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LTTP Terminator Salvation and I actually enjoyed it SPOILERS

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Finally saw this through the wonder that is $1 Redbox rentals. Much more enjoyable than T3! Whereas T3 felt like a busch league shot-for-shot remake of T2 without Linda Hamelton that brought absolutely nothing worthwhile to the table, Salvation was a fun ride through some of the early days of the war with loads of neat homages to the first two films, and saw John become the leader of the resistance. My only regret about this movie was that they chickened out on the original ending. I think it would have worked much better, and the new ending felt really out of place. Granted they didn't actually show the procedure, and Connor might not have survived. So they could save the
Marcus is John Connor
twist for the sequel, if there ever is one. I guess I just like the idea of Skynet having been wrong all along, and that John Connor is more than a man, but a symbol of hope for humanity to rally behind.
 
DihcarEM said:
I think it's more likely that being reason why Kyle is number1 on the wanted list then Skynet actually knowing that he's the father which isn't said by them anywere in the movie. I don't know or care which scene's were cut, i just look at what we got and this is one easy way to explain everything that happend.
And i'm pretty sure that Skynet has basic reasons of deduction. Kyle was one of the topguys in Connor's army, one day poof he's gone, i'm sure they kept tabs on every important human resistence fighter.

The first terminator's chip was mostly left intact in human-hands for over a decade, again could be part of the reason why so much happend too fast. That researcher guy said that having that terminator's hand and chip moved their progess immensly and they could have gotten the information out of that. Not that Kyle is the father but perhaps the whole chase and id'ng Kyle as Sarah's protector, without the humans working on it even knowing what they have. They could have scanned it a lot, and the info might have been availble in the database when the AI went active.
Who knows.
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The way I see it is that, the "terminatrix(T3)", once she infected skynet, she updated everything from the future to the present time(T3) so from there to T4, skynet knew who Kyle was. Its really confusing to understand but thats how I see it. For instance, in the future JC send KR back to the past, and i think Skynet finds this out(?) so by the time they send the 3rd terminator back in time, they let their past selves(skynet) know who Kyle is to update their priorities for the upcoming future. Im pretty sure Im wrong but thats what I got from the wiki timeline.
 
Happy to see some more positive feedback on the movie. I still really liked it. It was no T2, obviously, but I found it very entertaining and enjoyable.

It was flawed but whatever. It was a mediocre Terminator movie but a really good action movie. But that's just me.
 
Just saw it. It was terrible. The people who liked this must be the same people that liked Transformers. The writers were clearly under the impression that an incessant repetition of the names "John Connor", "Sarah Conner", and "Kyle Reese" would distract people from how much of a shitfest the movie was. The lines where characters explained the series' history read so awkward and overly expository. They were talking to the audience, not the other characters. The action was crap too. There's no way it's better than T3, crappy Terminatrix and all. T3 had some decent set pieces that elevated it even if it was a T2 rehash. Salvation apes T2 and fails completely. The final action scene in Salvation was a shameless repeat of the T2 factory scene. The settings were identical but it was near impossible to care about any of the characters.
 
meh I liked it. much more than Transformers, which I also liked :)

A much better movie than T3 or Transformers

Mostly just a pretty shallow, fun action movie, without going absolutely ridiculous at all points, it fits within itself pretty well.
 
Roger Ebert's review sums it up best:

One of Hollywood's oldest axioms teaches us: The story comes first. Watching "Terminator Salvation," it occurred to me that in the new Hollywood, the storyboard comes first. After scrutinizing the film, I offer you my summary of the story: Guy dies, finds himself resurrected, meets others, fights. That lasts for almost two hours.
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The movie is for audiences with short or basically no attention spans. There is no attention paid to actually developing a single character in the story. Marcus Wright, while somewhat interesting given his story arc, is not given enough time to evolve and John Connor is a bland cypher. Just another generic action movie soldier barking out orders. You learn literally nothing about this man, other than the fact that he is a 'false prophet' (LOL) and that he occasionally gives motivational speeches on the airwaves. Apparently we also have submarines in this future world that serve as the central command of the human resistance. To tell a story like this and flesh it out with the attention it deserves, you need writers that are actually adept at creating a plausible future world. There is no such thing in this movie. It is just a series of mindless set pieces connected by exposition. This movie sucked.
 
JB1981 said:
Roger Ebert's review sums it up best:



The movie is for audiences with short or basically no attention spans. There is no attention paid to actually developing a single character in the story. Marcus Wright, while somewhat interesting given his story arc, is not given enough time to evolve and John Connor is a bland cypher. Just another generic action movie soldier barking out orders. You learn literally nothing about this man, other than the fact that he is a 'false prophet' (LOL) and that he occasionally gives motivational speeches on the airwaves. Apparently we also have submarines in this future world that serve as the central command of the human resistance. To tell a story like this and flesh it out with the attention it deserves, you need writers that are actually adept at creating a plausible future world. There is no such thing in this movie. It is just a series of mindless set pieces connected by exposition. This movie sucked.
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What the fuck, guy? "They have invented these magical undersea vessels called "submarines" (lol) in the future. What will these guys think of next?" I mean, really?

Do you think submarines are too outdated to use or what? Because they have already been invented if you hadn't heard.
 
T3 could've been great. I stand by my thoughts that it's main problem was that who ever casted the characters did a HORRIBLE job.

John Connor progressing to a fucked up junky? That could've worked, if he wasn't a little bitch like the actor portrayed. Claire Danes was horrible too. The TX Terminator was decent, but just not intimidating like the Liquid terminator or Arny in the first. Put this down to directing

From what I remember though the story was construed a lot better than Salvation. And the ending made up for a lot of the movie. The car chase scenes were really good

At times it felt like a real Terminator movie, at others it missed the mark
 
Aselith said:
What the fuck, guy? "They have invented these magical undersea vessels called "submarines" (lol) in the future. What will these guys think of next?" I mean, really?

Do you think submarines are too outdated to use or what? Because they have already been invented if you hadn't heard.
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This Resistance doesn't even have fucking food. Fuck, I don't think there is even a BUILDING in this future world. How the fuck are the capable of powering these submarines? I would like to know.
 
JB1981 said:
This Resistance doesn't even have fucking food. Fuck, I don't think there is even a BUILDING in this future world. How the fuck are the capable of powering these submarines? I would like to know.
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There are nuclear-powered submarines...

Chuck Norris said:
T3 could've been great. I stand by my thoughts that it's main problem was that who ever casted the characters did a HORRIBLE job.

John Connor progressing to a fucked up junky? That could've worked, if he wasn't a little bitch like the actor portrayed. Claire Danes was horrible too. The TX Terminator was decent, but just not intimidating like the Liquid terminator or Arny in the first. Put this down to directing

From what I remember though the story was construed a lot better than Salvation. And the ending made up for a lot of the movie. The car chase scenes were really good

At times it felt like a real Terminator movie, at others it missed the mark
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He wasn't a junky.
 
There is a huge ass EMP mine field around the rebel's HQ. Can't the robots figure out THAT might be where they are hiding?

Why don't the robots use fucking chemical weapons or something?

Why can you just walk into Skynet's terminator production factory and not meet any resistance? Fill the halls with sarin gas or something.

Stupid movie.
 
JB1981 said:
This Resistance doesn't even have fucking food. Fuck, I don't think there is even a BUILDING in this future world. How the fuck are the capable of powering these submarines? I would like to know.
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The luxuries of command has always varied wildly from the lot of the common soldier. The resistance has access to lots of military tech as evidenced by the A-10's they fly and the helicopters and guns at their disposal. Nuclear subs can run for a very long time and even a couple of refueling stations would last for a very long time with just one or two subs using them.

I really don't see the problem. There is copious evidence in the movie that they have people with the skillsets to operate and maintain old world military technology.
 
Finally got around to watching the director's cut. First off, let me say I don't get the hate for this movie. Yes, it is light on story, but it does a great job of showing the machines doing what they do best... and, as such, I feel it is a great companion piece to the first two films (which showed us the real human side to the story anyway). The way I see it, the first movie was Sarah's story, the second is John's story, and the 4th is Marcus's story. I'm not sure what the heck the third was doing.

My memory of the theatrical version isn't perfect, but it occurs to me that the extra couple minutes in the director's cut is a collection of small edits here and there. The quick glimpse of boobs is one of many. I noticed a couple extra quick Terminator shots and the Terminator-vision segments are a smidge longer.
 
Unless Skynet took over the world by throwing opposition forces and making largely contrived declarations of their intentions, T4 doesn't show robots "doing what they do best".
 
Terminator fish are fine. Our species is even less capable of defending itself in water; it makes sense that they would want to have some machinery in aquatic territory.

Think about it; our firearms don't work underwater and we're less capable of evading attacks when submerged.

silverbullet1080 said:
Since skynet is hosted on computers all around the world, wouldn't the EMPs from the nuclear holocaust have shut them down?
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I would assume that the military installations it controlled would have some protection against that.
 
Skynet had already killed most of humanity. The dregs were irrelevant and not worth the waste of ammo. Throw em around, harvest them, and use them to build more Marcus type models. That's what the lab was for.

And I dunno if y'all noticed, but they did nuke the entire insertion team in the beginning, slaughtered a good chunk of those fleeing rebels at the gas station complex, and destroyed the entire resistance command structure in that sub.

Why go after individuals, except for the big kahuna Connor, if you don't have to? It's smart battle strategy.
 
WickedAngel said:
Terminator fish are fine. Our species is even less capable of defending itself in water; it makes sense that they would want to have some machinery in aquatic territory.

Think about it; our firearms don't work underwater and we're less capable of evading attacks when submerged.



I would assume that the military installations it controlled would have some protection against that.
Click to expand...
Was it ever established that it was on military computers though? Skynet doesn't have a core but exists as software in cyberspace running on computers all over the world, making it effectively impossible to shut down... By cyberspace I assume it exists on the internet making it impossible for it to survive the emps from a thermonuclear genocidal campaign.
 
mosaic said:
And I dunno if y'all noticed, but they did nuke the entire insertion team in the beginning, slaughtered a good chunk of those fleeing rebels at the gas station complex, and destroyed the entire resistance command structure in that sub.
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So what? That's not Terminator. That's "random big shit blows up" generic action movie garbage.
 
Movie was pretty, cool action sequences, but the entire script was pure garbage and so full of plot holes.

mosaic said:
Why go after individuals, except for the big kahuna Connor, if you don't have to? It's smart battle strategy.
Click to expand...

Except John Connor was not the big Kahuna in the movie, this was set before he became the all important leader of the resistance. Just like how they single out Kyle Reese in the movie, it makes no fucking sense. They don't even bother to try to explain so much of the nonsense that goes on.
 
silverbullet1080 said:
Since skynet is hosted on computers all around the world, wouldn't the EMPs from the nuclear holocaust have shut them down?
Click to expand...

yeah, major plothole. Connor was pretty specific about it being all peer-to-peer on people's desktops and anything capable of running software. Nuking the world just destroyed most of its infrastructure. the only place it could be would be military servers in hardened bunkers, exactly like that "software core" they were looking for.

Why go after individuals, except for the big kahuna Connor, if you don't have to? It's smart battle strategy.
Click to expand...

that's exactly the stupid James Bond villain type of reasoning that lets the good guys constantly escape and blow shit up. Yeah, so smart it lost the T800 prototype and its entire factory for LA.
 
Those claiming Salvation is better than T3 are WRONG. There isn't one redeeming quality for Salvation. T3 at least had Arnold and a badass chase scene.

I don't even remember anything from Salvation being remotely entertaining.
 
Defcon said:
Those claiming Salvation is better than T3 are WRONG. There isn't one redeeming quality for Salvation. T3 at least had Arnold and a badass chase scene.

I don't even remember anything from Salvation being remotely entertaining.
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T3 was forgettable, but Salvation makes it look actually good in comparison. It was a rehash of T2 but at least it went somewhere and had a sense of direction and Ahnuld!!

Salvation was loud noises and explosions with words tossed in.
 
I finally watched this the other night. It was horrible, but it didn't really have anything about to make it great. I think the issue is that in the first two films there was a lot of suspense. They were almost horror film like with characters lives always in question. You feared the Terminator. This one was just a generic action film set in the Terminator universe.
I was hoping at the end of the film that John Connor would die, and Marcos would be named John Connor in order to keep the hope alive for the resistance, sort of like the Dread Pirate Roberts in The Princess Bride. It wouldn't matter who was actually Connor. All that would matter is that his name lived on. Odds are pretty bad that John would be compatible with Marcos' heart anyway.
Maybe that happens in one of the alternate endings. I didn't get to see them since we netflixed it.
 
Have the same sentiment that it was just a generic action movie and not Terminator meaning it was even worse than the already bad T3. Future war scenes in T1 and T2, even though they were incredibly brief, were better than this entire film. I hope they don't make anymore if they are going to be in the Salvation mold.
 
What I watched: Terminator Salvation.
What I expected: Me masturbating to Sam Worthington and Bale getting it on in a popcorn summer flick with the Terminator world around them.
What I got: A piece of shit. Sam Worthington was okay (but the whole "ripping out skynet" bit was "what?"), Bale phoned in a bad John Conner (when I expected better). Action wasn't that great (but I did dig the camera work for Kyle's shotgun switch while the HK flew overhead). Plot was terrible. Logic jumps. Just... terrible.

It doesn't even work as a popcorn flick because the action isn't really there until the end and it was bad action overall.
 
Cruzader said:
The way I see it is that, the "terminatrix(T3)", once she infected skynet, she updated everything from the future to the present time(T3) so from there to T4, skynet knew who Kyle was. Its really confusing to understand but thats how I see it. For instance, in the future JC send KR back to the past, and i think Skynet finds this out(?) so by the time they send the 3rd terminator back in time, they let their past selves(skynet) know who Kyle is to update their priorities for the upcoming future. Im pretty sure Im wrong but thats what I got from the wiki timeline.
Click to expand...

Terminatrix couldn't of known Kyle was the father, even if she had all the info from future Skynet because future Skynet couldn't of known either. The only Terminator who even knew Kyle existed beyond a simple civilian is the T-800 (Arnold from the first movie) and he was destroyed.

Technically, Kyle Reese wasn't even John Connor's father originally. John Connor was a different person with a different father when he sent Kyle Reese back. Once he sent him back a whole new parallel time-line was created in which a new John Connor was born with Kyle Reese as the father. It's just like how Judgement Day happened in 1997 in the original timeline but in 2004 in the alternate timeline that was created when Cyberdyne HQ was destroyed in Terminator 2. In the original Terminator movie Kyle explains how he was a slave to the machines before being saved by John for example, obviously he's never a slave in Terminator Salvation because it's a different future (he's also younger than he was originally).

The only possible explanation as to why they think Kyle Reese is important is if they somehow had been spying on John Connor (the future John Connor, Christian Bale, from Terminator Salvation) and figured whoever he was looking for was important. Of course they never explained anything like that happening or they cut scenes... from the information we, the viewer have, there is no way for them to have known anything about Kyle.
 
TheSeks said:
What I watched: Terminator Salvation.
What I expected: Me masturbating to Sam Worthington and Bale getting it on in a popcorn summer flick with the Terminator world around them.
What I got: A piece of shit. Sam Worthington was okay (but the whole "ripping out skynet" bit was "what?"), Bale phoned in a bad John Conner (when I expected better). Action wasn't that great (but I did dig the camera work for Kyle's shotgun switch while the HK flew overhead). Plot was terrible. Logic jumps. Just... terrible.

It doesn't even work as a popcorn flick because the action isn't really there until the end and it was bad action overall.
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I didn't like Salvation either but you didn't actually expect logic from a Terminator movie did you?
 
Terminator Salvation is like one of those generic action movies from the 80s-90s. The thing is what made the first two Terminator movies so good is that they shined above them. I just can't take this movie seriously I finally burst out laughing at the cheesy scene where the Terminator gave his heart to Conner.
 
I am watching this for the first time right now. Got it from NetFlix and...the GAF Collective was right in this case.

There are a ton of explosions, gunshots but the storyline was straight crap. I have never been so bored with so much action taking place in a movie. A retelling of the Terminator saga as a war movie would have been so easy to do, but they went into a direction that made no sense. Trying to add all these subplots just destroyed the entire movie. Made all the action scenes mean absolutely nothing. Just a very disappointing movie on all fronts.
 
Watched via PSN this weekend. It was an ok movie. Nothing spectacular. I really hated that damn stealth Sony plug.
 
vazel said:
Terminator Salvation is like one of those generic action movies from the 80s-90s.
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No, it's not. Action movies in the 80s - 90s were awesome. This one was a piece of shit for kids.

T3 was better.
 
Got the bluray as a gift from my brother. After watching it I'm going to use it as a coaster.

SkyNet HQ, super defended fortress of the machines, but hey, if you steal a bike you can hoof it there and infiltrate solo, no problem. And on this solo mission, you can rescue the hostages, all the while screaming "Get to the transport!".

What. Fucking. Transport?

And is there some Hollywood law that all centralized machine intelligences have to be represented by english females?

Oh and while the whole movie tries to explore the humanity of the man-machine hybrid dude, nobody bats a fucking eyelash when he offers to kill himself for a heart transplant. Everybody's just like, ehhh, fuck it, he's a droid, gut him for parts.

What a stupid and silly movie, and what an amazing pit of despair this series has fallen into. You couldn't fucking pay me to see another Terminator movie.

The only redeeming feature? That big mech making cars go boom. Thats it. I'd be fucking humiliated if I was Christian Bale.
 
Just saw it. I completely agree with those who thought it was better than T3. I thought it was way better, actually. I'm surprised how much I liked it. Nowhere near the first 2 though, obviously.
 
What's with the terminators not trying to kill humans?:lol




They just keep throwing them around like a cat playing with it's prey. If a Terminator has the chance to catch a human, it's should immediately lock em into a bear hug and crush them.
 
PjotrStroganov said:
What's with the terminators not trying to kill humans?:lol




They just keep throwing them around like a cat playing with it's prey. If a Terminator has the chance to catch a human, it's should immediately lock em into a bear hug and crush them.
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It wouldn't even take that much. One hydraulic hand gripping your neck would be way more than enough.
 
You know what? Finally saw it, and it was actually a very competent action movie. Some really good action sequences make me happy to say that there's not a dog in the entire Terminator franchise.

People who think it's better than T3 are on crack though.
 
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