Terminator: Salvation (Esspecially after that last movie! hey-o!)

[Nique]

Apart from the indecipherable mythos of this time-traveling series, this film was pretty awesome. Great preformances all around, although it was sort of weird having John Conner not really be a character anyone could really sympathize with as he's really not supposed to be just another soldier.

Bale just sort of played him as too much of an A-Hole IMO. I mean, I can understand WHY he's a jerk in the movie - but the scenes where he expands on the non-jerk aspects of the character weren't as convincing as when he was shootin' himself some terminators. And, I mean, really? THIS guy is the rallying point for humanity after the machine revolution? So, Marcus was really the favorite character here.

I did sort of feel underwhelmed, but that happens with a lot of action movies. Partly to blame for this might be the time between films which sort of makes the continuity just seem too fluid for us to even want to care about.

Thoughts?

[Corel]

It was an all round decent popcorn flick I thought. I had forgotten how gripping it is to have a half destroyed Terminator coming at you in the opening scenes, the scene reminiscent to that of the first film.

There were a few things I'm still not sure on.


The device that shut down the Terminators. They made it, tested it on a few and then proceeded to not use it in the assault at all, but instead just blew the place up. Did it truely have a purpose?

They kept going on how destroying this place will win the war...then proceed to say the battle was won but the war was not over.

Why didn't they just give Marcus (Who I thought was the strongest character in the film, as a note) an override program so he wouldn't decide to rebel as opposed to SKYNET going "JOIN US" and not expecting a machine created to be human to follow his humanity and throw a wrench in the works?

I LOVED the recreated Arnie in the film. It was very strange to see him that young again on screen.

The effect were pretty decent too, as a side note I'm still amazed how decent the make up effects in T2 were for it's time. (e.g. The T-1000 and metal showing through flesh)


Other thoughts about the film:

Half the time I couldn't understand Bale with his Batman voice on.

There were some quite corny/eye rolling lines in the film.

They picked a decent look alike for Conner's father.

God damn time travel.

Overall: Nothing truely memorable, quite a decent action flick. Better than T3 by far and not a lick on T2.

[Marc v4.0]

It was an all round decent popcorn flick I thought. I had forgotten how gripping it is to have a half destroyed Terminator coming at you in the opening scenes, the scene reminiscent to that of the first film.

There were a few things I'm still not sure on.


The device that shut down the Terminators. They made it, tested it on a few and then proceeded to not use it in the assault at all, but instead just blew the place up. Did it truely have a purpose?

They kept going on how destroying this place will win the war...then proceed to say the battle was won but the war was not over.

Why didn't they just give Marcus (Who I thought was the strongest character in the film, as a note) an override program so he wouldn't decide to rebel as opposed to SKYNET going "JOIN US" and not expecting a machine created to be human to follow his humanity and throw a wrench in the works?




to 1

It was a trick by the machines, very clearly revealed when they find out the 'shutdown signal' was actually just a way for SKYNET to track the Sub-Command down and blow it up

to 2

They thought it would win the war because they thought it was a real shut down program, and the attack would have struck a serious blow

to 3

I assumed it was done that way because SKYNET is completely confident in its abilities OR the fact that he had a human brain meant that he could only be guided by 'suggestion' and not outright programming

[Corel]

Thanks for the answers! I had forgotten about those details.

Did we ever find out why SKYNET was hoarding humans in the first place? I assume it was research into creating new terminators/to bait Connor to come rescue them.

I still don't know why SKYNET just doesn't destroy the planet to a degree that it cannot sustain human life but can sustain machines. Would save it a lot of heart ache!

[Marc v4.0]

Did we ever find out why SKYNET was hoarding humans in the first place? I assume it was research into creating new terminators/to bait Connor to come rescue them.

I assumed the same thing, it makes sense when you think of the hurtles to creating proper machine-to-organic integration. Going to need some test subjects and such.

[Nique]

If Skynet is sentient, then it must have some motivation for keeping people alive at all or keeping earth livable. Maybe constant nukes would damage skynet as he/she/it is software that exists on a global network?

[Marc v4.0]

If Skynet is sentient, then it must have some motivation for keeping people alive at all or keeping earth livable. Maybe constant nukes would damage skynet as he/she/it is software that exists on a global network?

iirc, Nukes tend to cause EMPs, though that might just be air-detonated nukes. I'm too lazy to look it up, but the explosions don't tend to be very kind to anything at all anyway

[Dørmatte]

The amount of things that didn't make sense in this movie were spectacular, even outside the usual things that are always ignored in movies.

I AM JOHN CONNOR! I CONSIDER MYSELF THE MOST IMPORTANT PERSON ALIVE! TIME TO JUMP OUT OF A HELICOPTER INTO A STORMY SEA WEARING NOTHING AT ALL! I SURE HOPE THE PLOT WILL SAVE ME BEFROE I DIE OF HYPOTHERMIA OR DROWN!

(it does)

There is a list of people who will die in 4 days! You are #2! Who is #1?! Kyle Reese!! *30 minutes later reese is positively identified then captured* Quickly! I must save kyle reese, who has been captured to use as bait against me so that I can be lured there and killed even though killing him would make me fade from reality (and thus die!)!

Wait, how do I even know this? Oh right! The cyborg that was programed to go north and never would've found me if he hadn't randomly bumped into a downed fighter pilot who knew where I was and could persuade him to come with her told me where he was, even though THAT MAKES NO SENSE. How the ass did he know that the kyle reese connor was asking about was the one he met? He told him he was looking for his father, how could he possibly have known that connor's father was a time traveler? He didn't even know what a terminator was.

And what's with the terminators in the final base recognizing the cyborg as one of them, but every single other terminator everywhere else were trying to kill him? Oh, except for the snake/worm terminators in the pond where connor, who has survived who knows how many years of constant warfare against these things, randomly decide to go and get himself nearly killed, only to be saved by the cyborg sent to kill him. No, I mean, lure him to skynet so skynet can kill him. ...wait, what? And why does the cyborg have a heart that actually does something? Sure, put it in him so that he can pass as a human, but why make him actually need it to survive?

What exactly does the cyborg's "computer brain" do, anyway? It gave him the urge to go north, okay, but what else? It didn't make him kill connor, it didn't stop him from tearing it out of himself in the final battle. That suer was one crappy control chip. And then skynet just totally ignores him after he releases himself from its control and lets him run rampant in the facility, helping connor blow it up and saving his life. And why was there only ONE naked arnold trying to kill connor? Why was connor allowed to keep his weapon? Why was naked arnold killing the other terminators who were trying to kill connor?

It also was nice that the cyborg had a perfectly matching donor heart (apparently, though they never bothered to test). And how, after he had been deemed as a NON-TERMINATOR and HUMAN-LIKE, nobody even so much as raises an eyebrow when he proclaims his desire to kill himself to save connor. I mean, what the fuck? How many heroes have you seen that actually agree to let (perfectly healthy non-dying) people kill themselves so they can take their organs?

And a bunch of other stuff I can't remember right now.
Despite all that, I still enjoyed the movie. I came expecting something that made no sense, and I was not disappointed. It looked good, and it had explosions.

It also made for far more interesting after-movie chatter.

[BitVyper]

As far as Marcus goes, I think it's more just a thing of the human mind being way more complex than we give it credit for. They couldn't truly program him. There's too much there that is different from or goes beyond what computers do.

I liked the movie quite a bit. The only thing I'll never understand is why the machines don't just dump chlorine gas or something all over the place when they're in a fight with the humans. It makes sense to use combat machines like the terminators for infiltration and time-travel shit, but when it comes to the large scale, things like gas and napalm should be like, their primary tactic.

I know it wouldn't be the same movie then, but still. That's why I liked the scene with Arnie firing off tear gas everywhere in T2. HE figured it out, at least.

[Roxas]

My main problem with this film is that the Terminators only captured Kyle Reese. They knew he was going to be John Connor's father, so why didn't they kill him?

[PhoenixFlame]

I thoroughly enjoyed System Shock 2: The Movie, despite it's flaws. That said, anyone notice the similarities? (Warning, SS2 spoilers ahead.)

Protagonist suffers amnesia, doesn't know where he is or what his mission is. Has been secretly given cybernetic implants to make him a super-soldier.

Protagonist is subtly manipulated by humans and logical stimuli to perform a task that has desired side-effects predicted by the big bad's HUGE XANATOS GAMBIT! :D

In carrying these out, the Protagonist finds out he's been duped, and meets his machine creator, who proceeds to explain how and why she's manipulated him, and how he cannot resist. Shocking reveal! Despite being unable to directly control him via his cybernetic implants, SHODAN makes him an offer he can't refuse(TM), fully confident that being a superior machine means her plan is flawless.

Protagonist plays along only long enough to rebel agaisnt his creator, destroying them in a fit of awesome classic revenge.

Okay, so not exactly, but close enough. Pretty much explained to me how skynet wasn't able to directly control him, even though I cringed when he synched with it, figuring he was malfunctioning.

That said, I felt it was a little too obvious how Marcus was able to perform feats like destroying a VTOL hunter probe with a thrown tire iron from a car moving at full-speed down a hill while taking evasive manevuers, or how obviously terminator he acts when fighting post-apocalyptic 'wasteland assholes' with his fists.

Good movie, though.