T4 Terminator Salvation: The Future Begins

SirLemonhead

Yeah the boyfriend. Arnie gets pushed around a fair bit in return by him too.

What does he say again? "I'm gonna bust you up man!"?

monkeyfudge

You're not supposed to know he's a robot at that stage though, so I guess that was the reasoning behind the scene.

KerranJast

monkeyfudge wrote: »

You're not supposed to know he's a robot at that stage though, so I guess that was the reasoning behind the scene.

I'm pretty sure ripping a mans heart out with your bare hand inside normal human behaviour

paulieeye

i feel dirty for saying this but u cud tear a few holes in T1 too. Like after the car chase that ends in Sarah and Kyle getting arrested, arnie sneaks away where he coulda just walked over to the goodies car and blow them away with the cops lookin on. That and the throw matt around bit. But i think we can let em away with these few things. T4 on the other hand...

faceman

paulieeye wrote: »

i feel dirty for saying this but u cud tear a few holes in T1 too. Like after the car chase that ends in Sarah and Kyle getting arrested, arnie sneaks away where he coulda just walked over to the goodies car and blow them away with the cops lookin on. That and the throw matt around bit. But i think we can let em away with these few things. T4 on the other hand...

Id also argue that the whole cyborg coming back from the future is a bit far fetched too but thats just nit picking!

_Kaiser_

lostexpectation wrote: »

what film is the ' i can be any face you like' from ?

Dunno if this was answered as still reading through the thread, but it was Star Trek V when "God" tells Sybok that he has many faces

Actually... come to think of it:
- Worst film of the series.. check!
- Plot where the not-quite-villain of the story is lured to a particular place, but only so as to bring someone/something else the REAL villain needs... check
- Everyone runs for it just before the big explosion... check

I think Paramount should sue!

More thoughts after I finish reading...

_Kaiser_

Trevor Coulahan wrote: »

Let’s face it, the reason Cameron never made another Terminator movie was because the story arc had ended, the characters had come full circle.
Terminator 3, Terminator Salvation and the TV story only serve to cheapen the last scenes of T2.

As much as I want to see more terminator movies, sometimes it’s just better to leave things alone.

George Lucas, are you listening??

lostexpectation

the whole factory setting, there bit where there on the gangway and he starts shooting him with a shotgun, singlehandedly reloading, all from preious movies

paulieeye

faceman wrote: »

Id also argue that the whole cyborg coming back from the future is a bit far fetched too but thats just nit picking!

Theres always one..:rolleyes:

Jazzy

i enjoyed it. thought the blowing up of stuff was brilliant. its a hell of a lot better then T3. its a completely new beginning for the franchise and its ditched the chase movie tag and gone for all action, something which is great with popcorn but there isnt that much suspense.
the giant mech like terminator rocked balls. more of that sorta thing pls

SoupyNorman

Jazzy wrote: »

more of that sorta thing pls

You're in luck - and done 7000times better btw.

SirLemonhead

monkeyfudge wrote: »

You're not supposed to know he's a robot at that stage though, so I guess that was the reasoning behind the scene.

Ah, true. I'd love to have seen the film not knowing that myself. Would have made the Tech Noir scene even greater when he slowly rises up after being shot

SirLemonhead

paulieeye wrote: »

i feel dirty for saying this but u cud tear a few holes in T1 too. Like after the car chase that ends in Sarah and Kyle getting arrested, arnie sneaks away where he coulda just walked over to the goodies car and blow them away with the cops lookin on. That and the throw matt around bit. But i think we can let em away with these few things. T4 on the other hand...

Yeah but he was pretty damaged at that stage, you could argue. His hand didn't work and his eye was messed up. Might have been out of ammo. Better to sneak off, fix himself up and get the big guns. He knew they'd be arrested and taken to the police station. No chance to run away while he's fighting 4-5 cars worth of cops

paddyismaddy

finally got round to seeing this and must admit i enjoyed it i had heard plenty of negatives about it

Snake Plisken

paddyismaddy wrote: »

finally got round to seeing this and must admit i enjoyed it i had heard plenty of negatives about it

Totally agree with you bought it on Blu-Ray ages ago but never got around to watching it. Watched it last week and I thought it was excellent fairplay to McG for doing justice to the Terminator series, after the mess that was Terminator 3.

BlitzKrieg

ahh I love this thread.

its one of those epic 12 month long threads that is actually more entertaining to read then to watch the non entity that was terminator salvation, with its plot that has absolutly no point or relevence on the mythos beyond a few nudge nudge wink wink nods to small quirks in terminator 1. Throw in some unimaginative and dull dragged out action set pieces and the character assassination of john connor aand you got a film that is difficult to outright hate but really easy to forget and never speak of again.

red dave

I thought T4 was great. Even went to the cinema twice to see it. Action scenes were superb especially

the chopper crashing

Faith+1

Just to let you's know the Screen in D'olier street is showing T2 on the 20th.
Wonder how much they'll charge?

Goldstein

Dear God, how do people like this movie? I thought it was terrible.

Even if you weren't around for T1 or T2 this is still pretty poor, have you noticed that there is no plot??? or script???. Apparently Christian Bale was in it but I didn't notice. It was a truly abysmal effort at the Terminator franchise, "McG" (How up himself is he by the way?) would do better making more Charlie's Angel's sequels.

(Insert random illogical helicopter crash scene for no reason)

indough

the only reason anyone likes it a all is because it somehow still managed to be better than the 3rd installment

the nods to the first 2 movies were horribly cringe worthy

Handsome Bob

Goldstein wrote: »

Watch T2 again and tell me with a straight face that this wasn't a load of bollix.

That's your problem right there, you walked into the cinema expecting, nay, demanding quality at the level of T1 and T2. McG was never, EVER, going to produce something on a par with James Cameron's films.

Compare TS to most of the action films out these days and it is a very solid film. Jesus christ, give me TS anyday over The Expendables, The A-Team, GI Joe or The Losers.

Goldstein

LZ5by5 wrote: »

That's your problem right there, you walked into the cinema expecting, nay, demanding quality at the level of T1 and T2. McG was never, EVER, going to produce something on a par with James Cameron's films.

Compare TS to most of the action films out these days and it is a very solid film. Jesus christ, give me TS anyday over The Expendables, The A-Team, GI Joe or The Losers.

My first post was a bit hasty but this one was just a huge disappointment for me. I didn't expect it to live up to 1 or 2 obviously. What I did demand it live up to, however, was its own trailers and the pedigree of the cast it had at its disposal, wherein it failed miserably. The plot really was bottom drawer stuff when you consider the scope that existed when given free reign of the Terminator universe.

Taking the Sarah Connor Chronicles as an example, it's still possible to produce compelling and interesting additions to the Terminator franchise without doing a Michael Bay on it. We were denied the Terminator movie a more capable writer/director would have delivered given the same resources "McG":rolleyes: was given.

I should also mention that I thought Sam Worthington was excellent as movies only redeeming feature.

I agree it was better than the A-Team, The Expendables & The Losers but that's not exactly high praise and I wasn't expecting anything in excess of the mediocre efforts they turned out to be. If I was 10 again I would have loved GI Joe though.

Handsome Bob

Alas your point about the trailer is very true, it promised more than it delivered, that's the problem with trailers these days. It's too easy to make a film look like a million bucks when in reality it's anything but.

sky88

i just didnt like it at all i could see what they were trying to do in the film but i think they failed at it even as a stand alone away from the rest of the terminator films it wasnt good

BlitzKrieg

i actually enjoyed the a team and gi joe more then terminator salavation they both had better set pieces and more memorable moments then the non entity of terminator salvation. havnt seen the expendables or the losers.

tommyboy2222

Compare TS to most of the action films out these days and it is a very solid film. Jesus christ, give me TS anyday over The Expendables, The A-Team, GI Joe or The Losers.

Agree with you there.

However it was a very average film.

SirLemonhead

At least it was better than T3 and the tv show :pac:

Skerries

SirLemonhead wrote: »

At least it was better than T3 and the tv show :pac:

be careful, you might have all the Summer Glau fans coming out of the woodwork

juma

indough wrote: »

the nods to the first 2 movies were horribly cringe worthy

Why did you think they were cringe worthy?

krudler

Am I the only person that prefers T3 to this? yeah its not without massive faults but theres a great Terminator movie in there somewhere, TS is a good sci fi movie with a Terminator storyline tacked on.

I love how T3 ends,

its ballsy for a big budget Hollywood summer movie to end on the end of the world.

Goldstein

krudler wrote: »

Am I the only person that prefers T3 to this? yeah its not without massive faults but theres a great Terminator movie in there somewhere, TS is a good sci fi movie with a Terminator storyline tacked on.

I love how T3 ends,

its ballsy for a big budget Hollywood summer movie to end on the end of the world.

No, you're not the only one. T3 was the better movie as I see it and it had Arnie (for more than 2 seconds) and a somewhat plausible plot.

The remote controlled cars scene was idiotic alright but as you say, there was a good movie struggling to get out. Definitely more loyal to the franchise than Salvation was.

"Drop your weapon.......and the coffin" C'mon, that was pretty cool.

indough

juma wrote: »

Why did you think they were cringe worthy?

serious question? how anyone could watch him driving a bike listening to the guns n roses song or the cgi arnie at the end without feeling at least abit uncomfortably embarrassed is beyond me

also the scene where he talks to youknowwho as the computer near the end was embarrassingly poor

Galvasean

Krudler, can you please be more careful when talking about the end of movies. Spoiler tags please.

re: T3 vs T4. I prefer T4 as for all it's faults it is at least it's own film, wheras T3 just feels like a rehashed 'bigger badder' version of T2.

JP Liz V1

Sam Worthington had the better role and completely outshone Christian Bale for me

Handsome Bob

That's because Sam had the better role, it's as simple as that.

The same thing can be said about the upcoming Micky Ward film starring Bale and Mark Wahlberg. Everyone is going on about Bale looking great in the trailer while dumping on Wahlberg, but that's only because Bale maybe has the more interesting and fascinating role than Wahlberg does.

At the end of the day, it's all about the quality of the character, and how much time he is given. It's not really a case of one actor outshining the other.

Ditto in regards to Bale and Ledger in TDK, people go on about Ledger outshining Bale and he did, but that's not because he out acted him, it was because The Joker was by far the best role in the film to have.

Goodshape

T3 was awful. Absolutely, dreadfully, awful.

Having Arnie's saggy 90 year old man tits on screen does not make it a good film, it just shows an utter lack of original thinking.

T4 wasn't great but at least it wasn't T3.

Lamper.sffc

Any film that would do this to the classic openings of the first two deserves to rot and never be discussed again. There is no T3.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=inPijjFNNSI

Dempsey

Goodshape wrote: »

T3 was awful. Absolutely, dreadfully, awful.

Having Arnie's saggy 90 year old man tits on screen does not make it a good film, it just shows an utter lack of original thinking.

T4 wasn't great but at least it wasn't T3.

He had the same body weight and muscle measurements in T2 and T3

Mackman

Galvasean wrote: »

re: T3 vs T4. I prefer T4 as for all it's faults it is at least it's own film, wheras T3 just feels like a rehashed 'bigger badder' version of T2.

+1, T3 has pretty much the same story as T2, nothing original about it at all. Its a good action flick alright, but its definatly the worst in the series.

As for T4, i enjoyed it a lot. Its not as good as T2, but not many action movies are IMO. I even bought it on Blu-Ray the other day, looking forward to watching it again

Goodshape

Dempsey wrote: »

He had the same body weight and muscle measurements in T2 and T3

That was sort of a cheap dig; he did look great for his age.

But, muscle measurements aside, he did look his age and the whole thing just felt like fanboy appeasement. "zomg! you cant hav Terminator without Arnie! zomg, arnie's the greatest!!".

He's a frackin robot. They're interchangeable! I would have been much more interested in seeing Linda Hamilton back and even that I would have sacrificed for a decent story. As it turned out, we got nothing. Just comedy moments with misunderstandings in gay bars and sexy cyborgs using Internet dialup tones straight out of 1996.


I remember being quite excited about T3, and watching T1+2 back-to-back the night before. Huge mistake. Just brought the whole atrocity into perspective.

Dempsey

Goodshape wrote: »

That was sort of a cheap dig; he did look great for his age.

But, muscle measurements aside, he did look his age and the whole thing just felt like fanboy appeasement. "zomg! you cant hav Terminator without Arnie! zomg, arnie's the greatest!!".

He's a frackin robot. They're interchangeable! I would have been much more interested in seeing Linda Hamilton back and even that I would have sacrificed for a decent story. As it turned out, we got nothing. Just comedy moments with misunderstandings in gay bars and sexy cyborgs using Internet dialup tones straight out of 1996.


I remember being quite excited about T3, and watching T1+2 back-to-back the night before. Huge mistake. Just brought the whole atrocity into perspective.

I actually thought the CGI effort in T4 was the better option for the T800. The fanboy's might not have liked it but I thought it worked well considering the T800 is suppose to look 'timeless'.

As for Arnie's appearance/age, he looked different in all 3 films if you want to be fair. Just that T2 was so good, that gets overlooked. Its just a pity that the franchise went to development hell after T2 and Cameron went onto other projects.

One of the things that annoyed me greatly, and its happening with alot of films is the toning down of violence solely to get larger target audiences.

You can easily watch 1,2 & 4 and not be lost bar wondering where Sarah Connor was (which scenes could have been easily done for T4 to tie that up)

Mostow's film was a parody sequel of T2 which he should receive capital punishment for

Snake Plisken

Am i the only one who thought that T2 was a bit of a let down after T1? I loved T1 back when it first hit VHS, I then went to see T2 when it came out and ok from a tech/stunt aspect it was great, but I thought they should have left Arnie be a bad terminator, I thought this might have been an Arnie demand that he be good but it was Cameron's as I saw an interview with Arnie that when he read the script he told Cameron that it wouldn't work as he got to kill no one.

Dempsey

Snake Plisken wrote: »

Am i the only one who thought that T2 was a bit of a let down after T1? I loved T1 back when it first hit VHS, I then went to see T2 when it came out and ok from a tech/stunt aspect it was great, but I thought they should have left Arnie be a bad terminator, I thought this might have been an Arnie demand that he be good but it was Cameron's as I saw an interview with Arnie that when he read the script he told Cameron that it wouldn't work as he got to kill no one.

I think Cameron got the story right, Arnie as a bad terminator in T2 would be nothing but a rehash of the first one really but better done stunts. The T1000 was so much better at infiltration

Goodshape

Yeah, the swtich was good storywise. Sarah having to come to terms with it, putting her life in the hands of her worst nightmare. The conflict between trusting this "good" robot and knowing that that, essentially, is what starts the whole mess. Great film .

T1 is equally great, I would say. It's a bit like Alien/Aliens with the shift in tone from horror/thriller to action/thriller.

DirkVoodoo

If by "remaining faithful" you mean that terminator was simply a rehash, a cheap imitation bordering on parody (I'm sorry, walking into a biker bar and it's "ladies night" is something I would have expected from SNL) then I have to disagree. Terminator 3 was guilty of the same crimes that Superman Returns committed, namely being too afraid to stray from a more successful prequel and in the end offering nothing new.

The franchise, if it needed continuation, had to move into the future and show us the war against the machines that all the movies hinted at. Unfortunately McG was not the director to do this and the script had a ridiculous plot asking a simple question of what it means to be human. The original idea was probably more interesting before Bale wanted to be Connor, forcing his character to be rewritten and expanded, along with the new ending (the first ending sounded far more interesting and much more of a ballsy effort than the ending of T3).

However the basic story was pretty poor, we never really saw a world overrun by terminators or humanity struggling for survival, in fact it seems if you stayed away from San Francisco you were pretty safe. Bale's Connor was never shown as a true leader and saviour of humanity, just as a man obsessed by prophecy. In fact, they should have ditches the whole "chicken and egg" philosophy, it really bogged the movie down - "So wait, you don't matter anymore, the human race doesn't matter, all that matters is saving Kyle Reese?". This is the future now, let's not worry about time travel and who has to go back in time and screw who, it just makes the movie less fun.

But above all, I never got the impression that machines were taking over the world. I mean, what the hell have they been doing between T3 and T4 except sending out a few terminators to rust away in piles or urban rubble?

Dempsey

However the basic story was pretty poor, we never really saw a world overrun by terminators or humanity struggling for survival, in fact it seems if you stayed away from San Francisco you were pretty safe. Bale's Connor was never shown as a true leader and saviour of humanity, just as a man obsessed by prophecy. In fact, they should have ditches the whole "chicken and egg" philosophy, it really bogged the movie down - "So wait, you don't matter anymore, the human race doesn't matter, all that matters is saving Kyle Reese?". This is the future now, let's not worry about time travel and who has to go back in time and screw who, it just makes the movie less fun.

The point in time where the terminators have overrun the resistance and when John Connor is recognised as the leader of the resistance is 2029, T4 is set around 2018 AFAIK.

He only received his scars at the end, the same ones you see in T2

Still, all you had to do was turn on a radio to alert a scout party.

Did you really expect everyone to believe, straight away, a guy with zero military training was ready to lead a war?

I didnt like the way skynet explained their plan to Marcus, it felt like watching an old Bond movie

Handsome Bob

Dempsey wrote: »

Did you really expect everyone to believe, straight away, a guy with zero military training was ready to lead a war?

Very true, to add to that as well, you wouldn't really expect the military hierarchy to bow down to the guy either until he actually demonstrates leadership skills beyond being privy to information about Skynet and the Terminators.

Goldstein

So I watched T4 again, in its entirity, just to be sure.
I'm just gonna spoiler the whole thing - for the record, you shouldn't be here at this stage if you haven't seen it yet.

Hey, I've got a good idea for a terminator - let's give him a ridiculous weakness for no reason, ...perhaps a human heart. He's lucky Luke Skywalker didn't turn up in a small x-wing and mistake him for a death star.

If I ever get impaled through the chest by a girder-wielding T800, that's definitely the surgical team I want performing my in the field heart transplant. No doubt.

That's assuming I live long enough to: (with no heart remember)

1. Survive being carried out of a tall skyscraper (Which was important somehow)
2. Survive the helicopter ride to "the nearest safe zone" (Which I'm thinking could be a bit of a jaunt away from Skynetopolis) Although they did disable that 1 gun turret so all should be well.
3. Survive long enough for it to be daytime in the next scene.
4. Survive long enough for robot buddy to donate his heart (ahhhhh I see what they did there, the weakness must have been put in there for this, that's incredible writing), touching moment with Father, touching moment with robot & hot chick pilot etc.
5. Survive the actual (triage) heart transplant.

Still though, just as well the little 5 year old girl picked up the remote detonator and passed it to the (heartless at this point) Connor so he could blow up Skynet's (skyscraper factory we'll call it) or the entire episode would have been a bit of a waste of time.

Also a good job Skynet didn't just kill Reese when it found him (target #1 we're told, even more important to kill than Connor) or it would have been problem solved (No more John Connor). Skynet could have kept the T800 from T1, the T-X from T3 and all the TSCC T's and used them as bowling buddies instead. The imprisonment for no reason option was certainly the way at go.

Skynet is software. Skynet is not a building - And I'm not buying the token "oh ya, I forgot that fact" disclaimer in the last scene.

The entire movie made no sense, none. I mean God help MCG if I was to go through the entire movie like I did its last 10 minutes.

T3 was crap, and a complete regurgitation of T2, but I stand by the assumption that it was better (if not prettier) than T4, just because T4 was (even more) utterly ridiculous. I think I watched a different movie to most people in this thread.

(Assume there are many of these: :rolleyes: dispursed throughout the above but you know - readability and all that.)

BlitzKrieg

The franchise, if it needed continuation, had to move into the future and show us the war against the machines that all the movies hinted at. Unfortunately McG was not the director to do this and the script had a ridiculous plot asking a simple question of what it means to be human. The original idea was probably more interesting before Bale wanted to be Connor, forcing his character to be rewritten and expanded, along with the new ending (the first ending sounded far more interesting and much more of a ballsy effort than the ending of T3).

I said it waaaaaaay back on page 1, but I actually felt going into the future was the biggest mistake the franchise did.

Going into the future removes pretty much everything that made terminator interesting.

The time travel, the infiltration unit, being forced to use modern weapons, the disjointed flashforwards of the impending horror mixed with the disorientation (t1) of time travel or obsessive motherly fear (t2) hell even the grim responsibility of T3 touched it briefly. These are what made terminator unique.


Remove the past and time travel and it loses alot of what makes terminator interesting.

Its the same as the matrix series, take out the matrix and focus on the war against the machines and zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.

It just too wide and bland of a narrative scope. Hell we dont even do it with war films.

So if they do decide that a fifth film is possible (and not a reboot) they need to work in at least time travel again. To scrape back something interesting hopefully.

Faith+1

BlitzKrieg wrote: »

So if they do decide that a fifth film is possible (and not a reboot) they need to work in at least time travel again. To scrape back something interesting hopefully.

It's already in post production!


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bBBw9E2Q_aY