Terminator Salvation...

[dennis tooth]

Yes the computer's plot hinged on Sarah Connor being killed in the first one which didn't happen. So it got destroyed and then what? Also I understand the Sarah Connor Chronicals rubbish loads of the T3 storyline anyway?

[Tyler Durden]

To be honest ive never watched much of it because it looked shite (never really liked film spin offs anyway) but i know that cyberdyne was never fully destroyed and was then taken over by the military after T2.

Skynet was about to be destroyed in what is the latest point in the whole timeline 2032 i think it was.

[Scott_M]

God sake Philly, you can understand Spock going back in time but can't grasp Terminator doing it?

 

Without being rude, you've already said something in another thread along the lines of 'I hope every film this summer is shit so Star Trek is the best'. TBH, that's kind of making your views on this film irrelevant.

[Special K]

To be fair to Philly, I went to see both Terminator and Star Trek yesterday. Star Trek pissed on Terminator from a great height.

 

Yes it's got big explosions but, as a film, it doesn't make a whole lot of sense. I didn't care for a single character and the ending was beyond ridiculous.

[Duff Man]

Peter Bradshaw wasn't a fan:

 

With much buzzing' date=' beeping and whirring, the Terminator franchise comes to an absolute creative standstill, or even goes clankingly into reverse, with this fantastically dull fourth episode. Look closely in the battle scenes and you can see one of the red-eye Terminator robots yawning, leaning over to another robot and mouthing the words: "I actually voted for Stavros Flatley."

 

It is set in that post-nuclear future of smoky wreckage, CGI ruination, battered bridges and buggered buildings prophesied in James Cameron's original 1984 film. The star is notorious crosspatch Christian Bale, playing John Connor, the freedom fighter battling robot-machine tyranny. Connor, you will recall, is the resistance hero whom the machines tried to wipe out by sending California's future governor Arnold Schwarzenegger back in time to whack his mom. Connor and his comrades discover what they think is a kryptonite-type weapon which will win the war: a signal transmitter that appears to immobilise the robots.

 

They certainly need all the help they can get. Because Connor has chanced upon evidence that the machines have developed an all-new, human-looking super-duper, so-unstoppable-it-makes-previous-Terminators-look-stoppable Terminator. Where, oh where, can this chilling prototype be? Meanwhile, a mysterious warrior hoves into view, insinuating himself into the resistance fighters' ranks: one Marcus Wright, played by the Australian actor Sam Worthington. But as we have already seen this same character in the pre-credit sequence on death row, pledging his body to science, it isn't hard to guess his tragically conflicted secret. Inevitably, we are to be reintroduced to that self-defeating concept already rolled out in T2: the "nice" Terminator, the Terminator we're sort of supposed to be rooting for.

 

Fundamentally, Connor and Wright utterly cancel each other out; all the crash-bang action is entirely uninvolving, looking frankly less exciting than the chase scene at the beginning of Walt Disney's Bolt. There's nothing to compare with the magnificent showdown between Arnie and Linda Hamilton at the end of the first movie, and the only woman on view here is Bryce Dallas Howard, playing Connor's winsomely pregnant partner who is at all times wringing wet.

 

If the contest was about who can be the dullest, Bale would win hands down. His belligerent, resentful facial expression is that of a stunned ox, or a vexed moose, or a rhino that thinks it's overheard someone calling its mum a slag. All the world has now heard the famous on-set meltdown that Bale had while making this film, weirdly maintaining his American accent while raging at director of photography Shane Hurlbut for messing with the lights while Bale was trying to do a scene. (Almost as many will have heard his apology, phoned into an LA radio station, expressing concern that anyone would have thought less of Hurlbut, and emphasising that he is in fact an outstanding professional.) Perhaps the tantrum should be released as a bonus feature with the DVD - or perhaps it is rather that the film should be the bonus feature, and Bale's super-strop the main event. It is certainly more exciting and more deeply felt than anything in the fictional action.

 

The terminators themselves, once so scary, are now starting to resemble a chorus line of grumpy C3POs. And despite being notionally formidable warriors, they have an unfortunate eccentricity, which is to prove convenient for the narrative. If you can get close enough to stab them in the back of the neck, they go limp and floppy for a good few minutes! What a very unfortunate design flaw for these Terminators. Why didn't the "machines", those implacable foes of humanity, think to stick a metal plate on the back of their necks?

 

And the other thing is, for the third time, he's beck. The original Terminator comes very briefly out of retirement, digitally created to look like Arnold Schwarzenegger as he was 25 years ago, in his primped, pumped pomp. Oddly, this obviously unreal Arnie doesn't look as excitingly and creepily unreal as the actual, real, non-CGI Schwarzenegger did all those years ago. Nothing and no one in this film looks as gloriously mad as he did in 1984, and no one is capable of the droll, subversive hints of humour that helped to make the film and its star such a smash.

 

Famously, Schwarzenegger's later switch from movies to politics was so quick that he was fully installed as governor of California just as the DVD edition of Terminator 3: The Rise of the Machines hit the stores. Well, now that his career in public office is beginning to tank, who knows if the de facto leader of Hollywood's Austrian-American community won't be back for T5? After all, Sly Stallone returned for another Rocky and another Rambo. Perhaps Arnie will feel the need to stick in the old red contact lenses for another sentimental outing. Perhaps this can be all about the problems that a Terminator faces in his autumnal years: the slowing up, the grandchildren, the bittersweet visits to the prostate clinic. It couldn't be worse than this.

.[/quote']

[Scott_M]

Star Trek pissed on Terminator from a great height.

 

I don't deny that.

[Special K]

I don't deny that.

 

Sorry mate, I wasn't saying that you weren't. I was just giving my, very brief, appraisal of the 2 films.

[philyhamann]

God sake Philly, you can understand Spock going back in time but can't grasp Terminator doing it?

 

Without being rude, you've already said something in another thread along the lines of 'I hope every film this summer is shit so Star Trek is the best'. TBH, that's kind of making your views on this film irrelevant.

 

There was fundamental problems with the plot which means you can't really be engaged. You're only supposed to like John Connor cause you've been told he is a hero. I can write a list of reasons why this films plot is retarded.

 

They should've hired a decent director not MC FUCKIN G.

[hamstrung]

Its getting slated to fuck by every decent critic. I won't bother.

[Section_31]

Will watch it on Sunday, at the end of the day it's got Michael Ironside in, so it'll have to work very hard indeed to disappoint me.

[dennis tooth]

What's Mark Comode saying is the only question?

[hamstrung]

What's Mark Comode saying is the only question?

 

Mark slated it at 3.30 this afternoon.

 

He seems to have a problem with McG

[dennis tooth]

If he slates a film I probably won't bother to watch it but this is Terminator so it will probably delay bothering to watch it for me.

[Unrighteous]

I was excited to see it but might give it a swerve now... people not liking it, really.

[NickConklin]

Just got back from watching it and only one word for it DULL.

Forget the plot holes etc u got to watch these films for "action and adventure" but god this was boring. Bale looks like he realises hes in a crap film and cant wait to get out of there the Marcus character is the most interesting but the whole premise of him doesnt make sense and when the CGI Arnie turns up then im afraid I gave In. The best I can say about it was that its isnt shit its just nothing and pointless.

[Lefti]

I'm a fan of the new one, they did what they could with it. Think its setting up for an even better T5 and T6. Thought the actor they got in to play Kyle Reece was spot on, Bale puts in a solid effort as Connor.

 

However, the director couldn't steer away from a few cheesy moments "i'll be back!" and also they played the T2 sound track Guns n Roses - You could be mine in the film.

 

A solid 7/10 imo.

[philyhamann]

Saw it tonight. Wish I had gone with my instincts and saw Star Trek again.

 

LOL! Joke film.

[philyhamann]

seriously

 

what a stupid fucking film. i really think i could write a better screenplay than the majority of people in hollywood. writing a blockbuster is in no way hard.

[Unrighteous]

seriously

 

what a stupid fucking film. i really think i could write a better screenplay than the majority of people in hollywood. writing a blockbuster is in no way hard.

 

Basic storyline premise works like this: Introduce Hero, Put Hero up a tree, Throw rocks at Hero, Hero solves the problem, Ending.

[1892-LFCWasBorn]

Why can't they just fucking leave the Terminator thing alone? It's been rinsed to death for crying out loud.

[snez1]

If "you could be mine" is in it them i'm watching it. What a tune.

[Section_31]

If "you could be mine" is in it them i'm watching it. What a tune.

 

Aye, video is top too. The clips at the very beginning were cut from the film when it was released, it was originally going to show the older John Connor breaking into Cyberdine and reprogramming the terminator.

 

This is the kind of tune I'd play in the car if I was driving to someone's house to kill them. Not that it's ever crossed my mind.

 

[YOUTUBE]1C2dGRoaZ1A[/YOUTUBE]

[philyhamann]

I also thought cameron's vision of the future was a lot better and grim. This one felt more like resident fucking evil or terminator on a beach.

[Section_31]

I also thought cameron's vision of the future was a lot better and grim. This one felt more like resident fucking evil or terminator on a beach.

 

Cameron's filming in T2 was quality, he used filters like Michael Mann uses to create that LA hue, either gold or blue.

[Bourbon]

Cameron's filming in T2 was quality, he used filters like Michael Mann uses to create that LA hue, either gold or blue.

 

Heat and Collateral being the two finest examples.

 

Terminator is a load of sci fi bollocks and shite within that genre, too.

 

If anyone is weighing up which load of sci fi nonsense to watch, go for star trek; its basically american hero pap but is fun and easy to take in.