*** Official TERMINATOR SALVATION Discussion Thread - Page 3

Re: *** Official TERMINATOR SALVATION Discussion Thread

Carlos,

The events of T2 postponed Judgment Day. In T3, which was released in 2003 and took place in the present, Judgment Day indeed happened in the early 21st Century...relatively around the same time Marcus was put to death...

Pete, as for Bale and Howard, a lot of their material in the first and second acts go cut because if you go by the trailers and the extended four minute trailer, they both had significant scenes and dialogue cut that are quite important. And, apparently in a new interview, McG said the pregnancy will be addressed in the sequels.

Re: *** Official TERMINATOR SALVATION Discussion Thread

Well in the tv series people recalled different Judgement Day dates, since actions in the present sometimes managed to alter the original date.

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IMO, the timeline was off before Terminator 3. There is no way that John Connor was only 10 years old in Terminator 2 as indicated when the T-1000 looked him up on the computer in the police car. I mean, though the date of his birth was 1985 and Terminator 2 took place in 1995, John Connor/Edward Furlong appeared to be more like 13/14 years old. Even his friend was about 13 years old. Of course everybody wants to overlook those facts because Terminator 2 is so well-thought of in regard to being one of the best action films ever made.

Re: *** Official TERMINATOR SALVATION Discussion Thread

John Connor is 10 in T2. There's nothing really being overlooked. Eddie Furlong is clearly older than that but the character is still supposed to be 10. How many high school movies or TV shows have actors in their early to late 20's playing an 18 year old?

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If he was only 10, how did he get a permit to ride a moped?

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I'm going to assume you're joking.

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More to the point, why was he still listening to Guns N' Roses in 1995? He totally would have been into Nirvana and Stone Temple Pilots by then.

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Except that the main reason the film exists is to "milk the franchise" and to the degree that Arnold is the franchise....

I enjoyed this one enough, although that is partly from the low expectations after T3. I've only seen that one once, and while the ending -- that Judgement Day is inevitable -- is plausible, it smacks of wanting to do more sequels, and more importantly shits on the memory of a film that I really really liked. In fact, that's not the first time a number three film written/directed by someone else tells you that the emotional investment in a number two Cameron film was a waste. Just to be clear, that makes me like your new movie less.

The Resistance seems better equipped than I expected. In this movie alone, John crashes two helicopters. How many of them are left? At the end of the movie, they're operating out of a fantastically equipped hangar. Why doesn't Skynet take those out overnight? Is Sony still in business, or do they have a cache of rechargeable batteries for when they wear out?

With some time-travel-pretzel logic, I suppose you could invent how Skynet knows what Kyle Reese looks like as a teenager. (Maybe.) But of course Skynet should have killed him once he was taken prisoner in HQ.

Kate is very obviously pregnant. Bryce Dallas Howard looked more full-faced than usual. I was curious about the timing -- often a bad idea to assume that a woman is pregnant -- and it turns out she had just given birth, and actually started to visibly lose weight during the filming.

I thought that was in Mexico; so no, not the same one.

Re: *** Official TERMINATOR SALVATION Discussion Thread

Were they possibly better equiped because it was the start of the war against the machines? The Connor we see in the first movie is a grey haired man clearly older than Bale in this movie. Reese is also an adult, not some teenager. And Skynet hasn't developed time travel, yet.

My assumption is that as time goes on, more gets used up so that simple machine guns on the back of jeeps is all that is left. That said, since the bulk of the world's military was likely wiped out at once that leaves a TON of stuff that can be left for the handful of fighters left.

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Yeah right, but I can't accept him at 10 years old and it has nothing to do with how old Eddie Furlong is, but the character itself despite the known timeline taking place in that film and one before it.

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No, it's a way to gauge what his age was. It was obviously his motor scooter, not something he had to drive secretly for fear of being pulled over. So that places him at 15 1/2 at best (learner's permit).

California law says "To apply for a motorcycle Class M1 or M2 permit, you will need to...Be at least 15 ½ years of age"

Though I think he seemed closer to 14 in T2.

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John was stealing from ATMs at the age of 10, and you think not having a motorcycle license or permit was going to prevent him from riding a moped around town?

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Okay, so having now seen Terminator Salvation after heading in with very tempered expectations, I actually mildly liked it. It's not without its problems, but it's consistent in it's OK-ness. It's about the same level as T3 to me - a 6/10. Unlike T3, it doesn't have the very low moments ("Talk to the hand"), and is more consistent. However, T3 has a more satisfying ending, IMO. I think my favorite little moment in the new film was seeing how Connor got his scar.

I must say this film was one of the loudest films I've ever seen.

In any case, I might actually buy the Blu-ray when it comes out, which I never thought was going to be the case going in.

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funny.

The latest movie and entertainment news and gossip - Yahoo! Movies

"Terminator Salvation" earned $43.0 million. The film fell short of the $44 million start for the previous entry in the cyborg series, 2003's "Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines," the swan song of franchise star Arnold Schwarzenegger.



1 - Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian - $53,500,000 $53,500,000

2 - Terminator Salvation - $43,010,000 - $56,382,000

Re: *** Official TERMINATOR SALVATION Discussion Thread

All i can say is i'm disappointed. I at least wanted to see the how the T-600s were made & them trying to infiltate with rubber skin & all. But all we got was that one scene with Kyle, Marcus & Star. It was poorly done & needed Cameron. Why were the t-600s at Skynet all beat up? All they were doing was guarding the humans. Then the movie jumps right into the t-800 models just so they could throw Arnold in there.

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Call me crazy, but I couldn't tell if Star was a boy or a girl.

Anyone?


Well I just looked her up and she was indeed a girl. Silly me.

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Star could have been the offspring of Moss from "The IT Crowd".

Could T4 been worse? You be the judge:

EXCLUSIVE: WHAT WENT WRONG WITH TERMINATOR SALVATION?

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well at least we understand the horrendous editing now.....

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Kyle says "she" early on. Otherwise I'd be on the same boat.

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Yes. Wow, that last act in that script sounds AWFUL.

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WOW!

After reading that I really do think that this series should have ended with T2.

This was James Cameron's baby and he stated that T2 was his final word on the story. Except for a few decent eps in the "Sarah Conner Chronicles" TV series (now canceled) I haven't found much to like with anything that anyone has done since.

T3 was an enjoyable action flick and (marginally) extended the franchise's mythos, but was also an unnecessary step back from plot points established in T2; T4 was a complete failure as anything other than a Summer action flick. In retrospect T3 and T4 would have been better off working within the framework of some other post-apocalyptic mythology. There are lots of ways to fabricate a Summer action movie without destroying a concept that doesn't fit what you're trying to do. At least "The Sarah Conner Chronicles" really felt as though it existed within the Terminator mythology created by Cameron. It couldn't tell enough interesting stories within that framework to stay on the air, but it at least gave it an honest attempt. I didn't feel as though we got that from the two movie sequels.

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I am most-shocked that Night at the Museum did any business. The previews for Night at the Museum were playing before everything I've seen recently -- Trek, Wolverine, and T4, and the audience reaction has been dead silence, not even a titter. The film looked low a new low-point for Ben Stiller and Hank Azaria both. But I guess parents need something to take the kids to...

Azari'a line to Darth Vader in the preview, about Vader's cape, "are we going to the opera? I don't think so" bothered me not only because Azaria's acting was crap, but, how would a resurrected Egyptian tyrant know what an opera is?

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I like some of the ideas in that earlier script - the seaside resort being probably the best addition, since it would have been a total mind-frack. But speaking of frack, that seaside resort is a bit too Battlestar Galactica "New Caprica" (where the Cylons tried to force the humans to live in peace), and, it is a bit too much like the Appleseed saga (where robots keep the natural humans from letting their instincts of violence take control). It also has a tint of Aeon Flux (the poor live action film that used the name Aeon Flux, not the real Aeon Flux as seen in the anime).

I'd like to read that early Teminator Salvation script, but, like any script that exists before a director is hired and before the actual film takes shape, it isn't really the "original" script, and as such doesn't have the "original" ending.

Indeed, in the film, the ultimate sacrifice of Marcus donating his heart to save Connor is set up in the first scene (of him facetiously donating his body to science), and as such is not a "random" event like so many bloggers seem to think -- it is in fact the "salvation" of the murderer Marcus Wright. The bloggers don't get the concept of his character going full-circle in that way, so they see that heroic act as coming out of the blue. It was only out of the blue in the sense that Marcus was not exactly injured or anything -- he had no reason other than "choice" to do what he did.

I like the idea of Connor not being in the film except via radio broadcasts, but that said, following a generic resistance soldier around would have been weird.

One other note: People keep asking what makes Connor so special that people follow him? Well this is a question that the tv show wasn't able to answer either. Fact is, aside from being able to "prophesize" various Terminator tactics -- starting with the fact that there will be Terminators, following with knowledge that they'll then disguise themselves as humans, following with the knowledge that they'll then get human flesh -- there's never been too much info about why Connor is special.

My own theory is that Connor is special because he knows that there will be a time machine facility built some time, and that if they take control of it, they have the opportunity to fix everything. Hopefully T5 and T6 (if T4 does enough business worldwide to justify the investment) will get to that.

I liked the way that in T4 Connor had followers, but was himself not given a rank to match. Now that the world's military leaders have been wiped out, of course he will start to lead simply because he's John Connor, the prophet who blows stuff up.

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I saw this earlier today. I thought it was pretty good. Certainly nowhere near as good as T2, but not a bad movie at all, IMHO and I don't really get the hate for it. I thought the movie started off pretty smartly, and while the last half wasn't too clever, nothing about it jumped out to me as awful.

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I think what they could have done is focused the film on Marcus Wright and Kyle Reese. That was the best part(s) of the film and then had John Connor come in at the very end to setup the inevitable sequels.

Regarding John Connor as a character ... honestly it's stuff like that were James Cameron just gets it right, and there's not a lot of directors of these kinds of movies that can do that.

Think about Terminator 2 for a second ... that could have been an absolute train wreck (annoying kid + Arnold), but Cameron nailed the characters dead on. I think Cameron would've made Connor more of a conflicted character (unsure of whether he really even is the person his mother made him out to be, etc.).

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That's what the series did with Connor and it was annoying as hell. At least they did transform him into something other than just another whiny kid by the second season.

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Now all I can think of is "What if Moss had invented Skynet"

"Fire, Fire!"

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7/10 in my opinion

There really is nothing memorable about it. no great sequences that stay in my mind other than the emergence of the T-800 Model 101.

for comparison:

T1 9/10
T2 10/10
T3 8.75/10

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I was reading something about McG stating the t-600 was 8ft tall. Well how the hell is that model going to sneak inside the resistance groups. It seems like a toy decision there or a blatant not caring about continuity.