Terminator Salvation Spoilery Discussion by Zeek

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Terminator Salvation Spoilery Discussion

POSTED BY: ZEEK
UPDATED: Friday, July 3, 2009 17:17
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Friday, May 22, 2009 5:44 AM

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Sorta surprised we don't have a discussion thread yet. Who else has seen it? What did you think?

As for me I thought it was a cool action movie, but the plot left a lot to be desired. Just think about the ending. What all really happened in the movie? They found Kyle Reese...that's it. The writers clearly got too wrapped up in their idea of examining the line between man and machine. The only problem is they really didn't cover it well at all. It made no sense that the machines created a human/machine hybrid and then left it will total free will and with his regular human brain. If they wanted to kill John Conner all they had to do was give the guy a gun and when he sees John have programming kick in to kill him. No instead Sky Net seemed to want him to choose to fight for the machines of his own free will. Dumb!

I really liked the Arnold cameo though. I thought that came at the perfect time and it was just enough of him.

Though at the same time John surviving impalement that sure looked like he at least lost a lung and part of his heart. That is far from believable. Also heart transplant in the outdoors in a little med hut? Please.

Also that one girl sure built up a lot of loyalty for machine guy in a day. Her plan was just "awww he saved me...I guess I'll save him even if he is evil and brings the machines down us hehe" . Dumb.

John's radio addresses sure were lucky that there were always people waiting around to listen at just the right time.

Still I rank it higher than T3 but below T1 and T2. If they make another Terminator they're going to need a reason to have a movie. This one just felt like we were watching some standard events in the lives of the resistance. I want to see the big moments not just the day to day.

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Friday, May 22, 2009 7:05 AM

DEWRASTLER

I was kind of hoping for more of a war movie, but I can see why they kept in line with the other movies about machines trying to kill John Connor personally. It seems like they really only wanted to make a movie that was similar to the others and payed homage to the previous films because they were too afraid to do anything original.

Also, what was up with Kate Connor? She was in it, but I don't think her name was mentioned. And she was pregnant, but this was never brought up. What was the point?

All in all, I agree that it was better than T3 but T2 is an ultimate action movie and can hardly be topped.

________________________________
People who don't care about anything will never understand the people who do

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Friday, May 22, 2009 7:08 AM

STORYMARK

The reason it looks like John shouldn't have survives his wound, is because he wasn't supposed to. There was a different ending originally in place, well, two variations on a different ending. Both involved John dying from his wounds. In the "lighter" of the two endings, they transplant his face onto Marcus, and Marcus becomes the new John - a machine leading the resistance. The other variation had Marcus become John again, but then go evil, and kill every remaining character, including Reece.

Granted, neither ending is any more plausible medically speaking than the one they did, but at least it would have been an interesting twist, rather than forcing the film to feel like one of the Star Wars prequels - everything laid out, so you know what's going to happen next.

I rather liked the first one, with Marcus taking over (I like the irony), but AICN leaked the ending months ago, and people freaked. So, they shot a new ending, which is what we have now.

"I thoroughly disapprove of duels. If a man should challenge me, I would take him kindly and forgivingly by the hand and lead him to a quiet place and kill him."

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Friday, May 22, 2009 8:49 AM

ZEEK

I just read about the original ending before coming back to check in. That did sound a little more interesting at least.

As for the pregnancy I just read that it's part of a plan for future movies. Movies where the Conner kids start to play important roles in the franchise. That sounds really stupid to me. Guess who cares about the kids? No one that's who.

I guess one of the problems I have is it feels like the fakes us out. They gave us the premise of the future war and then even this was kind of a prequel. John isn't yet the leader. They aren't winning the war. So, at the very least they need one more movie where he's clearly the leader and the humans are starting to turn the tide. Then they can start in with brand new material if they want. Really by then who's even going to care about a T6?

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Friday, May 22, 2009 9:05 AM

BLUESUNCOMPANYMAN

*Sigh*
My heart left the Terminator franchise with the end of T2 when "Future history changed". I've often held discussions of this with friends who disagree with me....who love the action and care less for the story. That's never been me.

Reese says many things to Sarah in the orginal film. He describes how humanity was on the brink, being herded into death camps for effecient disposal. He himself was a prisoner of one. The way Reese tells the story one of the people in a camp came to lead an uprising. That man's name was John Connor. Connor taught the people how to fight the machines, which themselves weren't bipedal at all. Reese describes how Connor knew the flaws in the early T models and "Taught us how to dust them". It was after an established resistence threatened skynet when the infiltrators appeared. Terminators were the newest, the worst. He describes to her in the parking garage scene that the "T-600 models had rubber skin, we spotted them easy" but the T-800 models were new.

All these statements imply that skynet evolved it's killing methods after humans built a Connor-led resistance. Salvation takes place in 2018. This is early in the war. Reese travels through time in 2029. My point in all of this is that previously established canon would lead us to believe that the T-600's we see in Salvation shouldn't be around yet. The T-800 was "new" to reese in 2029. The T-600 was around slightly earlier...say 2024. Where are these 600 and 800 models coming from in 2018? Why does arnold (series T-800 model 101) emerge to combat John in 2018 when Skynet developed it in 2028-2029?

Answer: There are too many people trying to write terminator stories. There is so much jumbled confusion. With alternate timeline BS people feel that they can just do...whatever they want. I hate it.

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Friday, May 22, 2009 9:12 AM

BLUESUNCOMPANYMAN

One high point:

Did anyone notice that the boom box John used to hijack a cycle terminator model was playing the same Guns & Roses song (You Could be Mine) as when he was on his moped with his buddy in the T2 film? Not only was it the same song, it was the same model Boom Box as well, but banged up and damaged as a function of Judgement Day survival.

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Friday, May 22, 2009 9:18 AM

ZEEK

Quote:
Originally posted by bluesuncompanyman:
With alternate timeline BS people feel that they can just do...whatever they want. I hate it.

I think that's the excuse but at the same time it's like they're only going half alternate timeline. They still have the same style terminators mentioned. They still have John becoming the leader. I would really think an all out change of the future would be cool. Throw us for a loop. We expect to see some of those future events come true so why not show them change radically? That would tell us that things aren't set in stone and we can't be sure what's going to happen in the next scene.

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Friday, May 22, 2009 9:55 AM

BLUESUNCOMPANYMAN

The way I've heard it described there are 3 timelines.

#1 The orginal. In 2029 John Connor's army smashes the final defense grid of Skynet. The Supercomputer sends a T-800 back just before it's memory core is destroyed by John's forces. The events of the 1st film play out.

#2 The inital timeline leaves no room for the development of a T-1000. Therefore a second timeline which we'll call #2 is created where John's efforts in 2029 do not fully kill the defense system. The war continues later than 2029 with the T-1000 emerging. This means that the entire T2 film was in this alternate timeline and therefore has no connection to #1 from the get-go, based upon the presence of the T-1000.

#3 The events of timeline #2 lead to cyberdine's destruction thus leading to a third future where judgement day delays past Aug 29, 1997. The third film and Salvation exist in this third line.

Sarah Connor Cronicles further murk up the water and perhaps lead to more timelines. I really don't care. What I want to see is:

One series of films/TV shows that focus on Timeline #1 and only Timeline #1. Period. No T-1000s. No stupid T-X models. Just the orginal future history story written in the orginal 1984 film

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Friday, May 22, 2009 10:12 AM

ZEEK

Really I think the first Terminator was more of a B movie. It was somewhat silly and of course being that it was the 80s the special effects are pretty bad. In fact a theater here did a MST3K thing of it that was really funny. Though I still give it props for having a plot that holds together fairly well except for the stupid Kyle is John's father thing. They just did that cause they wanted a dumb twist that made people scratch their heads IMO.

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Friday, May 22, 2009 10:28 AM

BLUESUNCOMPANYMAN

Quote:
Originally posted by Zeek:
the stupid Kyle is John's father thing.

You belittle the emotional core of the tale. Ah well.

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Friday, May 22, 2009 11:19 AM

ZEEK

Quote:
Originally posted by bluesuncompanyman:
Quote:
Originally posted by Zeek:
the stupid Kyle is John's father thing.
You belittle the emotional core of the tale. Ah well.

I don't like it because it's impossible. To me unless they explain how that one works then I don't like it. The explanations that I can buy is that the John we've seen has never been the John Conner of legend because the original John Conner had a father from his actual time period or we never got to see the original time line and we're just jumping into the story in the middle of a time loop.

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Friday, May 22, 2009 1:26 PM

DEWRASTLER

Quote:
Originally posted by Zeek:
Quote:
Originally posted by bluesuncompanyman:
Quote:
Originally posted by Zeek:
the stupid Kyle is John's father thing.
You belittle the emotional core of the tale. Ah well.

I don't like it because it's impossible. To me unless they explain how that one works then I don't like it. The explanations that I can buy is that the John we've seen has never been the John Conner of legend because the original John Conner had a father from his actual time period or we never got to see the original time line and we're just jumping into the story in the middle of a time loop.

By having Kyle be his father this turns John Connor into a messiah figure that just exists. He was always been and he will always be. He is our savior. It adds a little bit of depth to the movie rather than him just being some guy.

________________________________
People who don't care about anything will never understand the people who do

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Sunday, May 24, 2009 8:55 PM

JEWELSTAITEFAN

Well, Arnold didn't do a cameo - they CGI'd his 1980's mug onto that Kickinger guy's body - the body guy has a credit, Ahnold doesn't, he wasn't in it. (not sure how that image liscensing worked out).

Didn't heard mention of Kate Brewster's name - is she Connor now?

Hope this gives a boost to Moon Bloodgood's career.

Marcus had to have free will because the writers were channeling Ahnold's Total Recall torment into the role.

Was disappointed that they performed heart transplant surgery in the open sand dunes. right.

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Tuesday, May 26, 2009 5:05 AM

BLUESUNCOMPANYMAN

Quote:
Originally posted by jewelstaitefan:

Didn't heard mention of Kate Brewster's name - is she Connor now?

She was simply placed into the credits as "Kate Connor". There was no mention of a name, or the fact that she was pregnant.

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Tuesday, May 26, 2009 5:22 AM

STORYMARK

Quote:
Originally posted by Zeek:
Really I think the first Terminator was more of a B movie. It was somewhat silly and of course being that it was the 80s the special effects are pretty bad. In fact a theater here did a MST3K thing of it that was really funny. Though I still give it props for having a plot that holds together fairly well except for the stupid Kyle is John's father thing. They just did that cause they wanted a dumb twist that made people scratch their heads IMO.

Way to show you have only a surface understanding of the film. If you're gonna go - go shallow....

"I thoroughly disapprove of duels. If a man should challenge me, I would take him kindly and forgivingly by the hand and lead him to a quiet place and kill him."

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Tuesday, May 26, 2009 5:44 AM

CHRISISALL

Quote:
Originally posted by Zeek:

I don't like it because it's impossible.

It's not impossible by any means.
Read this for an explanation:
http://www.mjyoung.net/time/terminat.html

N-jump explains all.

The laughing Chrisisall

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Sunday, May 31, 2009 11:40 AM

SIGNO060

I thought it was alright. Worked as a summer movie I guess, but really nothing more. I mean McG was out there saying that they were going to reboot the franchise like Batman Begins and the Dark Knight did for Batman. I think he took that too seriously and John Connor inherited the Bat Growl for the whole movie. I felt Christian Bale was just yelling, doing the Bat Growl the whole time and falling back on his now overplayed action hero. Bale is definately is Bruce Wayne, but John Conner had to much Bruce Wayne in him this time around. There were some well shot action sequences, but some unbelievable stuff too. Like John Conner needed to see the leaders of the Resistance so bad that he jumps out of a helicopter into a raging sea hoping the sub will surface with divers and come get him before he drowns. And I agree that the movie didn't progress the terminator storyline all that much. And I guess Marcus was a Proto-type of a cybernetic organism. I really didnt feel like he was a terminator. In the Climax too we see the Arnold model come out. Felt that didnt need to happen. I would rate it the worst out of all of the terminators. At least T3 kept in the spirit of James Cameron's first two entries and had terminators committing some bloody gory violence. McG had the license to put more violence in this its Terminator after all people need to get Terminated. On the other hand Rated R movies don't sell tons of action figures.

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Thursday, June 18, 2009 3:24 PM

GRIPPER

Was anyone else disappointed ...at not hearing NIN's "The Day the World Went Away?" after the initial trailers??I kinda looke dofrward to hearing it in the soundtrack,having always considered "The Fragile" to be under-appreciated Trent Resnor music....

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Friday, June 19, 2009 9:24 AM

SIGNO060

Definately that song made the trailer.

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Saturday, June 20, 2009 7:04 AM

GRIPPER

It WAS pretty appropraite given th esituation-Marcus discovering that he ...was not the man he used to be

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Friday, July 3, 2009 5:17 PM

JAMERON4EVA

Quote:
Originally posted by bluesuncompanyman:
One high point:

Did anyone notice that the boom box John used to hijack a cycle terminator model was playing the same Guns & Roses song (You Could be Mine) as when he was on his moped with his buddy in the T2 film? Not only was it the same song, it was the same model Boom Box as well, but banged up and damaged as a function of Judgement Day survival.

Noticed that as well, GUNS N' F'N ROSES, HELL YEAH!!!!!!!!!!!!! "You could be mieine!"

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