Terminator: Salvation, directed by Joseph “McG” McGinty Nichol (ala. Charlie’s Angels: Full Throttle), certainly is not lacking in the qualities audiences have come to expect from summer blockbusters: McG’s post-apocalyptic world is saturated in lovely shades of concrete gray and charred black, accented with splashes of furious explosions and ominous mushroom clouds.

Los Angeles has never looked worse, and that’s a good thing. The terminator models themselves are particularly impressive, boasting a much greater variety and creativity than has been seen in previous “Terminator” film iterations. These mechanical ravagers swim, hobble, crawl, and sprint with a physical presence on screen that really is impressive to behold. There’s even an in-the-buff cameo by our favourite American governor.

And yet, despite McG’s flavor for explosions and creative shooting perspectives, one can only cover up an utter lack of story, dialogue, and humanity for so long. And that’s precisely the flaw with this film; for all its show and visual splendor, there is a total lack of substance.

Bale and Worthington, while certainly holding a presence on screen, deliver dialogue through variations between yelling…and shouting louder. Performances are over-acted, plot exposition is flat and fleeting, and you would swear Christian Bale left the bat-ears somewhere on the set.

Part of what made James Cameron’s original Terminator, and even the sequels that followed it, so successful was the sense of humanity and emotion so deeply intertwined with the plot and the characters we experienced it through. By contrast, Salvation does little beyond establishing names familiar to followers of the franchise, and little else. Establishing an emotional connection to the characters is simply unreasonable, given how little screen-time is dedicated to the supporting cast.

Worthington, who perhaps had the most difficult role to perform, raises interesting philosophical questions of what it means to be human, and the qualities that distinguish man from a machine. Sadly, “raising” these questions is as far as McG is willing to go, and we’re once again bombarded with more explosions and robots, which only get larger and- arguably -more distracting as the film goes on.

Terminator: Salvation is just that: Distracting. Yes, it remains true to the canon of the Terminator franchise, and certainly does boast the pyrotechnic splendor our your average summer blockbuster. You might even start thinking about the paradoxes and implausibility of the time-travel plot but– Hey look, explosions.