TERMINATOR SALVATION Post Release - Page 7

Two under-performing films now and a television series that was just cancelled. I'd say this franchise is done.

Unless a major A-list director decides they want to do a Terminator film.

Or in ten years when we get a reboot.

I can't imagine this not getting a sequel. Yeah, the budget will be reduced - I can't believe this flick cost $200m - but there's no way Halycon lets the franchise go, and doesn't MGM have some kind of hard-on about getting Terminator back?

The problem is the next installment needs to be signed right now due to rights issues...I hope they keep the budget under the belt and they throw a good script.

I dunno if Skynet had enough Nukes to go around. You figure that he hits all major cities around the world. Now the Soviet and American Stockiles were meant to cover the US and Russia not the world. So they'd have to spread them out among South America, Africa, and Australia. This of course is considering that many US military facilities have hardened fallout shelters.

We have enough nukes in the US to make the Earth uninhabitable for centuries, if not millenia.

But thinking about it, Skynet can't just nuke everything -- it needs manufacturing facilities, power supplies, things like that. If a base was next to something Skynet needed, it could have been spared.

Skynet only launches against the targets in Russia. The Russian counter attack takes out its enemies here. The rest of the world should have avoided nuclear devastation.

That was in pre-T3 Judgement Day. In T3 the nukes are clearly flying a much shorter range.

True, but they're not all ICBMs, which is all that Skynet would be able to launch.

There are tons of hardened mothball facilities all over the place built specifically in case of a nuclear attack, they'd be where the Resistance got their A-10s and Chinooks.

The writing was shit. McG didn't write this.

This is the equivalent of blaming Ratner for X3 you fucking nerds. McG doesn't have the clout to demand a script change, especially when Jon Nolan has been brought on by the franchise star. This was directed well. The lack of tension is due to not giving half a shit about the characters.

It was only directed "well" because McG was aping Cameron's style instead of using his ADD mixed with PCP in a blender style of direction.

I'm so glad this P.O.S. bombed. As for Ratner, the man is partly to blame for how shitty the final product turned out. Subpar script that threw away all the great stuff from the first two films combined with an extremely uninspired director equals one poor flick. (e.g. WOLVERINE)

Wait, how was McG aping Cameron's style?

Me and my friends had a total blast with this. There are holes for sure, but I had a lot of fun. I loved the call backs to T2 and Marcus steals every scene he's in. Bale needs to lose the Batman voice asap, but it made for some unintentional hilarious scenes. Everyone else's screen time was cut way too short (Reece, Star, Blair, Kate). I dug the action, though the good stuff happens early in the film, and the ending is cheesy as hell. I stayed away from spoilers before seeing this and reading that the film has been chopped to bits, including adding a new ending, makes so much sense. It feels like there are lots of missing pieces. That said, I like this better than T3, which I am a huge fan of. The potential of the Marcus character elevates it so much higher than a Terminatrix that can increase the size of her boobs at will. Maybe I had a good crowd, but I left the theater buzzed.

I kind of liked the Terminatrix. She wasn't at all original. and she's no Robert Patrick, but she got the cool and scary villain factor done well enough... Terminator 3 is kind of like Ghostbusters 2. It's a competent and entertaining film that is completely without an original thought.

I love the fact that Arnie and the Terminatrix wreck half the city in that chase scene before there's any mention of a plot.

Also, Arnie with the chaingun in one hand whilst balancing the coffin on his shoulder was a cool image.

I think, just for posterity and my own venting, I'd like to list the things that were complete shit about this new film:

1. The credits. I like how it displays the title of the film after listing the headlining stars, and then closes the credits with . . . the title again. Our first little insight into the shit snowball this movie would unfold into.

2. The prologue. Helena Bonham Carter somehow works for Cyberdine, which was blown the fuck up years earlier. Don't worry about the explanation, it's just the first of the film's myriad plotholes. Oh, and yeah, of all the bad dialogue in the film, this scene has some of the worst.

3. The Script (dialogue). To reiterate, crap. Everyone yelling and expositing and no one actually saying anything. Though my favorite might be Common's line as they come up to the hunter-killer with the transmitter and he says something like, "Hey, there's the hunter-killer. Let's see if this transmitter will work."

4. Marcus and the Future. When Marcus meets Kyle, he seems confused at why everything is bombed out and full of angry killer robots, to which Kyle is all, "Duh, nuclear holocaust? Skynet?" And then the issue is forever dropped for the rest of the film. Apparently someone completely unfamiliar with the defining event and ensuing struggle for mankind's survival isn't really all that big of a deal to Kyle Reese.

5. Star. Yeah. I really shouldn't have to explain why putting a mute psychic child in the film was a dumb call, but there seem to be a lot of things I really shouldn't have to explain about still showing up in this film.

6. John Connor and the Resistance. What the fuck makes him so special that he gets to disobey orders and still keep his command? Or that people will follow suit? Or if it's a known fact that Connor has remarkably prescient knowledge of terminators, why does his command give him so much bullshit?

7. Security. John Connor broadcasts pirate messages on the radio, detailing plans of the resistance. Apparently Skynet, an entity that will in a few short years invent FUCKING TIME TRAVEL, can't locate and monitor ham radio waves.

8. Security, pt. II. The mine field surrounding the base has magnetic mines, which apparently only work on Terminators, and not the motorcycles and trucks that chase them down.

9. Completely worthless "actors." Who casts people like Common and Moon Bloodgood in movies? Why? To what merit? What does adding those people to your film do that replacing them with their non-union Mexican equivalent doesn't?

10. Blair Williams. "Oh I totally believe that half-robot guy is good and worth risking my life for because I walked outside with him all day yesterday. Trust me."

11. Dumb, dumb Skynet. Why is Kyle priority over John if they don't want to kill him? Why send Marcus to trick John into going to the factory when they could have just programmed Marcus to blow his brains out? Why is Skynet enacting a plan more convoluted and circuitous than anything Blofeld and Dr. Evil could come up with during a month of brainstorming, just to get rid one guy? I was just waiting for Seth Green to pop out and say, "F'real, Skynet? Why don't we just shoot him? I'll go get my gun, we'll do it together. Pop pop. Dead."

12. Kate Brewster-Connor. "Okay, Bryce, for this take, I want you to look lovingly at Christian and open your eyes really wide. And stop asking me when we're going to film the scene where we talk about your character being pregnant. It's completely irrelevant." Oh, and I'm glad it was established in T3 that Kate was a veterinary assistant. Otherwise I would have thought it completely impossible for her to perform a heart transplant in a tent in the desert.

13. The script (plot). This might have been the most thoroughly pointless movie I've ever seen. And I've seen both The Fog and Southland Tales.

14. Greenscreen Ruination. Was there a single backdrop filmed on-set? They even used CG compositing for establishing shots of the desert. What, no real desert to take pictures of, anywhere? And every single dialogue shot was done with wide-angle close up, so only the subject and distance are in the frame. You know why? Just like in George Lucas' shitfests, it makes it easier for the CGI teams if there isn't a midground to render in moderate-focus.

15. Action Camera. McG does know isn't not against the law to show action from more than one angle, right? There's no union rule against using a wide shot or overhead or crane, right? The DP will put the camera further back than medium close-up. You just havta ask.

16. The ends. What did this movie do to the status quo? Anything? Anyone? Whatever. I'm glad I have a AMC associates' pass, so I didn't have to spend money on being so thoroughly disappointed.

My friends and I referred to her as Mewt.

I noticed that too. I was like, huh?

Marcus Wright. I'm sure if I woke up with a metal endoskeleton, I would notice something was different. You know, when I went to set down, and I seemed to have gained like, 300lbs and went THUD.

Well his strength increased too.

True, but I would have been neat if they had build the reveal up a bit more. Like when he got in the jeep, have his side sink really low or something. Of course all of this is moot. Since they spoiled Marcus being a cyborg in the trailer.

With the trailer spoil, I thought that the movie would have played up Marcus' angst a little bit more. What does it mean to be half man/half machine? But he had no qualms about helping John find Kyle (which it seems he was programmed to do anyway) and then ripping his chip out to fight against Skynet. You'd think he'd have some curiosity about what he could and couldn't do. The closest we came was when his hand got burned and he sort of looks at it bemused. Which begs the question, he should still feel pain, right? Marcus has a central nervous system that is attached to his brain. Sure he has a beefed up healing process, but it should still hurt like hell to be shot, stabbed, and burned. It seems that given more time, there could have been some interesting concepts to explore. But given what was in the movie, they blew their wad with Marcus' reveal in the trail.

So there's alot of talk about this movie here, but I haven't really read anybody who thought it was boring. Am I alone in this? I was bored out of my mind.

They pretty much wasted this character.

Why would he give up his life for Connor? They don't really say. It's not clear if he wants to just kill himself or if he really believes that Connor deserves a second chance ... which applies more to him.

Marcus mimicking Connor after his death in the alternate script makes a bit more sense I guess, although it's kind of anti-climatic to dismiss Connor's ability to lead and attribute that to some random Joe who just happens to have become a Cyborg.

Also I loved Kyle. He had this need whenever someone asked his name to say his full name. It was hilarious.

I certainly was not bored. One thing you can say positively about this film is that the action was kick ass.

Yeah, this is really the shame of this movie. This character had so much potential.

As for your last point, it wouldn't bother me so much because that's exactly what they did in T3. John didn't become leader of the resistance because he was more qualified. He just happened to be standing in the bunker that all military communication was going through.

I think it was Dickson who said earlier that if they went with the original ending, there'd at least be the potential for a really good debate over what was more important: John Connor the man or John Connor the legend. Thinking back through all the films, it seems that Connor's leadership strength really amounts to that he knows more about what is going on than everybody else. Salvation undermines this by introducing Marcus. Connor's knowledge is now limited. The interesting question becomes, is it necessary that John lead given his strengths as a leader are moot? T3 suggests that as John becomes more and more isolated, Kate and his inner circle step up and play larger roles. The Sarah Connor Chronicles also suggest that all communication to and from John go through Cameron (his Terminator protector). It begs the question whether John is really leading at all or if he's just a figure head.

To me, John as a person is less interesting than John as a legend. He is what sparks others into action. Reece in T1, Sarah in T2, and to a lesser degree Kate in T3; their arcs are the stories that are most fascinating.

I dunno. The action was indeed nice, but as the movie drug on and the more things like bad CG and a distinct lack of urgency or motivation kept building and taking me out of the film, I just found it tedious. But only because at that point I was just wanting the thing to end already.

Motivation was hilarious here. "I need to find my new friend Kyle Reese." "I need to save my new friend who hates me John Connor."

Nobody had worse motivation than Skynet: "I need to engineer a new type of cyborg to befriend Kyle Reese and confuse John Connor and get them both to Skynet City where I will allow them to sneak in and then sic my robot factory on them, hoping they won't find the place where we keep all the nuclear power cells for said robots and just blow it all up. Much easier than just killing Connor. Or Reese."

This struck me as a movie that gets all the details right, but hasn't a clue about accomplishing the big, basic stuff of storytelling: compelling characters and actual drama/tension.

The CG backdrops were a bit annoying at times but for the most part, McG nailed all the production elements. Sound, effects, production design - all were very strong, if not terribly original. Likewise directing the action sequences - really well done.

But I was pretty close to being bored most of the film, even with the nifty action scenes. Every character hit me as "So what?", except maybe Bloodgood's - but most of that may have just been because she's so hot. Even Bale, whom I like as an actor, was essentially doing Batman in special forces clothing here.

Interesting to compare it to Star Trek: both films have flat to outright shitty scripts, and ST manages to entertain the hell out of us anyway. Terminator executes some cool scenes, but is nowhere near as compelling.

(And as a side note: did anyone else suspect that Jane Alexander was supposed to be playing Sarah Connor - and breathe a sigh of relief when that didn't happen?)

Was it ever established why Skynet was harvesting the humans? They were all herded into the building Holocaust style and I never saw what Skynet was doing with them. I didn't get why they had Terminators out scouting and killing humans while simultaneously harvesting them.

I think it said because they were harvesting their skin... I can't remember to be honest.

They were guinea pigs for the T-800, basically. The movie only explains it at the beginning when Connor and co. raid the Skynet facility: the people are on their way to San Francisco as some kind of R&D project for a new Terminator.

Diva,

"I think it was Dickson who said earlier that if they went with the original ending, there'd at least be the potential for a really good debate over what was more important: John Connor the man or John Connor the legend. Thinking back through all the films, it seems that Connor's leadership strength really amounts to that he knows more about what is going on than everybody else. Salvation undermines this by introducing Marcus. Connor's knowledge is now limited. The interesting question becomes, is it necessary that John lead given his strengths as a leader are moot? T3 suggests that as John becomes more and more isolated, Kate and his inner circle step up and play larger roles. The Sarah Connor Chronicles also suggest that all communication to and from John go through Cameron (his Terminator protector). It begs the question whether John is really leading at all or if he's just a figure head.

To me, John as a person is less interesting than John as a legend. He is what sparks others into action. Reece in T1, Sarah in T2, and to a lesser degree Kate in T3; their arcs are the stories that are most fascinating."

Given this excellent point, wouldn't you agree that it's about time to see if the legend was actually true, even though the future is in constant flux?

This is why I think the original story idea was not a good way to go. For three films, they've set up the legend of John Connor. I'm all for adding a twist to the thing (if it makes sense) but personally, I wanted to finally see John Connor take on the fight, instead of others fighting this battle for him.

Having him die the way he did basically makes the previous three films pointless.

Somebody refresh my memory, what was the point of the T-800 originally? Were they supposed to infiltrate the resistance? And did they all look like Arnold?

If memory serves me correct, the T-800s were able to not only look human but also have body odor, bleed, etc. in order to fool the resistance and the dogs (who they usually used to tell who was human and who wasn't!)

But did they all look the same? I mean that kind of negates any infiltrating ability they could have had no?

There's also some earlier models that look like they were supposed to look human no? Like the robot with the busted up face that attacked Marcus when he gets to the city?

I think they're supposed to look different. The flash-back (or future-back?) where the picture of Sarah burns involved a different looking T-800. That, and Reese was waiting during the first act to spot out the Terminator that was going after Sarah because he didn't know what he was supposed to look like.

I always imagined they were building many models of each skin version. Considering this is a global struggle Skynet could send out Arnie models to many countries. After a while when his model was compromised, they would change the skin.

another stupid thing about Terminator 4 was how bad of shots the Terminators were. I don't think the Terminators shot one person in the whole movie

It was that jerk who stood her up, forcing her to go get pizza and a movie alone on a friday night! He felt guilty and made it up to her the next day with a romantic night in the valley. (aka miniature golf/pretzel n cheese at the galleria/accidental pregnancy)

That's not fair. They shot that one loser in the back. Behold their awesome murderous capabilities.

I'm sure the off camera death of Terry Crews was caused by Terminators and was absolutely brutal.

Oh I can only imagine how horrific that played out. Can't wait for the Director's Cut!!!

Skynet spent more time making sure the Terminators excelled at throwing people into walls.

Seriously, amd I the only one who remembers when a Terminator was supposed to be, I dunno, scary? When Sarah was gimping away in the original, and crawling Terminator just almost grabbed onto her leg, you know that if it has succeeded in doing so Sarah's femur bone would have been broken off and used to beat her to death.

This time around the only thing the Terminators were good for was scaring us into think John may end up with a ripped shirt and a sore back.

Harvestor Terminator was pretty cool, though.

Sigh. These were T-600s or lower. These were the models the Resistance could deal with. The T-800 in the movie beat the shit out of John Connor and essentially dealt him a fatal blow.

There are people nitpicking the fact that the title appears twice.

True about the T-600s, but you gotta admit that CGI Arnie did quite a bit of pushing/throwing. Whatever happened to punching Bill Paxton's buddy in the gut and being able to tickle his aorta?

I guess I was just dissapointed at (as Im sure was mentioned numerous times in this thread) the lack of tension surrounding the robots and their killing abilities.

You're disappointed the robot didn't kill the hero with one punch?

What kind of a movie did you think you were going to see?

Am I mistaken or is the Terminator model in the original film something less advanced than a T-800? I seem to remember it being a T-100 or something, and in the sequel the T-800 was an improved learning computer model.

You're very close! I think you're getting the "100" from Arnold being a T-800, Model 101. The Arnold in T2 was just a reprogrammed Model 101, I believe.