*** Official TERMINATOR SALVATION Review Thread (1 Viewer)

[TerryRL]

I really had a great time with it. The action scenes were extremely well done, the FX were fantastic, and I really dug the two leads (Bale and Worthington). While its not the Cameron flicks, it does (easily) go down as the best thing McG has ever done. As was noted in an earlier review, the crowd went nuts when a certain cyborg showed up in the finale (very solid CG work in this sequence).

This was very much a big, loud, popcorn flick that was really fun to watch. It has its fair share of problems, but not enough for me to not recommend seeing it on the big screen. I'm giving it a solid 3 star rating (out of 4).

 

[Steve_Tk]

Disappointing. I think it was better than the 3rd, but both are so equally forgettable that I don't really remember. These movies are not smart anymore. The terminator is no longer an efficient machine, it now gets in fist fights prior to trying to kill it's victims.

 

[Inspector Hammer!]

Went and saw this on Saturday, I thought it was enjoyable but, in the end, brainless.

I loved the look of the film, it looked appropriately dark and bleak but shots that should have been emotional come off as nothing more than eye candy, like the shot of the ruins of LA, we've been hearing about it's destruction since the first film but when we finally see it it's just like...meh, cool looking but no heart.

That pretty much sums up the film as a whole as well.

Christian Bale as John Connor didn't really work that well for me, he screamed "this is a big budget Hollywood production with A-list stars" too much for my liking, I would have much preferred it if they went with an unknown for that role.

And why must every film that takes place in the apocalyptic future feature a mute kid?

Best part about the film was the undeniable state-of-the-art-action and visuals, the action was impressive enough (and **LOUD**, should be a great demo Blu-ray when it's released) but again they carried no emotional weight whatsoever, they were just sort of...there. My favorite moment of the entire film was the appearance of a CGI-rendered Arnold model T-800, the animators did a great job of capturing the look of Arnold circa 1984 and got his threatening gaze right to a T. Although it did look a little CGI which took me away from things a bit.

IMO the film suffers from the same sort of overkill that every action film nowdays suffers from, the technology has gotten so advanced that filmmakers are free to show us everything under the sun when it's wise to sometimes use older approaches to some scenes and keep us tight on an object or character. One of the things that made the first film a classic is that it used grunt-style filmmaking techniques, keeping the frame squarely on faces and showing us only what is necessary.

If The Terminator were made now we would have seen Arnold behind the wheel of that semi while the camera did a whip-zoom around the truck (with a complete CGI environment of course including the truck) before zooming through the windshield to show us an impressive close-up of a CGI Arnold's face complete with moving face pistons and hydraulics...not needed just because you can do it.

Fun enough movie, just doesn't feel like a continuation of the first two or even the third film, like the landscapes in the film, it's stark, barren and desolate. I do hope however that they make a fifth film, I want to see the events that Kyle foretold to Sarah in the first film, Kyle following the T-800 through the time displacement equipment and the destruction of Skynet.

Hey just because we have cool bad guys in the form of Terminators doesn't mean I don't want to see us win this thing once and for all.

Three :star:'s out of five :star:'s for Terminator: Salvation My favorite McG film remains We Are Marshall.

 

[DaveF]

While enjoyable to watch, Terminator Salvation is a weak Terminator movie. It lacked a strong protagonist and antagonist, making for a unexciting action movie. The story it told wasn't an important or especially interesting aspect of the Terminator timeline. It felt like a prologue to the movie that should have been made.

 

[Lou Sytsma]

Terminator Salvation is not shite but it is one big, messy, wet fart.

Character motivations are a mess. The internal story logic is self contradictory. There are a few well done action set pieces but with no emotional connections to the characters involved with them, who cares?

Wolverine you can relax, you are no longer the poorest film out this year. Adamantium amnesia bullets versus cyborg heart transplants. Pick your poison.

Give me T3 any day. At least it had a sense of humour. This film has none.

I would rate it but since I'll never see it again, why bother?

 

[Brent M]

Went to see this last night and I probably should have just waited for the Blu-Ray after all. It was decent, but certainly nowhere near the greatness of Terminator or T2. There were some very cool action scenes(loved the Terminator motorcycles) and the Endoskeletons were utilized better than they ever have been in any of the other Terminator flicks, but the story was completely uninteresting and the acting was terrible. I've never seen Christian Bale give a bad performance, but this has to be his worst. Overall, I'd give it 3 out of 5 stars.

 

[Tino]

I thought it was much better than many of the negative reviews in this thread(btw whats up wihh the spoilers in here??).

I had a great time. Lots of great action and I even liked the story.
:star: :star: :star: 14

 

[Raymond_H]

I saw this a few days ago and my initial impression was "Meh, that kinda sucked" then after thinking more about the story and everything else about it - I think it was one of the worse movies I have ever seen in a theater.

I keep hearing at least the action was decent, but even compared to Terminator 3 I think it fails in most every aspect. When the characters, story, editing are just downright poor, the action doesn't mean anything at all.

This movie fails even for a mindset of "turn your brain off and enjoy" type of movie.

A total mess.

 

[Steve Christou]

Went to our local Showcase cinema with a friend.

The new Transformers trailer looked pretty spectacular it looks like Michael Bay has thrown everything but the kitchen sink into this one. It's going to hit huge.Than there was a trailer to a film I knew little about, Surrogates, a sci-fi film starring Bruce Willis. It looked very interesting, the director was Jonathan Mostow who also made Terminator 3 Rise of the Machines.


Terminator Salvation Review.

There was not much to the script, the film was almost completely devoid of humour, the acting was pretty blah, violent but curiously bloodless, but the film made up for any shortcomings with spectacular scenes of carnage, state of the art visuals and action overload. I thought it was an excellent addition to the series and a departure from what we've seen before in that this takes place almost entirely after Judgement Day. The settings have a suitably gloomy end of the world Mad Max feel to them and the desaturated colour was another plus.

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Somehow John Connor evolved from spunky Edward Furlong into whiny Nick Stahl and on to gruff growly Christian Bale. Luckily the growl wasn't as annoying as my nephew made it out to be. I think the only time Bale smiled in this film is when he said "I'll be back" to his wife Bryce Dallas Howard (Ron's daughter), and Russell I think thats the scene where the infamous 'Bale rant' occured with the cameraman. Bryce was in that scene too, I can't think of where else it might have happened.

The real hero of the film is Marcus Wright played by Sam Worthington, a guy who doesn't realise he is a cyborg, a Skynet weapon, this 'shocker' was spoilt by the twerps who created the T4 trailer. Marcus was the main hero in the original screenplay but when Bale showed an interest in playing John Connor they beefed up his part.

Chris Pine in Star Trek and now another star is born in Sam Worthington who was very effective as Marcus, he next stars in James Cameron's $300m sci-fi epic Avatar out in december (I still can't believe there's a James Cameron film out this year, wow! Where has he been?)

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I had to shake my head at the guys in the discussion thread who have been nitpicking this film to death, who cares how much stronger the early model of the T-800 is in this film than in previous films or why Skynet didn't immediately kill

Spoiler

when they had him. It's a summer action film, not a practical guide to the laws of robotics.

In one scene what looks like a giant Transformer robot seems to have accidentally wandered off Michael Bay's movie and into the T4 landscape.

T4 is the 3rd best Terminator movie after T2 and T1. I'll always have a soft spot for the first Terminator film.

T3 and it’s miscast leads the worst Terminator film, though I did enjoy Kristanna Loken’s Terminatrix.

Terminator 2 - Judgement Day remains the greatest robot movie ever made and along with Die Hard arguably the two greatest action movies in cinema history.

Terminator Salvation gets 4 out of 5. Highly recommended (especially for action aficianados.)

 

[Edwin-S]

I'm glad I didn't pay attention to most of the reviews in this thread and decided to see this film for myself. I do not think this installment comes anywhere close to the first two installments, but I thought it was better than T3. It was a different take on the Terminator series in that it did not have a protagonist facing off against a clearly defined antagonist. The complaints about Skynet not having a clearly defined face stump me. Skynet was never really defined in any of the films. It has always been an amorphous opponent, so it is beyond me why Skynet should suddenly be expected to have a clear "face" in this movie.

This film was about the actual war taking place between humans and machines. As such, I would expect character development to take a back seat to the actual events occurring during that time. People seemed to be expecting some kind of James Cameron style focus on the trial and tribulations faced by Connor. How many times can a film be made showing Skynet sending a machine out to hunt Connor before it gets boring? In this film, Skynet attempts something more subtle and for that alone I think the film ends up better than it is being given credit for.

As for the lack of humour. I noticed that myself, but I have to ask a question. How can anyone derive humour from a situation where the entire human race is on the verge of extinction? This was essentially a Sci-Fi war film, so the lack of humour was understandable to me. If I sit and analyze this film I can spot a lot of problems; however, the same can be said about the original films.

For me, notwithstanding the obvious "Road Warrior" influences, the film turned out to be better than a lot of the comments here indicated. I'm also glad I avoided a lot of the reviews here due to the enormous spoilers that were being posted. I would probably give this film a B- : flawed, but still entertaining enough in its depiction of the man/machine war.

 

[Chris Atkins]

8/10

I'm with Steve and Edwin: T/S is an enjoyable but flawed entry in the series.