After Christian Bale signed onto the movie they substantially expanded his part, so that, you know, he’d be able to growl some more. From a narrative perspective it creates a giant conflict of interest between two different protagonists, and since Bale’s John Conner really isn’t all that interesting or fleshed out beyond shouting orders in a Batman tone, he can’t hold up half of this movie no matter how good an actor he is. Cut down Bale, expand Worthington, you’d have yourself a pretty great through-line for the picture and it’s disappointing they chose not to stick to their guns.

Even the supporting actors aren’t bad, though Helena Bonham Carter really gets shafted by poor direction and crappy dialogue for her brief moments on screen. Bryce Dallas Howard is just sort of there, as is Common and most of the other resistance fighters. Moon Bloodgood is the one bright spot in the ensemble, and, if given more to do, could conceivably have given Linda Hamilton a run for her money with strong female leads in the franchise. Instead she’s relegated to the edges of this story and it’s her scenes with Sam Worthington where she really gets a chance to shine.

I think now is probably the best time to address the rumors swirling about the ending of this film. If you want to avoid spoilers, just skip down to the next paragraph and you’ll stay completely free of anything to do with the ending. I’m not going to discuss the ending that is there so much as the ending that could have been, so it’s not really a spoiler in that sense. Beginning of Spoilers Anyway, the net was all abuzz with a leak from the set that claimed that John Conner would be a terminator at the end of the movie. I think the leak was taken pretty badly out of context, but the production denied it instantly after a wave of outcry greeted the news. In fact, that was an accurate description of the end that was originally shot, except that they went back and changed it. BAD MOVE. The original ending has John Conner getting a stake driven through his chest in the final battle with the T-800 and eventually succumbing to his wounds, leaving a pregnant wife and a Resistance that he was now the sole surviving leader of. In the original ending, Sam Worthington’s character of Marcus decides to take on the skin of John Conner and continue to lead the resistance, something that wouldn’t conflict with anything that has come before but would instead add much needed depth and emotional resonance to the film. Only the inner circle would know he was a machine, and that would mean that he’d have the chance to listen to ...