After watching Terminator: Salvation (imdb | rotten tomatoes) last night Nellie said, “Whoever made the trailer for that movie should win an Oscar.” If you haven’t yet seen said trailer, watch it here. Note the awesomeness, not the least of which is the note-perfect use of Nine Inch Nails.

After seeing the movie, I think whoever made the trailer should also be charged with fraud. It didn’t live up to the trailer. But you can’t really fault the trailer for being good, so here was my problem with the movie: I kept giving it chances, and it kept letting me down. I went into it with low expectations — I’d read the bad reviews and seen the poor ratings on RT — but I was pleasantly surprised by the first half of the film. It wasn’t bad.

It wasn’t great, either — the dialogue could be a little wooden, we both felt the Kyle Reese character was strangely played, and I thought Common was a great example of the latest in a string of rappers who can’t act — but it was interesting and the action sequences were very good. I actually started to believe that this could end well. But when it entered the final act, it just went sideways and got ridiculous. Completely fell down. I knew I shouldn’t have expected much from a McG-directed Terminator, but I think I was ultimately more frustrated by knowing, as Nellie said last night, that there was a good movie in there somewhere.