Ranking The Terminator Films And Shows From Worst To Best

Following up Rise of the Machines, Terminator Salvation tells the bleak, post-Judgment Day story of the Resistance and its fighters. There were hopes that the film would reinvigorate the franchise, and for a time, it seemed as though it would. Jonathan Nolan, the award-winning writer behind The Dark Knight, Interstellar, and HBO's Westworld, had started work on the script but pulled out due to another commitment. Along with the writers' strike, Salvation just couldn't seem to catch a break.

Even the film's star wound up hating it. In 2018, Christian Bale appeared on MTV's Happy Sad Confused podcast and touched on his regrets with the film (via Critical Hit). "I said no three times," the actor explained. "I went 'Nah, there's no story there.' ... And it's a great thorn in my side, because I wish we could have reinvigorated [the franchise]. And unfortunately, during production, you could tell that wasn't happening. It's a great shame."

At least Salvation isn't another retelling of the first three films. In this one, John Connor is a fully-fledged resistance leader, Kyle Reese (Anton Yelchin) is a young, pre-time traveling Sarah Connor-romancer, and the main cyborg doesn't even know he's a machine. But ... that's about all it has.