's strong point; director McG (whose main claim to fame to date is messing up the Charlie's Angels movies) has roughened it up stylistically, shooting everything in shades of grey, khaki and sepia, as well as going for a hyperactive, counterintuitive manner that unashamedly bludgeons the audience into submission. It's only the combination of a particularly dramatic atomic detonation and a more-than-usually portenteous voiceover from Bale that lets you know the film is over.