Watching Terminator Salvation on the tele...

[shootemindehead]

...can someone explain why this film is so hated?

[bassman]

I don't really see it as hated, but it's just.....plain. I personally don't think it's a particularly awful movie, but it lacks the spark of Cameron's two films and just leaves me with a stale taste in my mouth. My favorite part of Salvation is Anton Yelchin's performance as young Kyle Reese. I thought he was absolutely perfect for that. Lots of little nods to the original film if you look for them, too...

[Andy]

I Caught salvaition for the first time tonight and i have to admit it was nowhere as bad as id pressumed it to be, in fact i was really impressed when a young arnie walked out..

[SymphonicX]

It was pretty strong through most of it but it fell apart during the last half hour. Helena Bonham Carter's face appearing as the face of Skynet...and a heart transplant in the desert, with no medical equipment....hmm. Most of it was strong though, but like Superman Returns it just completely lacked magic.

[MinionZombie]

One of the biggest problems with it are the "super Terminators" that are totally at odds with the established lore of the first two movies. It was the same problem with T3. It isn't T3-level bad, but it's not good either. Great production design, but the plot is pretty dull, that stupid mute kid is annoying as all get out, it's PG-13, all the Terminators fart in this movie (that weird robotic growling noise), the Moto-Terminators were stupid additions, that Transformers-rip-off thing not only made no sense (nobody heard that coming until it crashed through the roof of the petrol station? As if...) but it was also crap... The movie felt rather meh in the end. I watched it a second time after seeing it in the cinema, and it was only "alright" in the cinema, but on second viewing my opinion dipped significantly.

[SymphonicX]

One of the biggest problems with it are the "super Terminators" that are totally at odds with the established lore of the first two movies. It was the same problem with T3. It isn't T3-level bad, but it's not good either. Great production design, but the plot is pretty dull, that stupid mute kid is annoying as all get out, it's PG-13, all the Terminators fart in this movie (that weird robotic growling noise), the Moto-Terminators were stupid additions, that Transformers-rip-off thing not only made no sense (nobody heard that coming until it crashed through the roof of the petrol station? As if...) but it was also crap... The movie felt rather meh in the end. I watched it a second time after seeing it in the cinema, and it was only "alright" in the cinema, but on second viewing my opinion dipped significantly. Yeah the mute kid is the ultimate in lazy script writing. Put a kid in any action/horror movie and you've instantly got an emotional anchor with which to weigh down the audience's sense of caring. Make that kid a mute and you're basically saying "look, feel bad for this kid, he/she's in danger just by proximity. We don't even have to give this kid anything to say because you're so fucking dumb you'll care about it just because it's a kid, and therefore the embodiment of innocence, so CARE DAMNIT!." To me it's an instant turn off, and those characters are the first I want to see killed.

[acealive1]

i personally LOVE this film. i was so in awe seeing it in theaters and i still have my ticket stub. people shit on it because its not part 2 and arnie isnt in it. they have to get their heads out of their asses and realize the entire terminator universe is not built around arnie. he isnt even a spec on the map because the time line is so broad. -- -------- Post added at 09:33 AM ---------- Previous post was at 09:31 AM ---------- and a heart transplant in the desert,with no medical equipment....hmm. they had equipment....u didnt notice john's wife was a doctor? also, they've been doing surgeries in the desert for a long time

[SymphonicX]

i personally LOVE this film. i was so in awe seeing it in theaters and i still have my ticket stub. people shit on it because its not part 2 and arnie isnt in it. they have to get their heads out of their asses and realize the entire terminator universe is not built around arnie. he isnt even a spec on the map because the time line is so broad. -- -------- Post added at 09:33 AM ---------- Previous post was at 09:31 AM ---------- they had equipment....u didnt notice john's wife was a doctor? also, they've been doing surgeries in the desert for a long time I'm sure they found a way to make sand in the wind magically miss any open wounds....!! Either way, it was a whack and ill-thought out idea. Totally tacked onto the end. Also Connor's wife was a vet in T3? So by the time she advanced from vet to heart surgeon, in the middle of a nuclear war, technology also advanced enough for a vet to perform adhoc heart transplants in the desert, with little equipment, even though humanity has been at the brink of extinction since the bombs went off at the end of T3? So that's....what? 2005? So all human based technological advancement would have stopped in 2005. But that didn't happen....OR....the tyrannical machines either allowed the humans to take a break to advance their medical technology....or....the machines found a way of doing it...? hmm. questionable at best. That's one of my biggest flaws with t4 -the plotholes of human technology. If John Connor was 21-ish at the time of T3 and that's when the machines rose up against humanity, then surely there would be no human technological advances. Moving onto T3 and how it also potentially invalidates this movie - at the point of Skynet taking over, it had control over everything yet had no physical presence apart from some lame-as-fuck looking sentry bots which looked pretty easy to wipe out with a few RPGs....so even if Skynet released all those nukes to russia and all that jazz - how the hell did it first compile all the metals it needs, move them to a factory, BUILD a factory with which to make terminators, then start making war machines fit for a war against humanity? There was a hint of human slavery in the first movie ("it kept some of us alive to work in factories") but at no point was there a believable Terminator presence on earth with which to make this happen - those sentry bots could not have engineered a project that big. They were prototypes in T3, and there were only a handful of them knocking around - so where did Skynet get all it's man-power?!? The most logical and believable way of this happening was that humanity had relied on Skynet and terminator-esque working robots to build, manufacture, and design everything that humans needed to live - so when Skynet gets "smart" and realises the human threat, it actually has a presence on earth that denotes some sort of logical uprising. Sorry, bit of a rant - but the last two T movies were poor. And I don't even like Arnie, except as an example of who not to elect to government. It was all done backwards. -- -------- Post added at 02:58 PM ---------- Previous post was at 02:51 PM ---------- I haven't been very succint in that post there - but I'm hoping you can pick through the meandering and get what I'm saying - basically if you try to fill in the gaps between T3 and T4, you should be coming up pretty blank unless some very outlandish ideas are put into place. The idea of manufacturing, designing, and testing weapons for a war against humanity is completely ignored - there's no logical way (at least in my mind) for a handful of robots and a very smart Intel Xeon processor to wage a war against humanity with no actual physical presence on the ground - at least not a believable one. And also - this: completely invalidates all the movies - if they haven't finished building an arnie prototype cyborg, where did it come from?? If Skynet dug out the plans from the backburners after wiping out humanity, why isn't Arnie's voice in the first two that of Southern african american man like here? Surely they didn't have enough time to "fix it" if the war started at the end of this movie...maybe these things are pretty easy to program. I know this thraed is about T4 - but T4 didn't even try to address the issues and plotholes created by the complete turd that was t3.

[bassman]

completely invalidates all the movies - if they haven't finished building an arnie prototype cyborg, where did it come from?? If Skynet dug out the plans from the backburners after wiping out humanity, why isn't Arnie's voice in the first two that of Southern african american man like here? Surely they didn't have enough time to "fix it" if the war started at the end of this movie...maybe these things are pretty easy to program. Yeah, but that's a deleted scene. If not shown in the finished movie, I don't think it should be considered as a specific flaw...

[acealive1]

I'm sure they found a way to make sand in the wind magically miss any open wounds....!! Either way, it was a whack and ill-thought out idea. Totally tacked onto the end. Also Connor's wife was a vet in T3? So by the time she advanced from vet to heart surgeon, in the middle of a nuclear war, technology also advanced enough for a vet to perform adhoc heart transplants in the desert, with little equipment, even though humanity has been at the brink of extinction since the bombs went off at the end of T3? So that's....what? 2005? So all human based technological advancement would have stopped in 2005. But that didn't happen....OR....the tyrannical machines either allowed the humans to take a break to advance their medical technology....or....the machines found a way of doing it...? hmm. questionable at best. That's one of my biggest flaws with t4 -the plotholes of human technology. If John Connor was 21-ish at the time of T3 and that's when the machines rose up against humanity, then surely there would be no human technological advances. Moving onto T3 and how it also potentially invalidates this movie - at the point of Skynet taking over, it had control over everything yet had no physical presence apart from some lame-as-fuck looking sentry bots which looked pretty easy to wipe out with a few RPGs....so even if Skynet released all those nukes to russia and all that jazz - how the hell did it first compile all the metals it needs, move them to a factory, BUILD a factory with which to make terminators, then start making war machines fit for a war against humanity? There was a hint of human slavery in the first movie ("it kept some of us alive to work in factories") but at no point was there a believable Terminator presence on earth with which to make this happen - those sentry bots could not have engineered a project that big. They were prototypes in T3, and there were only a handful of them knocking around - so where did Skynet get all it's man-power?!? The most logical and believable way of this happening was that humanity had relied on Skynet and terminator-esque working robots to build, manufacture, and design everything that humans needed to live - so when Skynet gets "smart" and realises the human threat, it actually has a presence on earth that denotes some sort of logical uprising. Sorry, bit of a rant - but the last two T movies were poor. And I don't even like Arnie, except as an example of who not to elect to government. It was all done backwards. -- -------- Post added at 02:58 PM ---------- Previous post was at 02:51 PM ---------- I haven't been very succint in that post there - but I'm hoping you can pick through the meandering and get what I'm saying - basically if you try to fill in the gaps between T3 and T4, you should be coming up pretty blank unless some very outlandish ideas are put into place. The idea of manufacturing, designing, and testing weapons for a war against humanity is completely ignored - there's no logical way (at least in my mind) for a handful of robots and a very smart Intel Xeon processor to wage a war against humanity with no actual physical presence on the ground - at least not a believable one. And also - this: completely invalidates all the movies - if they haven't finished building an arnie prototype cyborg, where did it come from?? If Skynet dug out the plans from the backburners after wiping out humanity, why isn't Arnie's voice in the first two that of Southern african american man like here? Surely they didn't have enough time to "fix it" if the war started at the end of this movie...maybe these things are pretty easy to program. I know this thraed is about T4 - but T4 didn't even try to address the issues and plotholes created by the complete turd that was t3. suspension of disbelief is in there somewhere, also the time line is messed up everytime something happens to skynet.......they covered it in T3. so literally everytime something screwed up happens, the time line changes. so the events of terminator 2 technically happened later on which coverd the plot hole about john being too young in that film and arent we on a site thats immersed in the walking dead tv show which has an animal vet operating on humans? so whats so hard about believing things in salvation? and yes they covered the fact that operations can be done in the desert. cnn's own sanjay gupta performed a number of those between 2002 and now. hes a member of the devil docs

[MinionZombie]

Yeah, but that's a deleted scene. If not shown in the finished movie, I don't think it should be considered as a specific flaw... Yeah, I don't consider deleted scenes to be cannon ... if it's officially been re-inserted then that's another situation, but flat out deleted, then not cannon IMO. As for T4 - couldn't give a shit that Arnie isn't in it (the CGI rendering of him was decent though, but the cannon-ignoring "super Terminator" abilities really fuck me off), the reason I think the movie is shit are varied and numerous, some of which are highlighted above, others I've talked about at length in past years.

[Sammich]

I'm sure they found a way to make sand in the wind magically miss any open wounds....!! Either way, it was a whack and ill-thought out idea. Totally tacked onto the end. Also Connor's wife was a vet in T3? So by the time she advanced from vet to heart surgeon, in the middle of a nuclear war, technology also advanced enough for a vet to perform adhoc heart transplants in the desert, with little equipment, even though humanity has been at the brink of extinction since the bombs went off at the end of T3? If Herschel can get aimbot and unlimited ammo cheat, then Kate Connor should be able to use the auto-heal hack.

[Tricky]

My favourite scene in the movie is when the rubber skin Terminator is on the rampage quite early on, but other than that its pretty turd, trying to be too showy and grandiose with regards the set pieces & ridiculously huge "transformer" style terminators and of course the gaping plot holes mentioned above

[Purge]

The Terminator series without James Cameron is like Pink Floyd minus Roger Waters: they can only go so far. The best thing to come out of T:S was Bale's backstage meltdown. "Give me a f***ing answer!"

[shootemindehead]

Mmmm...I'm with Andy on this one. It wasn't half as bad as I was led to believe. In fact I thought is was rather entertaining, for a once off. I doubt I'll ever watch it again. And I'm notoriously hard on the quality of entertainment media. As for the terminators being unbelievable, every single one of the them was a damn sight more believable than that stupid liquid robot in 'Terminator 2', although the "ninja" element of the large fella was a bit silly. But the film is hardly alone in that crime against cinema. Also, the silent kid was a plus IMHO. There's nothing worse than kids with dialogue in films. I'd rather have the silent kid in 'Terminator Salvation', than Ed Furlong in 'Terminator 2'. that's for sure. The whining little maggot. Plot holes don't bother me with the Terminator franchise, because it begins and ends with the first one for me. In fact, I watched 'The Terminator' directly after 'Terminator Salvation' and it was grand.