Terminator Salvation

[BorneAgain]

Didn't see a thread for this. If I missed it, mods feel free to delete.

All in all, thought it was okay. Worthington completely overshadows Bale, who seems to shout 75% of his lines. No one else really stood out, though I did like Yelchin. Guy's been solid in everything I've seen him in, which Admittedly is just this, Star Trek, and Charlie Bartlett. They left themselves open as far as sequels go, and as much as I'm not thrilled about having yet another actor play John Connor, there's gotta be someone out there who's a better fit than Bale.

 

[wnyxmcneal]

I went to the midnight showing and loved it. Sure there are things to nitpick about if you want to, but it was a fun action flick was lots of thrills and great special effects.

Loved the callbacks to the previous films, and thought Yelchin was great as Kyle.

I'm a geek for the Terminator series in general, I love all the movies.

The theatre applauded at

Spoiler

The T-800. That was great

I agree with one of the rottentomatoes reviews that a lot was probably left on the cutting room floor. What did Bryce Dallas Howard do anyway?

 

[BorneAgain]

I went to the midnight showing and loved it. Sure there are things to nitpick about if you want to, but it was a fun action flick was lots of thrills and great special effects.

Loved the callbacks to the previous films, and thought Yelchin was great as Kyle.

I'm a geek for the Terminator series in general, I love all the movies.

The theatre applauded at

Spoiler

The T-800. That was great

I agree with one of the rottentomatoes reviews that a lot was probably left on the cutting room floor. What did Bryce Dallas Howard do anyway?

Provide support, I guess. Honestly her, the Resistance, and even Connor himself felt like supporting characters to what was going on with Marcus and Kyle.

 

[bps21]

I remember reading a while back that the John Connor wouldn't be the main focus of the first movie. Guess that's held true.

 

[wnyxmcneal]

Connor was supposed to be a bit player, but then Bale signed on and they amped up his screen time.

 

[Mattdotcom]

Saw it, got drunk, and posting now. Good movie. Felt like it was Terminator Salvation: Christian Bale Filmed Two or Three Action Scenes and Hung Out For a While. But that's not a detriment because whoever Sam Worthingon is kicked ass. Everything else that kicked ass should be spoilered. If you like Terminator go check it out

 

[NoCalMike]

Just to get some context on this movie before I see it;

So it takes place during the future war against the machines, but more towards the START of when the machines actually started making terminator machines with human skin and stuff? So the terminator we see in the trailer is like, one of the first machines with living tissue?

Dreadcentral's http://www.dreadcentral.com/reviews/terminator-salvation-2009review kind of has me worried about it. Says there isn't much actual TERMINATING in this movie. Says most people aren't even killed, rather just dragged around and captured.

Also, says there isn't really any type of "bleak outlook" to it, the way James Cameron masterfully potrayed the future war against the machines in the snippets from T1 & T2.

I mean, honestly, THAT is the war I want to see realized on film. The darkness, the bleakness, the desperation of it all.

This movie just doesn't seem like it's going to offer any of that.

But, I guess I'll have to judge for myself when I see it sometime this weekend.

 

[Smues]

So wait, Bale isn't the focus of the entire movie? Awesome. That actually makes me want to see it more than before. The trailers sure focused a lot on Bale's character. And his yelling. I can't help but hear "If we lose this WE ARE DEAD WE ARE ALL DEAD" and have it turn into in my brain "IT'S FUCKING DISTRACTING. OH GOOD. NO FUCK NO," and all that jazz.

 

[Vitamin X]

I caught the midnight showing and I also loved it. Probably the best action film I've seen since Batman last year, it was lots of fun and the storyline is pretty decent.

 

[Fall of Epic]

Saw this last night. It dragged a bit in some parts but really enjoyed it overall. The continuity with the other movies is pretty good and Sam Worthington was pretty damn good as Marcus.

Spoiler

Arnold's part was awesome!

 

[CBright7831]

I saw it yesterday. I thought it dragged until the third act where (as a few other posters have said)

Spoiler

the T-800 in Arnold's skin shows up.

The movie has been getting some bad reviews and Night At The Museum beat it yesterday for Friday's numbers. :'(

Also, if you want a funny but positive review of the film:

Spill.com's Review of Terminator: Salvation

 

[Sabre]

Spoiler

Did they do a good job with the CGI then?

 

[CBright7831]

Spoiler

Yes. The effects were fantastic. The T-800 looked very convincingly like 1984 Arnold. I was shocked.

 

[Sabre]

Probably where the budget went then.

 

[Jingus]

The reviews, at present, are not promising. It's currently sitting on a 34% at Rottentomatoes, 52 positive reviews versus 100 negative ones. Most disturbingly, Harry Knowles ripped this thing apart, I mean he squated his bulbous hindquarters right on top of Terminator Salvation's face and took a steaming shit in its mouth. When even the most easy-to-please fanboy/shill in the critic business is cursing the day he saw this movie, that ain't so good. Looks like my early misgivings about frigging McG being the director are mostly all true.

 

[Mattdotcom]

That the same Harry Knowles that loved Episode I and equated Blade II with disgusting sex while giving it an A++++?

 

[wnyxmcneal]

The reviews, at present, are not promising. It's currently sitting on a 34% at Rottentomatoes, 52 positive reviews versus 100 negative ones. Most disturbingly, Harry Knowles ripped this thing apart, I mean he squated his bulbous hindquarters right on top of Terminator Salvation's face and took a steaming shit in its mouth. When even the most easy-to-please fanboy/shill in the critic business is cursing the day he saw this movie, that ain't so good. Looks like my early misgivings about frigging McG being the director are mostly all true.

Who cares what Harry Knowles says? The guy is an idiot.

And McG did a really good job, there are some awesome sequences in the movie, and it does a good job of paying tribute to the previous Terminator movies. Don't knock it until you've seen it, Jingus.

It's funny that everyone acts like T3 was a bad movie, when looking back, it got very positive reviews. I really enjoyed it

 

[Jingus]

Who cares what Harry Knowles says? The guy is an idiot.

The point is that Knowles is infamously easy to please and rarely ever gives a bad review. So on those seldom occasions when he does absolutely bury a film with great vengeance and furious anger, it's usually worth taking note. I haven't seen him hate on a movie like that since The Love Guru.

And McG did a really good job, there are some awesome sequences in the movie, and it does a good job of paying tribute to the previous Terminator movies. Don't knock it until you've seen it, Jingus.

Ain't watching it anytime soon. Firstly, I hated both of the Charlie's Angels flicks pretty thoroughly. Secondly, this movie just doesn't look or sound very good, so I'll wait til whenever I can watch a DVD-rip online. I don't pay for a movie unless I'm pretty damn sure that I'm gonna love it.

It's funny that everyone acts like T3 was a bad movie, when looking back, it got very positive reviews. I really enjoyed it

I just rewatched it a couple weeks ago. It was a bad movie.

 

[wnyxmcneal]

I watched T3 again before I saw T4 and loved it just the same. I think I'm a geek for the Terminator movies.

 

[Mattdotcom]

Who cares what Harry Knowles says? The guy is an idiot.

The point is that Knowles is infamously easy to please and rarely ever gives a bad review.

So maybe you shouldn't get your reviews from him then.

 

[Jingus]

Why? You will never, ever find any movie critic whose opinions match your own most of the time. So basically I've got a system where on any given movie, I look up the reviews from about a half-dozen specific critics whose work I've been reading for years now. Ebert, Knowles, and a few more obscure ones. It's pretty rare that any of these guys' reviews match exactly what I thought of any particular movie. But they're consistent enough and I've read them long enough that I can get a pretty good idea of whether I want to bother watching a movie or not by seeing what they thought of it. Not because they liked it or not, but seeing their specific reasonings why the liked or disliked the film in question.

 

[Mattdotcom]

I guess that, since I don't really take critical accounts into my decision making, I just don't see the point of following the review of someone whose decision hinges on superfluous details, such as how accommodating the studio has been to his enormous fat ass. And I respect Ebert, sure, but his reviews are a lot more lax now after his recent medical battles. I see your point, but there are just as many people here that enjoyed it. The movie has it's stupid parts (especially the jump into the ocean), but I've seen a lot of people elsewhere go out of their way to complain about stuff that can be explained away. It's a Summer action movie, and it's probably going to be one of the better ones this year, like it or not.

 

[wnyxmcneal]

I agree with Mattdotcom said about the movie. You can nitpick it all you want, and I wouldn't disagree, but the movie is about having fun and laughing at the fact that someone named their child Moon Bloodgood.


I go by Ebert and ReelViews, though I don't read any reviews until I've seen the movie myself, so my opinion isn't clouded. I also like to scan metacritic and rottentomatoes- variety usually has good reviews.

 

[Mattdotcom]

I agree with Mattdotcom said about the movie. You can nitpick it all you want, and I wouldn't disagree, but the movie is about having fun and laughing at the fact that someone named their child Moon Bloodgood.

Oh yes, thank you for reminding me of this. I took notice of all the stupid names/stage names in the opening credits and believe it was McG, Moon Bloodgood, and Common, the only non-stupid one. Although now I refer to him in my head as Comm. Common. Also, I don't want to terminate the discussion about the movie with our unimportant critics squabble, so here's a link to an interview with The Auteur, McG, in which he discusses the original ending. It's really stupid, and adds to the hilarious fantasy in my head of Christian Bale doing everything he can to get out of doing anything in the movie. It seems Bale took the Harrison Ford/Han Solo route by repeatedly trying to get his character killed off.

http://www.cinematical.com/2009/05/20/interview-terminator-salvation-director-mcg/

 

[Jingus]

I rarely see movies in the theater, so I mostly use reviews just to take a mental note as to whether I want to see that movie at some point. I usually tend to read reviews of new movies when they come out, forget about it until I eventually see them months later, and then scan my usual suspects as well as the Tomatoes archive after I've written my own long-ass review at the Pit. Kinda helps me see how many people agreed with me and if I fell into line with the consensus or not. Sometimes I didn't, and dammit, I ain't apologizing for thinking Benjamin Button was boring or laughing my ass off in delight at Seed of Chucky.

Another thing: I've never entirely understood the concept of "it's just an action movie, it doesn't have to be very good as long as they blow a bunch of stuff up". Both The Dark Knight and The Marine were action movies in which a bunch of stuff got blown up. Even in summer blockbusters, there's still widely varying degrees of quality.

It seems Bale took the Harrison Ford/Han Solo route by repeatedly trying to get his character killed off.

Um, in Terminator 3, didn't we find out that John Connor does indeed get killed by a T-800? Which would seem to indicate he had not yet really won the war.

I was just struck by a funny idea. Did anyone else read the novelizations of movies, back when they still made those? I had the one to Terminator 2, and it opened up with a pretty long passage talking about the future war, describing how Skynet got beaten, what specifically happened with the time travel stuff, things like that. Of course all of it got retconned out of existence by the subsequent sequels (not to even mention the Sarah Connor tv show, are these supposed to be alternate universes or something?).

 

[wnyxmcneal]

Sarah Connor Chronicls is an alternate timeline. It takes place after T2, and acts like T3 never existed.

In T3, The T-800 kills John in 2032 and is then sent back by Kate.
So John still has 14 years left, if T4 is to be believed

 

[Mattdotcom]

EDIT- Nevermind, bob_barron cleared it up for me. Although, they're not really ignoring T3 in this movie since Bryce Howard is playing Claire Danes' character from T3 and goddammit why did you guys have to bring up alternate timelines I can't follow this shit

 

[Jingus]

Yeah, Arnold says that he (that specific T-800 from T3) killed John Connor, and Kate reprogrammed it and sent it back in time to protect them on Judgement Day.

 

[Mattdotcom]

Well now John Connor knows his fate so he can pull a Doc Brown and save his own ass. Regardless, the point I was trying to make was that Bale was interested in dying because he didn't want to be in the movie to begin with.

 

[wnyxmcneal]

The interviews with Bale about the movie are great. It sounds like they had to do everything they could just to get him in the movie. It's okay to say no, Christian.

That said, I think he gave the film a little bit of credibility, though I remember when they first announced it, everyone was like: wait, what the fuck is Christian Bale doing being in a Terminator movie?

The black ending sounds awesome, but I don't think it would ever work. It would sure make the humans look like dumbasses