Terminator Salvation: The Machinima Series (2009)

The Machinima Series is an animated prequel set two years before the Terminator Salvation (2009) movie. I've no idea if it improves upon or adds additional depth to the movie's back-story because I haven't watched the feature, nor do I think I ever will, so I'm able to judge the series on its own merits, of which there are few.

It's a CGI animation constructed using the game engine of the movie tie-in video game. Already, alarm bells should be ringing in your head.

It's a bold idea but the result is pretty awful. The movement is stiff, limited by the engine's existing parameters. The environments are structured like a game environment, coloured by the seven shades of shit-brown and six shades of concrete-grey that dominate the uninspired action genre.

Its blandness is matched by its obvious padding out of story. There's a story there but it could've been easily told in one 25 minute short. Instead, they stretched it to 6 episodes, approx 12 minutes each.

When the first episode ended there was a fraction of a second when my brain said it was time to pick up the games controller and prepare for some insipid shooty action. I was unconsciously making ready to target exploding barrels for easy kill points. Thankfully. that didn't happen, which was comforting. Although, what that means is that very quickly the Machinima Series feels like it's a game without any actual gameplay. No, not like Heavy Rain.

1 system crash out of 5