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As Marcus and Blair make their way to the Resistance he is injured. It is then they and the audience finally discover that he is in fact a cyborg. He is slated for execution by Connor but saved and freed by Blair, who has formed a bond with the machine. As he escapes his pursuers, Connor among them, they themselves are attacked by Terminators. Marcus and John later form an understanding, in their common desire to free Kyle Reese from the machines, and embark on a rescue mission. I'll leave the rest of the plot here as to continue would spoil the climax and ending. And here is the part of the review where I'll do what all silly movie reviewers do and discuss what is wrong with the movie and what it should have been and a little of what it was.

As much as I anticipated seeing this film I can't help but feel let down by what was ultimately produced. The movie suffers tremendously from apparent script rewrites. Initially, the movie did not feature the character of John Connor except for a minor appearance at the end and it was only upon Bale's attachment to the project that the title role was expanded to include significantly more screen time. Unfortunately, the movie suffers from the re-writes and character expansion. The movie is not really about the character of John Connor at all. It never touches upon the relatively unexplored sci fi theme of what must a character be like to assume the near Christ like responsibility of savior of Humanity. It never discusses what the effect of this new life and world would have on the survivors. Sadly, both ideas were beginning to be well explored by the TV series, Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles before it was canceled. Instead, the movie returns to the well covered sci fi theme of "What is the meaning of humanity?" or more broadly, "What is the nature of existence?" Unfortunately, these ideas have been explored relentlessly in mainstream science fiction. In fact, this material is covered very well in the first sequel. The problem with returning to these ideas is that it's not particularly well done. Nothing new is really given to the audience to consider. This has all been covered since Mary Shelley's Frankenstein to Data on Star Trek: The Next Generation. And it's ironic that Christian Bale has now starred in two franchise tent-pole movies as iconic characters that are nearly secondary in each of the films.

Unfortunately, when a film loses its audience, its minor faults are no longer excused. There are too often silly science contrivances to advance a plot point - the radio frequency "kill switch", for example. And I fully expect Skynet to simply attempt to go back 100 years and try to kill a distant ancestor of John Connor because they are not adept at time travel assassination. Apparently, Skynet likes to make the same mistakes repeatedly, with the only variation being the time and target of choice. Simply irradiating the planet to destroy the possibility of any organic material surviving hasn't been thought of, apparently. (I hate myself for doing this. I hate geeks who sit in theaters and pick apart movies like this...why am I doing this? At least I am, however, self-aware regarding this particular human flaw in myself.)

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