Terminator Salvation - Was it really that bad?

I didn't like it. There was some good action sequences like the cg arnold and final fight. -Story wise it had a lot of plot holes.
-Characters reaction to situations didn't make sense.
The machines captured Reese, knew who he was, and what he'll do in the future. Instead of popping a cap on him, they pulled a stereotypical bond villain move. Let's lock him up and not kill him. I prefer to pretend salvation didn't happen.
 
And the cgi Arnold as well. It's the standard movie cliche. Big guy gets hero, but instead of killing him, throws him across the room until he finds something to kill the big guy. It had Connor in its hands. Crush his skull, rip off his head, and pull out his heart. Terminated.
It knew enough to attack whats his names heart, but not Connors.

But it's on TV twice today. I'm going to watch and hope it is somehow good this time. I want it to be good, but it never is.
 
And the cgi Arnold as well. It's the standard movie cliche. Big guy gets hero, but instead of killing him, throws him across the room until he finds something to kill the big guy. It had Connor in its hands. Crush his skull, rip off his head, and pull out his heart. Terminated.
Yeah, wouldn't that have been an interesting twist. All the fudging with time in T2 and T3 by Connor and co. altered the future to that extent that Connor actually got killed in T4 BEFORE he became the hero and savior.

When you start making it possible to change the future... you suddenly realize that whatever you knew... isn't accurate and that makes Connor a lot more fragile than if there wasn't any fudging and there was a fixed time line.
 
Just watched the beginning and lost interest. Even the T-600 with no legs grabbed Connor and threw him away. Then crawled after him, grabbed him again, and threw him away AGAIN. And then Connor got a machine gun and blew it away.

In T1 you just knew that if it got ahold of Sarah that was it. She would die. And now it's a bar fighting machine.
 
Agreed. It's lost the danger of the Terminator actually catching up to him. He's become a protective bubble of "cannot be killed".

And... there shouldn't even have been terminators in that part of the time-frame. So again... making changes just screws up perfectly good stories.

And Connor should be an unknown to the machines at that time... as well as Reese... but nooo... it's more "dangerous" to have them KNOW about both... AND... fudge up killing both... man... wonder if Reese and Connor are superheroes.
 
Here's the thing.

The good terminator movies (part one and 2) are not nearly as good as people think they are and the bad ones (part 3 and Salvation) Aren't nearly as bad as people say they are.

The only part of this franchise that is accurately praised is the sarah connor chronicles.


I just watched Salvation last night and my criticisms are very few and far in between:

1. the machines were too influenced by Bayformers
2. Chirstian Bale was miscast. Nick Stahl would have been great
3. Some of the action was lame. (Especially that huge robot that showed up in the middle of the desert)
4. Digital arnie was fan service of the wrong kind. No one wanted that
5. Skynet never really had a plan once they had connor and reese trapped.
6. PG 13

Other than that, it was pretty great. The entire Marcus plot was wonderful. I could have used less john connor. Hell, the movie didn't even need Connor.
 
Personally, I think the Marcus plot was what killed the movie, just wasn't any need for it I thought.
I think if they want to do stories about the post judgement day era, they have to frame it well using ideas like this.

John leading the resistance is like the "happily ever after" era of the terminator franchise.

I don't think that will ever be interesting.


We need to see different stories in that era. Which is why I this movie would have been better without John. Just have Marcus and reese. Heck, the SCC knew this, which is why they never portrayed "future John" at all. He's more like a myth in this series.
 
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Personally, I think the Marcus plot was what killed the movie, just wasn't any need for it I thought.

Salvation is what killed the film. The whole film just killed itself. I can only think of two things I didn't HATE about the film. None of those for the right reason :lol

At least TSCC had Summer Glau and her brilliant terminator portrayal.
 
Here's what I'd like to see, comic, animation, film, just in something:
Beginning of the uprising, after the bombs fell, random military unit surviving against machines. Rubber terminators, crappy looking because that's what they were, no super clean looking models yet. Mad Max type scavengers, more threats in the world besides just machines, Walking Dead type choices made in the name of survival. Have the unit start out humanized and wanting to help eachother through everything, but the world gets hard, and slowly the unit tears itself apart.

If anything needs a dark and gritty reboot, make a future war dark and gritty. Making it more than just man vs machine would give the plot more depth and heart. Having John vs a "newer and even more advanced'r terminator: now with more terminating" is overdone. Termy vs termy is also very used. Have humans arguing over who gets the meaty parts of a rat dinner. Throw in some slightly mutated humans going crazy and giving away positions, and the military having to shut them up. Have the story seem tragic as all heck, then have Kyle show up and start to bring the team together again and ends with Kyle recruiting more soldiers. No John appearances, its early in the war still, he can show up halfway through part 2 lol.
 
I totally agree the future war needs to be Terminator + Walking Dead rather than Terminator + Transformers. The drama was already there 30 years ago before it needed to be ripping off the latest Michael Bay movie. There is so much talk about human drama over special effects in Hollywood but the movies never seem to show it.

But in my world the whole franchise would get a totally clean slate reboot. No Cameron movies, no Arnold, no JC being born in 1984 . . . completely utterly start over on it. Trying to cram more shows into the old continuity is not always the most respectful thing to do with an old franchise.
 
The strength of all of our stories comes from human drama. Contemporary WWII films like Saving Private Ryan or HBO's Band of Brothers miniseries aren't compelling because of a gimmick like Matt Damon revealed as a cybernetic hybrid, nor are they less interesting because we know how the war ultimately ends. It's entirely possible to get into that situation and establish characters we'll root for and care about, but that takes storytelling effort which doesn't easily drop into Hollywood's preferred paint-by-numbers template for box office success. It's unfortunate and shortsighted, because good original stories seem to be a more consistent indicator of success than the summer blockbuster formula, and often with lower production costs and higher profits on those tickets.
 
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