If ever a movie was optimized to force a “Mystery Science Theater 3000” reunion, this is it. Starting on page one with its pretentiously oxymoronic title, every single word of the fractured, overwrought screenplay simply begs to be ridiculed. Much more like a randomly drawn series of movie poster tag lines than actual discourse, it doesn’t help matters either that every line is delivered with distinct and often multiple exclamation points.

The writing team of John Brancato and Michael Ferris, whose dubious track record includes the underwhelming previous “Terminator” episode “Rise of the Machines” and the universally loathed “Catwoman,” do take a couple of courageous shots at furthering the temporally tangled mythos of the “Terminator” universe, in which the human race and the family of its eventual leader John Connor (once played by punky Edward Furlong, then weasely Nick Stahl, now by hotheaded Hollywood it-actor Christian Bale) persistently resist eradication at the hands of uppity time-skipping killborgs along an erratically variable series of timelines.

It’s a fairly exasperating struggle for everyone involved—the bots consistently fall short of terminating those pesky Connors, and the Connors always fail to effect any significant change in the bots’ decision to nuke the planet into a new iron age. Every instance of time travel seems to inadvertently set in motion new events in the past that ultimately lead to the same old events in the future. It’s a frustrating four-dimensional chess game that keeps both sides, and evidently the screenwriters, scratching their heads, shrugging and loading their weapons for the next round.

The series has, between profuse torrents of high-caliber gunfire and vehicular bedlam, spent some effort exploring the philosophical landscapes of relationships between flesh and metal, and in its own hackneyed way, “Salvation” does make an attempt. In what could almost pass as an inventive thematic inversion, we are introduced to the character of Marcus Wright (Aussie hunkahunka Sam Worthington), a death row casualty who donates his body in pre-apocalypse 2003 (in a familiarly “Robocop 2” manner) to some ethically suspicious scientific experimentation. Waking up alone and disoriented in a greasy, underlit robo-lab 15 years after his own execution, curiously unaware that he hasn’t aged a day, now weighs 350 pounds and has superhuman strength, he launches on a road trip into the desolate ashlands of California to figure out what the hell happened to him. By incredible coincidence, he happens upon and befriends a young resistance fighter named Kyle Reese—the kid who we all know from the previous films would later grow to be popped back in time to father the Connor line.
Their unlikely partnership stands as another interesting, if anonyingly hollow, nod to the “boy and his bot” plotline of the prior chapters, and if rumors are true, was initially meant to be the whole of the story. Apparently, in typical Hollywood fashion, the potential for this original story was broken, diluted and rendered nearly indiscernible by Christian Bale’s insistence that his role as John Connor be rewritten and expanded for him at four times the volume, and it really shows. His scenes, all gnash, shout and pout, play like a series of disconnected, self absorbed and overindulgent pickup shots, most of which could easily be left in the cutting room bin. The movie’s running time could probably have been distilled down by 30 minutes simply by excising each occurrance of Connor loudly announcing his own name.

The disastrous collision of clichés, tediously incoherent dialogue, absurd performances and wasted tin man posturing aside, “Terminator Salvation” somehow does actually manage to entertain. Director Joseph McGinty Nichol, a.k.a. McG, the nice young man who gave us TV’s “The O.C.” and two bombastic “Charlie’s Angels” flicks, sure does know his way around an action sequence. The escalating clashes are all gloriously over the top—lead and fire and wreckage and havoc rocket out in all directions. The film is worth watching for the thrumming torque of the sound design alone.

Word has it that, regardless of the scribblers’ unmistakable ineptitude, a fifth “Terminator” installment is already in the works. Like the inescapable death-bots of the yet-to-come, ignoring all failure and malfunction, this franchise can be expected to continue lumbering inexorably forward.