Ridiculously shallow.
In the first movies - we've seen John Connor as a boy and as a young man. We've seen how his mother turned from a feminine chick to a fighter-survivor woman - we know how she raised her son. We know much about the life of John Connor - probably as much as the script-writer himself knows. Nonetheless - In this, 4th movie - John Connor is nothing more than a side-character, almost completely static in its development.
[may contain minor spoilers:]
John meets Kyle Reese for the first time, in this movie. This encounter had so much potential to make it a little bit more exciting - yet, in this movie it lacks any emotionality (or rather, have some extremely unbelievable emotional reactions from Kyle).
All dialogue is extremely shallow - full of cliche 'moral codes'.
Acting is unbuyable, unbelievable.
All characters are like static carton-boards, that doesn't move an inch from where they are at any point of the movie - with the small exception of the protagonist (not John Connor).
Emotional outtakes doesn't work even a bit in this movie.
The protagonist of the movie is a new character no-one ever heard of before in any of the other Terminator movies - Marcus, a character
with the cliche 'Robocop Syndrome' (he used to be human - they turned him into half-human half-machine - and then "OMG!! NO!!! the CONFLICT!!! AHH". He is the only character in this movie who experience change - and thus he is the main (and almost the only) mechanism to deliver the premise - which is, of-course - "humans are not machines - they have emotions" or something in those lines. This premise is bluntly and rudely get shouted into your viewing head several times during the movie.
And it's interesting to note, that while this movie tries to "preach" about that 'humans are not programmed machines - they have emotions and can control their own destiny' - ironically - this movie felt extremely mechanic and extremely unemotional
I also found the action-sequences somewhat redundant, though OK and nice.
The DP though, in contrary of the director, actually did a decent job on this - as the photography is pretty nice.
In the first movies - we've seen John Connor as a boy and as a young man. We've seen how his mother turned from a feminine chick to a fighter-survivor woman - we know how she raised her son. We know much about the life of John Connor - probably as much as the script-writer himself knows. Nonetheless - In this, 4th movie - John Connor is nothing more than a side-character, almost completely static in its development.
[may contain minor spoilers:]
John meets Kyle Reese for the first time, in this movie. This encounter had so much potential to make it a little bit more exciting - yet, in this movie it lacks any emotionality (or rather, have some extremely unbelievable emotional reactions from Kyle).
All dialogue is extremely shallow - full of cliche 'moral codes'.
Acting is unbuyable, unbelievable.
All characters are like static carton-boards, that doesn't move an inch from where they are at any point of the movie - with the small exception of the protagonist (not John Connor).
Emotional outtakes doesn't work even a bit in this movie.
The protagonist of the movie is a new character no-one ever heard of before in any of the other Terminator movies - Marcus, a character
with the cliche 'Robocop Syndrome' (he used to be human - they turned him into half-human half-machine - and then "OMG!! NO!!! the CONFLICT!!! AHH". He is the only character in this movie who experience change - and thus he is the main (and almost the only) mechanism to deliver the premise - which is, of-course - "humans are not machines - they have emotions" or something in those lines. This premise is bluntly and rudely get shouted into your viewing head several times during the movie.And it's interesting to note, that while this movie tries to "preach" about that 'humans are not programmed machines - they have emotions and can control their own destiny' - ironically - this movie felt extremely mechanic and extremely unemotional
I also found the action-sequences somewhat redundant, though OK and nice.
The DP though, in contrary of the director, actually did a decent job on this - as the photography is pretty nice.
