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Choosing whether to pick up the medium-sized or family-size carton of popcorn turned out to be one of the most memorable moments of my trip to the movies.
Considering the amount of weight and blubber I had gathered over the past year, I spent almost 20 minutes deciding on what to order. Finally, the man at the counter was kind enough to remind me to have a good time more than anything else; so it was going to be family-size after all.
I slowly stepped into the hall realising that this would be my first Terminator movie. I had missed out on the past three of the series but a little internet surfing had me quickly up to speed on the man-machines and the mission to destroy mankind.
Terminator Salvation is a prequel to 1984's The Terminator that takes place 34 years after the original. How does that work? It is set in a post-apocalyptic Los Angeles of 2018 during the early days of the human resistance, 11 years before Kyle Reese is sent back in time to protect Sarah Conner from the first Terminator.
Expecting a star performance from the main man in this movie, Christian Bale, we first had to sit through a long line of advertisements and trailers randomly talking about unicorns, Arnold Schwarzenegger action figures and, for some odd reason, Akon.
When I tucked into my mouth-watering toffee-coated munchies we found humans fighting to stay alive as they are hunted mercilessly by Terminators created by Skynet, a global network of machines.
John Conner (Christian Bale) is the prophetic leader of the resistance and Marcus Wright (Sam Worthington) who is half-human, half-machine is determined to win the war. An all out attack is planned on the headquarters of Skynet until John discovers that Kyle Reese (Anton Yelchin) - his future father, is being held prisoner in the facility. As a result the attack is called off and an operation launched to save Kyle and the others trapped with him.
Sadly, instead of riveting, edge-of-your-seat action I fought against snoozing and choking on mouthfuls of popcorn amid a disappointing array of cheesy lines and clichŽ scenes.
The most disappointing was Bale's performance. Most of his lines were yelled out and dialogues dragged pointlessly on.
Worthington, however, executed his role pretty well. Movie-goers will easily connect with Marcus who displays a brilliant array of emotions as he connects to his human side.
Also, the sounds and machines are awesome. There are lots off hi-tech ingredients on offer including mean motorcycles, large flying contraptions and, of course, Terminator robots.
And, the best part of the movie is a scene which caused me to awake instantly and one in which I clearly remember gasping at ... the arrival of Schwarzenegger. The big man was awesome.
It was a short lived moment to remember in a movie more reminiscent to a cheesy episode of Batman with stolen moments from the Matrix.
Final verdict; it's just another summer action flick and nothing to be really excited about.
