When I first heard there would be a fourth Terminator film, my reaction fell somewhere in between what it would be if they announced a seventh Highlander film and the announcement of a third Mannequin -- with Mannequin being on the higher level of excitement. Now that's not to say I didn't enjoy the hell out of the first two Terminator films, I did... a lot. But once James Cameron left the series, the third film, Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines, followed by the recently canceled The Sara Connor Chronicles, drifted the franchise in a direction I wasn't interested in. There seemed to be too many 'smokin' hot' terminators and not, you know, 'scary as hell' terminators. My interest was not aroused until a press release was released in late 2007, Christian Bale would play the role of John Connor. Instant credibility.

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This brings us to Terminator Salvation, which, by the way, is a really hard film to review. My initial reaction when leaving the theater was praise. Though, after more thought, I'm not convinced this is the film die-hard Terminator fans have been waiting for. See, expectations can skew one's thoughts. And to be honest: I wasn't expecting much.

It's 2018 and Skynet rules this post-apocalyptic Earth. This is one bleak place to live. There is a resistance that's surprisingly not led by John Connor, but Connor is considered a sort-of messiah because his predictions about the future always seem to come true; in other words: he's got a following.

Let's get this out of the way first: Christian Bale's John Connor is a supporting character in this film; the story belongs to Sam Worthington as Marcus Wright -- a man sentenced to death in 2003 that mysteriously (not so mysterious, unfortunately, if you've seen the all too revealing trailer) reappears in 2018. Worthington is fantastic and he, along with Anton Yelchin's Kyle Reese -- the real key to this story -- are the only characters I really cared about. Bale's performance is ... well ... let's just say that if you heard that infamous recording of Bale yelling at this film's director of photography, then you have a pretty good idea of Connor's mannerisms.

Image © Warner Bros.

At times, Bale's intensity is welcome; this is a pretty intense film. If I were living in a world where scary robots were lurking behind every corner trying to kill me, yeah, I'd probably be cranky, too. And, yes, the terminators are scary. I loved that director McG decided to actually build real terminator prototypes as opposed to CGI. It adds a presence to the film that I think was beneficial to the actors; they were not reacting to a green screen. And we get terminators of every size and shape: The endoskeleton looking T-600 terminators, motorcycle terminators, water eel terminators and even a large walking prisoner transport terminator that was reminiscent of the tripods in the most recent War of the Worlds film -- even emitting a similar, yet equally terrifying, mechanical horn sound. And then one other terminator I'll get to in a second.

Bale, though, completely drops any sort of fun and sarcasm that the younger John Connor used to posses. This may alienate Terminator fans. This film was just begging for a couple of lighter, humorous moments. Other than one quick scene when a familiar line in Terminator lore was uttered, there's not a lot of levity to be found. It's almost like Bale realized halfway through production that he didn't have the biggest role and decided that if he wasn't going to have the most screen time, he was at least going to ACT THE HELL out of every single scene he had. Let's be clear: this is not Terminator's version of John Connor; for better or worse, this is Christian Bale's version of John Connor.

MINOR SPOILER ALERT

The last terminator I want to briefly discuss is the T-800. What they did in this film with Arnold Schwarzenegger was pretty freaking amazing. You see, Schwarzenegger himself had nothing to do with this film but somehow they cast a circa 1984 Arnold in this film. It was a short scene but looked absolutely amazing. It really was like they went back in time and brought back that version of Arnold just to briefly appear.

I enjoyed this film but I think you're going to see reviews that are all over the place. Again, for die-hard Terminator fans, I get the feeling there might be some backlash. I found -- save for one pretty silly scene involving Helena Bonham Carter at Skynet's headquarters and the wonderful Bryce Dallas Howard serving really no purpose at all -- this to be a pretty well made film. I feel that if you're going to make a Terminator film set in 2018, well, this is it, right? Right? I have a strong feeling others are going to disagree.

Grade: B

"Mike's Pulse" is a column written by transplanted Midwesterner and current New Yorker Mike Ryan. For any compliments or complaints -- preferably the former -- you may contact Mike directly at miker@starpulse.com or submit reader questions for celebrites to Mike on Twitter.