It’s been a good year for Terminator fans. Although Sarah Connor Chronicles didn’t get picked up for a third season, I had a consolation prize in Terminator: Salvation. It fits in perfectly with the Terminator franchise; there are a lot of things that don’t make sense, some of the special effects are crappy, time warps turn your brain inside out, and it’s a helluva lotta fun. I’m guessing this one will do something in the $300 million range and get greenlighted for another installation by the time the DVD comes out.

Direction-wise, McG really should stick to music videos or just special effects design. He’s great at clever action sequences (such as a nice long take of a helicopter crash from the passenger POV). The CG effects were flawless, especially the breathtaking appearance of MUFFLE MUFFLE MWUMF MWUFMTHF STUFFING HAND IN MOUTH TO AVOID EPIC SPOILER, but I must confess some dismay at the B-level physical effects. I spotted two terminators who were obviously stuntmen in (poorly made) robot costumes, and the way they moved told me they’d probably done a lot of work as stunt zombies or ninjas. But they could chúpalo when it comes to playing a convincing robot. If you’re going to dedicate the movie to Stan Winston, don’t insult his memory by failing to use convincing puppetry and animatronics. On the upside, there is great continuity in the physical motions of the robots. Half of a terminator crawling toward its target is still as creepy as ever, and I really believed these things came off an assembly line every time I saw the unflinching head rotation to correct course after every pointless yet well-placed blow to the metal skull.

But in addition to actION I would hope for some actING. Although Sam Worthington nailed the physical presence of a machine and had the stone-cold attitude down pat, his accent slipped about every five minutes and with the exception of a brilliant cameo by Helena Bonham Carter, every character in the film had about one facial expression. (Hint: This is only acceptable if you’re actually made of metal)

Casting choices were spotty, and some that may have been good were not put to use by the superficial acting direction. Bale is gritty and seething, but McG’s peripheral treatment of the female characters in the film seem untrue to Terminator’s deeply feminist and family-oriented vibe. One female character is a forgettable soldier with a crush on the new cyborg in town, and the other is merely Mrs. Connor. What Bryce Dallas Howard could have brought to Kate Connor was never seen. She’s pregnant, but this is incidental, and the intense loyalty Sarah Connor showed for John is not reflected to the next generation. John shows his commitment to the human family, but that to his own seems merely to ensure the continuity of the time loop. He seeks out Kyle Reese, but he does not parent him. Anton Yelchin’s adorable, fresh-faced scrawniness endeared him to me as Chekov in Star Trek, but it seemed out of place here. He had none of Michael Biehn’s destroyed innocence, and came off as a kid playing cops and robbers rather than the battle-hardened, prematurely aged future father of John Connor.

This flick wisely stays square in the middle of PG-13 territory. There is action and mayhem galore, but no profanity and no gore. It’s truly appropriate for a teen audience, and won’t raise the hackles of moms who were irked by the profanity-spouting kiddie Connor in T2. Definitely leave the small kids at home, but gratuitous use of bullets aside, this is not a film that resorts to shock tactics, preferring deft cutaways and implied horrible events rather than being needlessly explicit.

It’s flawed. It’s messy. But it’s a spectacularly entertaining film. There are delicious fight scenes, obediently taking place inside a factory with molten lava, steam vents, and metal catwalks galore. There are giant rampaging robots destroying everything in sight. People get shot in the leg but somehow limp to safety. The tie-ins to the Terminatorverse are numerous and delightful, and it’s thrilling to see Skynet at its biggest and baddest, instead of just glimpsed through fleeting views of the future.

The flick didn’t let me down. One of the things I love about Skynet and the terminators is that they are an uncompromising enemy for humans to fight. Unlike bad guys, who fart around with witty banter and inefficient kung-fu, these are machines. They have their programming. They have their objective. And they will never stop. You must destroy or be destroyed. McG fails to grasp Cameron’s poignant vision that forced us to confront the conflicting forces of human compassion and self-destruction, but it does manage to salvage the theme of reclaiming the humanity that you thought you’d lost forever.

Don’t miss this one on the big screen. Hoo, boy will it be a great summer.