You can have too much of a good thing. Having recently gorged myself on the entire first series of Alias on DVD over a weekend I know that statement is not unequivocally true. But even allowing for the vagaries and relativism of personal taste, halfway into Terminator: Salvation I began to believe it.  It wasn’t the stunning CGI; it wasn’t the stunning set-piece action sequences; it wasn’t the scarred, bleached-out but atmospheric post-apocalyptic landscape; it wasn’t the gloomy, cramped underground boltholes of what is left of the human race after Judgement Day, scurrying for survival like rats in the shadows. It wasn’t any of these things in isolation. It was just all of them, all of the time, over and over in the absence of an involved and involving storyline. And what storyline there was remained fatally unfocused. This is the second time Christian Bale has received top billing in a monstrous budget blockbuster and ended up co-starring. No wonder he threw that now infamous huffy puffy on the set of this one, probably at the point at which it dawned on him where he was placed in the on-screen pecking order.

Director McG (Charlie’s Angels) said that he wasn’t interested in doing Terminator 4; that the Terminator franchise with a contemporary setting was done after Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines. Hasta la vista, Governator. Thus similar to but unlike the recent Star Trek with its much-lauded prequel reboot, Terminator: Salvation reboots to the future. So it’s a sequel reboot then? Only it isn’t. Because what both films have in common apart from the reboot is time travel. And when it comes to time travel in Hollywood currently, it’s becoming clear this means a blank cheque for a narrative recycling of old stock, a narrative apparently relevant to today’s cinema-going audience – since reboots now seem to be in: namely, B-Movie blather boasting budgets higher than the economic turnover of a small nation state, paper-clipped together by your basic myth-making hero storyline, one not even George Lucas would struggle to understand.

With the variables of time travel rebooting what was, what might have been and what may come, John Connor is now only second in command to General Ashdown (Michael Ironside in a part not that far-removed from his Lieutenant Rasczak in Starship Troopers) who coordinates the resistance against Skynet from a submarine. But it is Connor on the desolate land above who has the heart of the troops, not to mention that of his pregnant wife Kate (Bryce Dallas Howard), who helps reveal John’s sensitive side (if only she could have done the same for another gruff-toned monotonal Batman turn by Bale). The survival of mankind could hinge on the development of a signalling device which if successful, will incapacitate Skynet’s endless parade of daunting Homo sapiens-shredding weaponry. Except that Connor is very conflicted about being ordered to sacrifice other people for the sake of war strategy percentages. And then there is a teenage Kyle Reese (Anton Yelchin, Chekov in the recent Star Trek reboot, here similarly sparky-eyed) who comes across the mysterious Marcus Wright (Sam Worthington, the best performance in the film), a man haunted by fragmentary memories as a prisoner on death row pre-Judgement Day. His last half-decent act is to sign his body over to Helena Bonham Carter’s Dr Serena Kogan during the opening credits. You know something’s amiss when Marcus pops up in the future and proceeds to pull through horrors not even Tom and Jerry could survive.

Sod philosophical science fiction content – this is an action film. Serious money and talent has been expended here and the results are spectacular. State of the art indeed. The aforementioned Skynet weaponry includes a Transformers-sized Terminator bot, mechanical sea-serpents and riderless motorbikes; sleek black ergonomic metal beasts these last, with mounted high impact gun turrets. They feature in what is surely the best set piece, the pursuit of Reese, his mute child companion resistance member, Star (Jadagrace) and Marcus driving an oversized pick-up truck that leaves similar chases in Mad Max eating the dust in its wake. It is astonishing.

In the midst of all this mayhem you might have a moment to decide whether the storyline, such as it is, keeps you guessing or simply veers all over the place like that truck. Is it Marcus you are supposed to care about: who, what and why is he? Moon Bloodgood’s leather-clad fighter pilot Blair Williams literally falls out of the sky to help him answer these questions. By the time Bale’s Connor is called upon to stop being General Ashdown’s very naughty boy and become the Messiah, there is neither enough character development invested or screen time momentum behind him for us to buy it.

McG’s avowed intention not to do a Terminator 4 sits uneasily with constant references to Cameron’s vastly superior originals. Loading a firearm one-handed on the fly: the molten metal and below zero solution to an unstoppable stomping Terminator exoskeleton. The appearance of an iconic presence from a veil of smoky electrical discharge. And yet there is nothing iconic in this film. The action and effects are at times staggering, but it still doesn’t have the singular flair of Arnie reloading a rifle while riding a Harley and simultaneously shooting chain-locked gates open. Nor the heroic iconography of John Connor seen through a brief future vision of him, face and battle-scarred, binoculars in his bunched fists as he surveys the field of war. The variations on former set pieces and visual references to previous films we keep getting now in a franchise, while they might flatter to deceive as witty continuity leitmotifs and in-jokes, have become little more than unimaginative steals.

What Terminator: Salvation does, like Star Trek, is act out what has previously been threaded into character mythology in the original films through fragmentary information and passing conversation. This is rebooting, then. The problem with it is that by actually showing the mythology in the making, it kills it stone dead. It isn’t necessary to act out what went on behind those binoculars. The image is iconic and it lingers in the memory as something we feel we have seen and know. That’s why it has resonance as myth. The only thing that resonates with Salvation is the thundering bass effects on the soundtrack. But does it matter? Because funny thing is, while I was watching, I did sort of enjoy it. Then battle fatigue set in. Maybe it’s not for me, leitmotifs and all; anymore than the rebooted Star Trek probably was. Perhaps they are for the ‘digitally literate’ new generation who might fill in the gaps if they can be bothered and simply don’t need extended conversations with philosophical content nor have the time to concern themselves with varied pace because the digital smorgasbord is unceasing. The kind of pace so superbly realised in Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles, where the thoughtful and immersive dialogue between Catherine Weaver and Ellison, loaded with import and dramatic irony on the nature of man and sentient machine was punctuated by Summer Glau’s cybernetic Cameron kicking ass. The TV series was supposedly cancelled because it failed to find its audience. Bums on seats. Shame. It could teach Star Trek and Terminator: Salvation a thing or two about integrity towards the original source material while doing something refreshingly new. But such big-screen branded juggernauts are unlikely to have similar trouble finding their audience. Terminator: Salvation is your typical summer smasher. Its tag line: ‘The End Begins’. Probably the best in-joke of the whole film.