Terminator Salvation

[Nightwing]

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.

Uh, I'd say a fair amount of people are killed. And considering how old Kyle Reese is in this film, they aren't to the point that is shown in T1 and T2, where Kyle is late twenties, early thirties.

Personally, I thought it was a good movie. Not spectacular, but overall a solid plot, good acting, good action, and good execution.

 

[Dr. Zaius]

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

I want the timeline where they stop making movies that suck. When will we get to see THAT timeline? Huh?

 

[CBright7831]

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

I want the timeline where they stop making movies that suck. When will we get to see THAT timeline? Huh?

 

[pbone]

Holy shit, they actually included what the first two were horribly lacking in: terminators.

 

[Dr. Zaius]

Holy shit, they actually included what the first two were horribly lacking in: terminators.

Less is more. Except in the case of Terminator 3, where less really was less.

 

[KOAB]

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.

The movie is actually good pretty good. There are actually points where I thought McG will be good as the next big director of big budget action films. I'm not saying you'll find it great but I'd put money down that you'll like this.

 

[NoCalMike]

Is Terminator Salvation, Fox Searchlight? If so, then you can't take anything Harry Knowles says seriously. He has some big gripe with them, I am not sure over what, but I remember him refusing to go see Wolverine: Origins, until one of his talkbacks consisted of members of his site calling him on his hypocrisy, so he gave in and went to see it, of course ripping it to shreds in his review.

It's a shame how biased he has become over the years, because his site was pretty damn cool back in the day.

 

[Edwin]

This was pretty much the blurst thing ever. Terrible movie in all ways, all which can be summed up in that it's the tale of both stupid people and stupid machines (!) doing stupid, stupid things. Oh, and hydrobots. The first 30 minutes or so have some cool world-building, but the entire film takes a mammoth nosedive around the second act, and the editing hits untold levels of choppy and awful. Given the mythology in place, it should have been incredibly easy for an even just-competent director to pull off a fantastic Terminator film. McG, you're the worst.

 

[vivisectvi]

McG directed the film, he didn't write it.

Anyway, I thought it was pretty good. I don't put any stock into the Terminator franchise so I was only expecting a run of the mill action movie and I got what I expected. I did like the little nods to previous movies like the GnR track, the boom box, and the T-800. Also, I marked out when Rooster was playing on the jeeps radio when they started it up.

 

[Edwin]

A director with some spine or talent demands rewrites, but you're correct. John Brancato and Michael Ferris are also the worst.

 

[Mattdotcom]

The Hydrobots madae sense in preproduction when they were saying that regular Terminators couldn't traverse water, but since they didn't mention that in the movie...oh, well. What they really suffer from is that it's much more fun to say MO-TO-TERMINATORS!!!!!! Rolls right off the tongue.

 

[wnyxmcneal]

Is Terminator Salvation, Fox Searchlight? If so, then you can't take anything Harry Knowles says seriously. He has some big gripe with them, I am not sure over what, but I remember him refusing to go see Wolverine: Origins, until one of his talkbacks consisted of members of his site calling him on his hypocrisy, so he gave in and went to see it, of course ripping it to shreds in his review.

It's a shame how biased he has become over the years, because his site was pretty damn cool back in the day.

Fox Searchlight is an indie division of 20th Century Fox.

Terminator: Salvation was distributed by WB.

 

[Edwin]

I wish I could edit this topic to include a poll on which aspect of the film most made you want to castrate yourself. I think the options would be:

1) Hydrobots

2) Mototerminators

3) Helena Bonham Computer

4) Michael Ironside not having an eyepatch

 

[CBright7831]

I wish I could edit this topic to include a poll on which aspect of the film most made you want to castrate yourself. I think the options would be:

1) Hydrobots

2) Mototerminators

3) Helena Bonham Computer

4) Michael Ironside not having an eyepatch

5) Jumping into a raging ocean with no oxygen mask and getting safely into a submarine

6) Rambonator (Terminator with a bandana)

 

[vivisectvi]

Rambonator was the shit!

 

[Nightwing]

I wish I could edit this topic to include a poll on which aspect of the film most made you want to castrate yourself. I think the options would be:

1) Hydrobots

2) Mototerminators

3) Helena Bonham Computer

4) Michael Ironside not having an eyepatch

5) Jumping into a raging ocean with no oxygen mask and getting safely into a submarine

6) Rambonator (Terminator with a bandana)

With the ocean thing, he told them to send out the divers. While they normally don't do it in that sort of ocean, you can enter a submarine like that.

And I don't understand the resistance to the other types of bots. Having different types of robots for the water (Where, even if they could move in water, it's just more efficient to have a robot specifically designed to swim) or pursuit makes sense. I actually thought that was reasonably intelligent from a design standpoint.

 

[Dr. Zaius]

Talk all the shit you want....it was still better than Terminator 3.

 

[Edwin]

I actually disagree with that, even though Terminator 3 was itself a pale, silly imitation of T2. At least that had the really graceful ending in the bunker and the gorgeous composition of the nuclear launches looping across the earth from space.

 

[Dr. Zaius]

I don't think a cheesy movie with a cool ending beats a mediocre movie with a cheesy ending.

 

[CBright7831]

Although it is a very flawed film, I enjoyed it. I think it is probably the best possible sequel that you could do after a film like T2.

 

[DrVenkman PhD]

I enjoyed the movie. I was very happy to finally see the war, chaos, and destruction that the opening level to T2: The Arcade Game portrayed in a movie.

 

[bps21]

I pumped my fist in the air and had to contain yelling when "You Could Be Mine" came on. Everyone just looked at me and I slowly lowered my arm.

I don't care. That rocked.

 

[Damaramu]

So I'm wondering, is this the beginning of what led to Terminator and Terminator 2 or did they change everything in T-3? Or was the message at the end of T-3 that things continued as they were supposed to?

 

[vivisectvi]

So I'm wondering, is this the beginning of what led to Terminator and Terminator 2 or did they change everything in T-3? Or was the message at the end of T-3 that things continued as they were supposed to?

Continued as they were supposed to, I believe. Going by T3, Connor is killed in 2023, so they have 5 more years before that point is reached.

A reprogrammed Terminator (Arnold) has been sent back to counter the T-X. Similar in design and programming to the Terminators from the previous films, this particular Terminator is revealed to have killed John in 2032 before being reprogrammed by John's future wife, Katherine Brewster, and sent to protect the couple.

Of note, Kyle Reese goes back in time to start the events of the first movie in 2029.

 

[Mattdotcom]

I wish I could edit this topic to include a poll on which aspect of the film most made you want to castrate yourself. I think the options would be:

1) Hydrobots

2) Mototerminators

3) Helena Bonham Computer

4) Michael Ironside not having an eyepatch

5) Jumping into a raging ocean with no oxygen mask and getting safely into a submarine

6) Rambonator (Terminator with a bandana)

With the ocean thing, he told them to send out the divers. While they normally don't do it in that sort of ocean, you can enter a submarine like that.

I just imagined Indiana Jones was riding the submarine and let John inside

 

[Damaramu]

So was the T-800 from the movie the first of it's kind?

Spoiler

If the infiltrator model that Marcus was was so great why wasn't that sent back in time or setn to infiltrate the base rather than the T-800's? Kyle talks in the first movie about them having rubber skin and being easy to identify, then he mentions they get better at being harder to identify as time goes on. But, the infiltrator model was nearly impossible to identify. So why not use more of it's kind rather than rubber skinned T-800s and then the real skinned T-800s that end up getting sent back in time?

Also in T3 the Arnold Terminator that killed John Connor. Did he look like Arnold because they thought John might trust him?

Ugh, I hate time travel. Skynet keeps sending Terminators back to kill John Connor and his mother. But, is that's what's always supposed to happen? Is time a continuous loop that they'll never escape? Or is that the first and only time in the spinning record that is time that Skynet sent someone back. And how does he know in the future in T:S that Kyle Reese is going to go back in time anyway? It hasn't happened yet.

 

[Mattdotcom]

The last Terminator movie should just feature a bunch of time travel until the movie just fades to white and Christopher Lloyd explains to everyone that the universe was destroyed in a mess of multiple paradoxes. THAT is how you reboot a franchise, Hollywood.

 

[vivisectvi]

So was the T-800 from the movie the first of it's kind?

Judging by Connor's reaction to it and how it was a "big bad" of the movie, I'd say yes to that.

Spoiler

If the infiltrator model that Marcus was was so great why wasn't that sent back in time or setn to infiltrate the base rather than the T-800's? Kyle talks in the first movie about them having rubber skin and being easy to identify, then he mentions they get better at being harder to identify as time goes on. But, the infiltrator model was nearly impossible to identify. So why not use more of it's kind rather than rubber skinned T-800s and then the real skinned T-800s that end up getting sent back in time?

Essentially it's probably because they could think for themselves and therefore weren't as controllable.

Also in T3 the Arnold Terminator that killed John Connor. Did he look like Arnold because they thought John might trust him?

Ugh, I hate time travel. Skynet keeps sending Terminators back to kill John Connor and his mother. But, is that's what's always supposed to happen? Is time a continuous loop that they'll never escape? Or is that the first and only time in the spinning record that is time that Skynet sent someone back. And how does he know in the future in T:S that Kyle Reese is going to go back in time anyway? It hasn't happened yet.

He knows because of the tapes his mother left him explaining everything. It hasn't happened in his present, yet, but he knows it needs to happen in his future.

 

[Damaramu]

I was asking about how Skynet knew of Kyle Reese since he hasn't sent the Terminator back in time yet, thus Reese has not been sent back yet.

So if that was the first T-800 then what were the other models? They didn't seem as good as the T-800 obviously, but they looked similiar.

I remember there being a story, not sure where it was from, about how they came upon the Arnold skin and voice for the Terminator. Seems how it's been reused 4 times by Skynet now. Surely the other Terminators look different and they don't all look like him. I mean being infiltrators they'd have to look different.

And time travel is still confusing. I mean it could be that the whole Skynet sending Terminators back in time is what was always suppose to happen. Or time is not a continuous loop and you can change the past and future so when Skynet sends Terminators back is the first and only time it's happened in time. Or Skynet could create a time paradox. Or Skynet realizes that what he did as far as sending the Terminators back doesn't work so he sends one back in time to kill Sarah Connor as a baby? But by sending the Terminator back in the first place Skynet indirectly caused John Connor to be created. Good job, you created your nemesis. Maybe you should've never sent the Terminator back. But that fosters the continuous loop that just repeats itself theory. But, by sending them back he creates Cyberdyne because they blow up the original facility and cause it to be taken over by the government and thus advance the research to create the Terminator and Skynet 10 fold. If the Terminator had never gone back then there might not be a Skynet or Cyberdyne due to them not having that technology. But, if the T-1000 never goes back then they never blow up Cyberdyne and thus Skynet is not advanced. *head explodes* Yeah, I hate time travel. So many variables and things to think about. And that's only half of what goes through my head when I think about it!

 

[vivisectvi]

The other models were T-600's.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/T-600_(fictional_character)

...and, Dama, you overthink way too much about this time travel stuff. This and Lost must be destroying your brain.