Terminated.

I love time travel.

I also love robots.

The Terminator franchise combines both of these classic science fiction elements, yet it's never thrilled me that much. The Terminator is an enjoyable and original 1980s horror movie. Terminator 2: Judgment Day is an amazing film, one of the best action movies of all time; it has everything that's good about the first film, depicted with greater depth and resonance.

Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines, unfortunately, adds nothing to the first two films and actually changes their mythology in some significant ways. We finally get to see Judgment Day, but first have to watch an entire film's worth of so-so action and silly quips and one-liners from Arnold Schwarzenegger. Terminator Salvation, the latest entry in the series, is pointless, dumb, and irrelevant. The only thing that happens in this movie that is important to the events of the other films is that John Connor meets Kyle Reese. Too bad that when it happens, it's boring. As much as I've tried to like these two films, their general carelessness and lack of respect for their audience has prevented me from doing so

One of the biggest problems is the character of John Connor. At the end of Terminator Salvation, I did not care if John Connor lived or died. That's not a good way to feel about the most central character in the entire franchise. In Terminator 2, there were actual emotional moments and feelings on display. John Connor went from being a wiseass punk who resented his mother's insane ramblings to experiencing the loss of the machine he'd formed an emotional bond with, the closest thing to a father he'd ever known. The film allowed you to feel for the characters as they changed and grew.

Not so in Terminator Salvation: this John Connor is completely one-dimensional. He yells nearly all the time, except when he's speaking in a gravelly monotone. A lot of people complained about Terminator 3's John Connor, who spent most of the film hiding from his "destiny" and generally acted ineffectual until the very end. However, is this new version of the character really an improvement? He's boring and he has no character arc. What about the period in between, where John Connor presumably becomes "John Connor," the incredible leader and resistance fighter we've been told about since the first film? They way the overseers of the Terminator franchise have dealt with their central character has been unsatisfying, to say the least.

Worse, however, is the simple fact that the Terminator timeline is essentially incomprehensible. If you think about it for more than two minutes, you will realize that even the filmmakers can't figure it out, and it shows. Each subsequent Terminator film has changed what the previous one told us about the future and its relationship with the present. The events of the future can't have happened without the events established in the films as having happened in the past, which in turn can't have happened without the events that occurred in the future. What?

Why are the machines looking for Kyle Reese in Terminator Salvation? How do they know that he is John Connor's father, since Reese won't be sent to the past for another eleven years? Why are they looking for John Connor this early in the first place? I don't know, and the movie doesn't seem to know, either. It's all just an excuse to have lots of robots, guns, and action set pieces (which are admittedly fantastic).

The terrifying appearance of the glowing red eyes and metal skeleton of a Terminator has earned this franchise a lot of goodwill from me. It's got time travel and scary killer robots, after all. Let's just hope that the future of the series includes some actual character and plot development alongside the relentless gunfire and bellowing paramilitary hogwash.

UPDATE: The movie's not doing very well in the U.S., so the planned sequel is probably up in the air until overseas grosses, DVD sales, etc. come in. There's a rumor that it will take place in modern-day London, for some reason, with John Connor traveling back in time to...blahblahblahblahblah. Sounds amazing!

SECOND UPDATE: Actually, I think I'm getting a little sick of robots, particularly ones that try to take over the world. The first trailer for the upcoming film 9 left me intrigued and interested. The second trailer, which delves deeper into the backstory, reveals that at some point in time, ROBOTS BECAME SELF-AWARE AND REVOLTED AGAINST HUMANITY. What a surprise.