Christian Bale stars as John Connor in Terminator Salvation, the fourth instalment in the sci-fi film series. (Warner Bros. Pictures)

It’s been 25 years since Arnold Schwarzenegger clomped out of the steam as a visiting cyborg from the future, a role that made the most of the “actor’s” waxen face and mechanical charms. Hop-scotching through time to save the world from evil machines, the first two Terminator movies were a fist-pumpin’, big-bangin’ harbinger of the internet anxiety era.

Christian Bale plays hero John Connor with such lunatic, Batman-esque gravitas, that it looks physically painful – all that clenching can’t be good for the bowels.

But like most franchises, it’s been a case of diminishing returns since T2. Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines was OK, and the fourth installment is a little less OK. The new film starts in 2018, which is somewhere in the middle of the whole convoluted mythos. Judgment Day has already leveled the Earth and a man vs. machine war is raging. The machines appear to be winning, siphoning off the few remaining humans to spaceship concentration camps, a little nod to the Holocaust that is as distasteful as it sounds.

The leader of the resistance is John Connor (Christian “Sorry About That” Bale), the prophet who now has to find the boy (Anton Yelchin) who, with a little time warping, would be his dad. This clueless teen, trailed by a mute sidekick kiddie (Jadagrace Berry), is a kind of decades-traveling sperm bank upon which the future of humanity rests. John gets his inside info on the cyborgs from a series of tapes his mom left behind. Tapes! Skyscrapers have crumbled and civilizations lie buried under mountains of nuclear dust, but the tape recorder still works! Funny, I recall those things as being only a little less reliable than a Victrola even when they were cutting edge.

On one tape — to bring forgetful viewers up to speed — John’s mom, Sarah, gives background about Skynet, the evil intelligence network that became “self-aware” and nuked the planet. As she yammers on about “resetting” the future and the past, she stops suddenly and exclaims: “God, a person could go crazy thinking about this!” Indeed.

Best, perhaps, not to think at all, and enjoy the supra F/X. There are explosions a-plenty, and some great visuals, including Connor throwing himself from a jet on high into the ocean that makes for a breathtaking split second. A few narrow escapes involving motorcycles are a wink to Arnie’s preferred mode of transportation back in the day.

A T-600 Terminator packs heat in a scene from Terminator Salvation. (Warner Bros. Pictures)

But these robots lack the alpha Terminator’s verbal panache; they’re the kind of computer-generated creatures that look like the more sophisticated siblings of stainless steel refrigerators. The problem is, with their slim hips, massive metal pecs and feet that stomp like tractors being dropped from the sky, they look too powerful. Their awesomeness is a cheat. Not to be too comic-store geek about it, but there is no way a human being could ever win against a titanium, nuclear-powered, 100th-generation robot the size of a mountain. Could a guy really kick robot ass with only a truck and a little moxie? Never has an old-fashioned human-on-human fistfight been so welcome; at least that’s something like an even match.

The man who comes to fisticuffs is the film’s other lead, Marcus Wright, a former death row murderer who donated his body to science, and woke up 14 years later to an apocalypse. Sam Worthington is off-handedly persuasive as a confused, scuffed maybe-hero (although there is some Australian-accent leakage). Marcus proves to be the physical manifestation of the ultimate sci-fi quest: What makes us human?

Someone might ask this of Christian Bale. The guy plays hero John Connor with such lunatic, Batman-esque gravitas, that it looks physically painful – all that clenching can’t be good for the bowels. Dude, lighten up: It isn’t ACTUALLY the end of the world! It’s only a movie, and a summer movie, too, which means silly leaps of logic and, God willing, the occasional laugh. Despite Bale, Terminator Salvation does contain a few moments of levity, requisite po-mo references to the franchise that should get audiences cheering.

But given the best line of the movie – a variation on Schwarzenegger’s famous “I’ll be back” – Bale blows it, refusing to allow even a twinkle of the eye. The actor’s most awesome superpower seems to be sucking the joy out of everything he touches these days. Dear Christian: Maybe it’s time for a Matthew McConaughey role, a little romp on the beach with Kate Hudson, just until you get your love of the game back.

Directed by McG – just typing that makes me feel like he’s mocking all of us – with a pointless shaky cam, Terminator Salvation injects every visual cliché found in the post-apocalyptic genre. It’s shot in a palette of fecal matter greys and browns, and everyone wears chains and tight jeans (hot for the fallout season, no?). The film is grinding and inevitable, and occasionally very cool. But mostly, it’s lifeless, as if it, too, was made in a lab somewhere, a film designed, if not to destroy us, then to lower our expectations. Ah well, why fight it?

Terminator Salvation opens May 22.

Katrina Onstad is the film columnist for CBCNews.ca.