Terminator Salvation (2009) (1 Viewer)

[Chris Will]

double post

 

[Pete-D]

I'm not really expecting a "Terminator" film in the context of it being a "monster chasing boy/girl" type of formula the first three Terminator films stick to.

Honestly I don't think they could do that again, it worked great for T1 and T2 but was starting to show its age as a plot design by T3.

 

[Chuck Mayer]

Well, the general pre-release consensus is pretty down on the film. I watched The Terminator last night (standard def and mono). I was struck by a) what an 80's movie it is, b) how far budget effects have come, c) how GOOD the endoskeleton looked anyway, and d) how solid the story and characters are. I might or might not watch T2 tonight, before I tremulously journey to the theater to see Salvation. T2 is an up film, and T is a down film. Maybe a down film is the right frame of mind.

Anyways, expectations are tempered (sadly).

 

[Chris Atkins]

I won't feel guilty for not catching this one on opening weekend. I am bummed about the reviews, but what can you really expect from a director with a weak track record? (and for the record, I thought We Are Marshall was very pedestrian).

 

[TravisR]

I liked that movie well enought but I agree with your assessment. I will say that We Are Marshall seems brilliant when you compare it to Charlie's Angels though.

 

[TheBat]

chuck. I did the same thing. I watched t1. I liked it very much and agree with your statement. I got the new t2 skynet blu ray. been watching that.. I like the se of t2 better. its pretty good. I had my doubt that t4 was going to be any good because of the director and the PG-13 rating.
cameron still shows why he is master of directing with both t1 and t2.
He is certainly is no cameron.

Jacob

 

[David (C)]

Anything Terminator without Jim Cameron's involvement is nothing more than glorified fan fiction with studio backing.

 

[Quentin]

Not that there's anything WRONG with that...

I recommend anyone check out Terminator:Sarah Connor Chronicles. There are some bad episodes, but there are some damned fine ones too. Overall, much better performed, written, and creative than this gawdawful movie.

But, the FX in the film are pretty nice. Count me as another who appreciated the daytime stunts as a change of pace to the usual dark/nighttime vision we have of this future.

 

[Cory S.]

After seeing this film, I feel like we have a "Kingdom of Heaven theatrical cut" moment on our hands.

I just think McG did deliver with this film but studio interference is the cause for the lack of character. Personally, I could just feel the cuts to any scenes that dealt with characters, especially between Christian and Bryce.

I mean, when John finds out about Marcus, that scene after wards between him and Bryce is really good. I mean, John is genuinely freaked out because "this is not the future his mother warned him about" and he has no idea if he's meant to be the leader of the Resistance any longer with this revelation. Christian delivers in that scene but we don't get the Bryce end of that scene which I'm pretty positive is there but as the scene starts, she's standing. When John finishes and Common comes in, she's sitting and the way the cut is made, you can see she just finished saying something.

That's one example but there are plenty of examples like that scattered through out the film and, for me, it hurts what's really good about McG's direction of the series.

 

[Chris Will]

Maybe you are right Corey, and hopefully an extend cut will be released one day. As it is now, though, I will not be buying this on BD in its current form. If an extended cut is released I'll give it another shot but, I don't think I'll ever feel the need to see the current cut again. T1 and T2 are plenty good enough to satisfy my Terminator needs (I even like T3 more the T4).

 

[Cory S.]

Chris,

Just read on another forum that McG is going to have some type of extended cut on DVD this fall. The question obviously is how much of the 30 to 40 minutes of deleted scenes will make it back into the extended cut because, to me, it just has to be characters stuff, not action...because this film aces that in spades for my money.

Again, I think McG got the bad end of the deal with this film with this cut. I mean, I could just feel the cuts. And even with that, it still bests T3 by a wide margin for my money.

 

[Chuck Mayer]

Major spoilers will abound, but I can't discuss my opinions on where the film goes astray without getting specific. So I get VERY specific with story details.

Cory may be right, and there might be some good material cut that makes the film feel more like a film and less like a commercial. If there is an extended cut with at least 10 more minutes, I'll give it a try. Otherwise, I can't really make heads or tails of this film.

I probably won't bother with the small gripes, but I have to target the two big ones.

1) There is absolutely a boner of the "Kirk meeting Spock on Delta thanks to an extraordinary confluence of astronomically unlikely events for screenwriting needs" level. Bigger maybe, considering the relative tones and histories of the two series. This will be my narrative gripe.

1a) I hate that Skynet has a "personality" in this film. I like HBC a lot. But one of the charms of the first 2 films, and the 3rd one even got this mostly right, is that the antagonist is cold and inhuman. Methodical, brutal, relentless...but impersonal. There was a tiny little of bit of malice by the T1000, but it was calculated. Seeing Skynet monologue (to use The Incredibles parlance) and twirl its figurative mustache was dumb. But that isn't my grip, really.

So Skynet's BIG plan is:
1) to create an infiltrator out of a death row inmate with a conscience,
2) hide it in lab for 15 years,
3) blow the lab to hell, killing everyone but Marcus,
4) let him walk around the wasteland until he meets Kyle Reese (the very first person he meets),
5) shoot down the most acrobatic A-10 Warthog ever, but without killing the hottie pilot, right where Marcus can interact with her,
6) have her get assaulted by three central casting goons to allow her to trust him,
7) get him to one of the resistance bases (and they obviously have QUITE A FEW),
8) conveniently the one with John Connor,
9) to coordinate his ingress into Skynet San Fran?

Honestly, some of that is a good idea...I can buy 1, 7, and 9 - plus a few of things that happened that could be attributed to his subtle programming.

But 4? Seriously...4? Or 6? Or 8? I could deal with one of those. The idea is good...an infiltrator. That is actually really good. But the narrative mechanisms are quite flawed. And they topped it off with the Borg Skynet queen explaining the genius and inevitability of the plan?

But that isn't necessarily a deal breaker. As Star Trek recently showed, great characters can overcome some poor plotting. Characters have arcs, and Marcus has the arc in this film. It's not bad. It needed some more work, especially upfront, but we can fill in some blanks. John Conner though...his arc is uncertainty. And pretty much left incomplete.

Here was my key problem with the script. Conner makes it a point to save Kyle Reese...specifically discussing not performing a major operation in the context of "we have to save Kyle Reese!" This makes him sound like a self-involved douche. Later, when conducting his Bill Pullman ID4 speech, he makes a much better, much more tonally-consistent-with-T2 argument. Humans don't sacrifice their own to win battles, especially when they have a choice. I would have flipped the film a bit and had Conner working to rescue the citizens. I think it would have played with more intensity and truth to have John Conner trying to save people (as he points out how important each person is). And one of the people he saves is his father.

In short, the film has John Conner trying to save his father and therefore he rescues a bunch of people. The film should have him trying to rescue a bunch of people, and thus he meets his father. A thematic reward, so to speak.

It would call back to T2: "you can't just go around killing people". Conner should be focused on the prisoners...not the one he is related to. And I think the film meant to play that way, but it waited to long to make that clear, and Reese's presence muddies his motives. It would have been easy for the script to get Conner there (and trusting Marcus [sort of]) without Kyle Reese).

Lots of words (and I'm sorry), but a few tweaks might have made the film noticeable more intelligent. Third film of the summer...and the third one needing a better script. That writer's strike is really impacting the summer films, isn't it? Wolverine, ST, and T:S would have all benefitted from another pass or two through the material.

Minor gripes:
Should have used Linda Hamilton's narration from the first film. The lines in Salvation would have sounded LESS robotic had Johnny Five recited them.

Secondly, Sarah wouldn't have been able to tell him any specifics about the war or the machines. She only knows the T800, and barely at that. She teaches him how to fight, how to survive, how to lead...she couldn't give him intel. That part did not make sense in the least.

And did the TX tell all future secrets to Skynet in T3? Because they knew a lot of stuff you'd only know if you'd seen the movies or had access to info from the defeated Terminators from previous films. Aside from the TX's actions in T3 (a film I have only seen once, but I am reaching here), how could Skynet know some of that shit? They haven't even invented the time displacement crap yet.

And Skynet San Fran looked cheap as balls. T2 3D was far more grand than this.

This is all the negative. There is some positive, but this film is a real missed opportunity. I didn't even get into Kyle Reese (who I mostly liked, with some reservations). Poor Yelchin, two summer films, two impersonations.

Anyways, more as we discuss later.

 

[Cory S.]

Chuck,

That's the thing with this franchise. The time-travel angle essentially can explain the logic of how Skynet, pre-Judgment Day, figured out who Kyle Reese was to John Connor. Because, essentially, every action that has taken place in the Terminator films change the future and how the war will be waged. I think I can buy that. That's why I liked the idea at the beginning of the film of the T-800's being ahead of scheduled compared to the knowledge that John knew. That's a connection to the previous films.

But, the situation with John and the capture of Rees kind of screws the film in a way.

For John, he's basically selfish as hell through out this film once he finds out that Reese is at the top of the list for Skynet. Now, the obvious question is if Kyle Reese does get killed by the machines, does John automatically disappear. That's a question that kind of validates why the hell the machines didn't kill Reese the minute they caught him. I mean, essentially, the mission was to capture Reese in order to lure Conner to Skynet....why not just kill Reese before he's been sent back to the past and see what happens?

But again, we don't understand the rise of Connor in this film. We kind of see why with his actions in the film. He's clearly a great solider but that's really it. Why don't know why anyone in his unit would follow him. We can understand why the people around the world listening to his broadcast would...we understand why Reese takes to him. It's just the development of him within the unit and with his wife and why she so narrowly follows her husband isn't shown at all...and this is where I think the film got cut a lot. I mean, Bryce and Christian get neutered in this film. I mean, hell, they don't even mention the unborn child. But, John's journey is too selfish because of what he's been told and not what he's done. And yet, there is one great moment by Bale that gets what I think they were going with Connor in this film absolutely right. It's the scene between him and Kate after the revelation of Marcus. Literally, John's world is shattered. He has no idea what awaits his future with a Terminator who actually believes its human. It shatters his belief system that was told to him before he was born. That one segment is what I wanted more of with the Connor character in this film. I mean, essentially, he's been fighting this war before he was born. He has to be tired as hell. And I think that Bale plays him that way...just totally battle wry and worn out thinking about this all the time (which is mentioned by Sarah on the tapes). I just think a lot of the essential character details to lead up to that scene got cut out...and I'm just assuming a lot of that was with him and Kate.

And I say all of these negatives and still feel this is a better film than T3, just based on the tone, action, and design of the thing. McG got that right.

It's the character details that make the film feel really, really short.

And yet, I want to see more of this because the obvious follow up to this film has to have John mentor Reese in order to finally send him back to '84 to protect Sarah. The third film will ultimately be the end of the war.

But, because of the actions in this film, the future is changed again. Anything can happen.

I still believe McG has a very good war film on the avid waiting to get out but Chuck's points about Marcus' journey do raise very valid points.

 

[Diallo B]

chuck hit the nail on the head.

but i have two things to add.

1. skynet still should have killed reese. it had already been established that skynet knew connor would attempt a rescue of reese. if not before hand the second he showed up skynet should have killed reese.

2. i am all for some hollywood magic and all. but sometimes in movies the realm of reality is too far stretched. who here with common sense believes that a heart transplant occurs in the open field on a whim? let alone from a hybrid terminator with a physiology that made no sense to anyone at the time?

okay the first rebuttal is that who believes in terminators? and my response is that i can buy a terminator for the purposes of the film and mythos. but i can't buy a convenient wrap up of a movie simply to save the protagnonist. super duper terrible writing and absolutely not believable.

 

[Josh Steinberg]

Maybe I totally missed something, but I left the theater thinking Marcus' origin wasn't completely explained because that'll come later. It didn't seem to me so much that they were avoiding an explanation, but that they didn't want to give the audience any information that the protagonists didn't have.

I'm not convinced Skynet made Marcus, at least not originally.

It's been a while since I've seen T3, but if I remember correctly, Skynet ended up being software that became self-aware within the global computer network, rather than a single piece of hardware that was built. Sarah Connor's actions in T2 with the destruction of Cyberdyne's lab may have changed the timeline in that Cyberdyne may no longer be part of Skynet's origin.

At any rate, watching the film, I guessed that Marcus donated his body to science as we saw at the beginning of the film. Whether it was the scientist's death or Judgment Day, work on the project seems to have gone unfinished or at least forgotten. I think we also see briefly that Cyberdyne ended up either being bought by the military or had military contracts. So what if, circa 2003, a biotech firm with government backing is researching technology to make human-machine hybrids, cyborgs, as a way to prolong life... the medical research community is interested for fixing broken bodies, the military is interested ostensibly for the same purpose but perhaps for the creation of more powerful soldiers as well...

Anyhow, it seemed possible to me that Marcus could have been created pre-Skynet, just as the HKs had been (we see this in T3 as well). Skynet found Marcus, fixed him up, and sent him out into the world. Probably used him to reverse-engineer technology they would need to make the T-800 as well.

I'm not convinced that's the case, but I'm not convinced the explanations submitted in this thread so far are any closer -- this played out like a mystery element that presumably will be brought up in the next film. The T-800 is way ahead of schedule... something's wrong... I was hoping to see more of that angle in this film, and I hope that's something that's brought up in the next film.

I do agree that the heart transplant at the end played more as lazy writing than anything else. The entire thing goes down so quick that we have no emotional connection to what's happening. I think deep down we all know John Connor is going to survive the movie, so seeing him injured doesn't carry the same weight it would if it was a character that was new to this film. Then the whole transplant thing happens so matter-of-factly that we don't have time to even contemplate what the death of John Connor could mean to the resistance, or any sense of danger. (Certainly not the fact that tests need to be run to make sure the organ being donated was a match, and people who receive donations need to be on certain drugs for the rest of their lives to keep their body from rejecting the new organ... the world of 2018 didn't exactly seem like a place where such things were around in abundance.) The problem for me with that is that it didn't add anything to the story, and it since it was unrealistic to a level different from anything else in the film, it pulled me out of it a little bit. I can forgive wildly improbable or impossible occurrences in films and TV shows, especially in the sci-fi genre, but it has to either add something to the plot or to the characters, and this was done in such a way that it managed to accomplish neither.

But all in all I found more to like in the film than not, and I'd definitely enjoy seeing a longer, extended version of the film that added more character moments and/or plot development. The action stuff was first rate, and after three Terminator movies (and a TV show which, admittedly, isn't meant to fit into the same timeline as the most recent films) all taking place in the modern day, it was exciting to actually see the war.

 

[Cory S.]

Josh,

You are correct. Skynet, through a military contract after the events of T2, was software.

As for John's situation at the end of the film, now knowing the original ending, that ending would've worked thematically better than what we got here.

 

[Chuck Mayer]

Some more thoughts, after a little e-digging.

1) My issue with Skynet knowing the future is already the paradox of not killing Reese. And HOW do they know it? John has his mother's tapes. How does Skynet learn from the T-800's and the T-1000? Or even the T-X? I know all of this paradox stuff can be magicked away, but it is weird to see Skynet Queen be so knowledgeable and predictive.

2) The original ending would have been far more thematically appropriate, even modified somewhat. Follows:I did not read the script, but I believe Conner was scheduled to croak, and Marcus would assume his appearance surgically. The latter is less relevant than the former to me. Conner could do his job symbolically or literally, and it would have meant more for his arc had he became certain, but doomed. Then Kate gets to send Kyle...or Marcus does. Wearing the skin, while a bit grotesque, has a certain ruthless romance to it. Either way, better than what we got.
Besides the John as Christ parallels (which would have worked even better had they played up his "conscience of the resistance"), why would a doctor and others willingly KILL Marcus to use his heart? Hippocratic oath and all that. I would assume Kate is a loving wife, but also a moral doctor. Marcus would have to DIE in order to transplant his heart. I have issues seeing a hero character accept that outcome. Including John.

3) I'm not sure I agree with Cory that a truly good movie (and KoH: DC is a great movie!) is in McG director's cut. A better one probably is. But the fundamentals of the script needed some real work.

4) Speaking of, while I thought he was a bit too competent as Reese, I did enjoy Yelchin's performance. It was occasionally eerie

An improved second half would have made better use of the character than bait. I did enjoy the performance though. Except for the silly call-forwards to earlier films (a prequel set in the future...time travel sucks).

5) I did enjoy the direction, for the most part. And I was impressed with the look. McG obviously watched a lot more Cameron than just the Terminator films. There was a bit of Aliens and The Abyss thrown into the pot during certain scenes.

A missed opportunity, for certain.

 

[Cory S.]

Chuck,

Yeah. Maybe not truly good but a much better one has to exist in the director's cut form. Here's hoping in the fall when it hits home video.

As for the Skynet part, I just don't think there's a clear answer in any of the films except for the paradox angle. I mean, that's pretty much the only thing you can hang your hat on when trying to piece it together. This afternoon, I went through all the important exposition parts in the previous three films and you don't get the answer.

It's just as simple as Skynet got wind of it, through it being software based, before the bombs fell in T3 or maybe in the time period between T2 and T3.

Either way, it's anyone's guess.

 

[Josh Steinberg]

There may have been clues left behind... for instance, when Sarah Connor and Kyle Reese were detained by the police in T1, they explained one version of the future there, and we know that exchange was recorded. In T2, we see that Sarah's told the people at the hospital that someone from the future is the father of her son, etc. They obviously kept videotapes and records of Sarah's time there... if Skynet pretty much takes over every computer in the world and has access to just about anything, who's to say that it didn't pick up some background info there. If John Connor was a rising force in the resistance, I can believe Skynet would check its database for anything it might have on that name, and come up with some records that said his mom was a crazy who thought his dad came from the future... and reading the details of Sarah's story, I could see how they could at least have pieces of the puzzle.

And who knows if the T-X did something offscreen in T3 to give the "just being born" Skynet an advantage?

Surprisingly, that didn't bother me.

I'm not sure the "originally scripted" ending (if it was indeed the original ending) is any better, for a number of reasons. For one, it kills John Connor, which is something I don't want to see this early into this new set of films. There are too many exciting things they can do in just showing Skynet continuing to advance, and the resistance bringing the fight to the brink, for them to be wasting time on silly sci-fi stuff like ripping John Connor's flesh off his dead body to put it over a terminator endoskeleton. It's just too out there for me as a way to end the first film, it seems more gimmicky and "hey, that sounds like cool future sci-fi kinda stuff" than anything else.

It felt like Terminator Salvation gave us such a limited window into the world of the characters that it's difficult to know where they're going with this. Could it just be a couple more mostly straight-up war films? Will there be more sci-fi elements in future films? Will they go into the creation of the T-800s and make a plot point out of why they've started showing up way too early? Is Marcus' appearance in the first film part of a larger story arc or does he simply exist to die for John? I feel like they could go just about anywhere with this, and it's hard for me to feel too strongly one way or the other about this film because I feel like I just saw a lot of events without context. If the context is filled in later and was kept under the surface as a plot device, I'm all for it. If this new series is just about blowing shit up, then they missed a golden opportunity to do something special. But it just seems way too early to tell.

 

[mattCR]

I think Chuck gets part of it and addresses it as a complaint that he hates that Skynet has a personality. Let me go beyond that: it defeats the entire purpose of every film in the series.

The moment we realize that Skynet truly has a sinister motive, then it started to strike me as just... goofy. I liked the idea as presented especially in T2 that Skynet had become self aware and rationalized that no matter what, the greatest cause of war was humans, and therefore the logical conclusion was to wipe out all humans. It was a great reveal and it made all of the killing done by Skynet seem to be relentless because it too, believed that it was doing only "what it had to do".

Skynet's machinations (hah!) in this film just made you wait to find some evil programmer who had fed it into Skynet, or a reveal of something like that.

The action set pieces were good, but honestly? If you can live without a plot and you just want action, the action setpieces in Wolverine were just as good, and the plot, while messy, wasn't this devestatingly bad.. and that's saying a lot considering I think Wolverine is "eh" kind of a film with a few good moments.

This however is just a soulless action film that paints by the numbers to hit certain action sequences, has a slick look and a storyline that depends on you being recently lobotomized.