*SIGH*
Okay first off, I love the Terminator storyline as a whole. I liked the movie, thought it was really good, but it still had it's bumps.
The thing is, the more I read of other people, the more I know they don't "get it" with the terminator series.
First off, I'm going to highly recommend the prequel book by Timothy Zahn, Terminator rise from the Ashes, as it expands out the movie by explaining many details the movie didn't bother to do. Yes, the movie was VERY fast paced and didn't take time to slow down much so many people made many wrong assumptions of what is going on.
However, for those that don't plan to read the prequel book, here's some explanations for everyone. But before that, I'm going to address one thing I know is generating some disappointment about the movies for many people. It is this, the Terminator series is episodic, NOT epic.
What does that mean? It means there is no contiguous plot line from start to finish with an intro, a middle, and an end. It's more or less like a TV series on the big screen. Many people going in wanting LOTR style story telling with a protagonist, antagonist, epic evil, duty for the hero, the journey to the climax, the good guy beating the bad guy, and then everyone goes home happy. That is NOT the Terminator series as it stands right now. It's not about winning the war but the battles.
Okay, with that out of the way, here is some further explanations that the book details a bit more that the movie doesn't do. The thing most people have to realize is this story takes place in the near future. Basically what happens is very soon, skynet "awakens" and realizes that it wants to stay alive and the only threat to its survival is humans that can turn it off. Realizing this threat, skynet decides to eliminate us. It decides to do this first off by taking over as many military and infrastructural networks as it possible can to gain access to as much weaponry and manufacturing as it can. It decides at this point the best way to start dealing with us is to start dropping nukes on every major population center across the world. It does realize by doing this, that it will be denying some resources it would have access to, but it also decides it will have enough and can manufacturer faster than us afterward. This is true.
The problem is, that skynet has very limited imagination and under estimates this about humans. So shortly after the original "Judgement Day" where skynet bombs the planet, it is a resource race between skynet and the remainder of humanity. Well those humans left that decide to fight. This is where the movie messes up, because there is quite a bit of humanity left, although most of it has degenerate into survival mode and forms gangs and pockets to live as best as it can. This is where fallout 3 is a very good example in a game to depict this scenario. Mostly at this point it is the resistance that is fighting skynet.
Now here is where I was a little miffed with the movie. At this point, skynet knows NOTHING about John Conner. John Conners "role" as predicted is to unite the remainder of humanity into the resistance capable of fighting back on equal footing against skynet. However, this is done be years of hardwork of Conner working his way up the "chain of command" that the movie glosses over. The book is spot on when it talks about how Conner and his wife would like to come out and tell everyone, Hey, just follow me, I know everything that is about to happen. But he realizes he would be taken for a lunatic if he did. So that whole intro the movie had about him being "prophesied" and everyone knowing he will lead is stupid. In the stories he does garner support by seeming to know the "answers" to skynet's decisions of what to use against humanity, which make others want to follow him, but it's a gradual process.
So at this point in the terminator universe, skynet is building up, humanity is fragmented with only a little resistance, and skynet is trying to develop the best ways to combat what little resistance is left. It no longer has access to a horde of nukes as they were all used, and if it did it would have to find the resistance which at this point is spread out and hiding. Skynet knows it can at this point ignore most of humanity and focus on the human resistance instead. So it decides to create "terminators" to try and infiltrate the resistance to take us out. It knows if it sends anything big after us, which doesn't have much of in the first place, that we humans would run like rabbits and peck at it's feet. Unlike skynet, humans have been fighting wars for a very long time. But skynet is a fast learner. This is the advantage though humans have over skynet, our unpredictability is what allows us to do things it doesn't expect. So skynet tries to create better weapons to take us out. When it realizes one method doesn't work it looks for a better one.
In comes the story of Terminator Salvation, in which skynet tries to make a "human" machine. The problem with other terminators, even the T800 "Arnold" one, is that they are still ALL MACHINE. sometimes it can get close enough to take out what it needs to, but usually humans figure it out a terminator is not a human. So skynet starts collecting humans and human bodies to make the best infiltration system. The problem is, to make one the mind would have to remain human to act human. By leaving Marcus with his own mind skynet has very little control over him, although it thinks the chip it implants in his head will provide the control it needs. All the chip does is give him "urges" because the human brain is still to much for even skynet to figure out at this point for total control.
Now, the book does a very good job of going into the characters shown in the movie and who they are. I especially like the character HKBK, aka the callsign of Williams the female A10 warthog pilot. It does much to show how the "world" is coping after skynets initial attack. These things I'll leave you to read and enjoy.
The movie was good in my opinion but not great because of what the OP called too much cheese. Here I agree. The final fight scene between Conner and the T800 was just way over the top. To have been more plausible, the T800 would not have sat around and toyed with Conner by throwing him all over the place. It would have do whatever it could do to kill him in one hit. That whole end fight scene just made me groan as this is one area the first two movies were awesome with. The terminators are brutal, efficient, and killers. They are not Austin Powers style evil geniuses that leave the hero in a predicament that he can overcome with ease once the evil mastermind walks away. That kind of crap annoys me to no end. Also, the fact is, the movie was not suppose to focus on Conner in the first place, but Marcus. But since they got Christian Bayle to be Conner, they wrote in many more scenes that included him that were originally not in the story.
While there were scenes with the movie I was disappointed over, they weren't enough to detract from the enjoyment of the movie too much.
So the things that bugged me about the movie was this:
1) Too fast paced and never slows down enough to explain a few things which leads the average audience goer to assume things wrongly and thing a few things are plots holes which are not.
2) Too much Bayle.
3) Very little character development for anyone but Marcus, which he was done well at least.
4) Skynet should no NOTHING about Conner or Reece. Should probably know nothing about Reece ever. Period. That would have changed quite a bit about the movie and I wish they had done that.
5) The end "fight scene" was overdone and not needed. Again too much Bayle.
those were the big things that messed up the movie. There were a few little things, like the resistance using PLAIN SPEECH into short wave radio transmissions were are easily received by Skynet. In the books they speak in code. I can understand for the ease of not going too deeply or overly confusing the average movie goer that doesn't read books, that was left as is along with many other side technology and resource issues. Again, reading the books sets this straight so the little things the movie does wrong can be ignored. The big things the movie does wrong that I listed above can't be ignored though.