MovieChat Forums > Terminator Salvation (2009) Discussion > I have always said Terminator Salvation ...

I have always said Terminator Salvation was amazing. I still believe it is because of these reasons:

posted 5 years ago by [deleted]
12 replies | jump to latest

Terminator Salvation, although far from perfect, was a great natural continuation. Continuing from the nuclear war started in T3's ending, Salvation picks up in 2018 where John Connor is just an ordinary soldier within the ranks of the resistance fighting SkyNet's machines.
Despite it having flaws (like most films), this should be given a pass as the overall idea of the film wasn't all that bad. Firstly, the negatives... No matter how many times I watch Salvation, the Blair Williams storyline always irritates me. I get it, Marcus Wright saved your ass and now you owe it to him. Okay, but what I hated was when she tried to flee with him, she put Connor's entire base at risk when Connor's men opened fire with bullets and even a napalm fucking bomb! The writing in Salvation was a bit bad here I thought and this was my only personal gripe with the movie.

What I loved about Salvation was that it was firstly a future story, not the same old sent back in time cat and mouse chase bullshit. This movie proved that you do not need that Schwarzenegger in it and that the franchise is bigger than him. I loved that it felt like it was going in the direction of James Cameron's classic vision of the future war. I think the main reason why this film flopped was because the fans were crying about no laser guns or war scenes like in Cameron's vision. Firstly, that is stupid because it was the year 2018, 11 years before the war depicted by Cameron, so there was plenty of time to build up to that. In Salvation, it depicted the resistance in it's early years with helicopters, working jets, machine guns and bombs targeting and kicking SkyNet's ass. This was actually good for plot sake. Why? Because at the end of the movie, we finally see the tide turning on the resistance! We see the implementation of the T800's being manufactured at SkyNet Central in San Francisco. This meant that the weapons which the resistance had been using would now be rendered obsolete against the titanium T800s in the next possible sequels. Secondly, I truly believe, had a sequel been made to Salvation, we would have seen the creation of Phased Plasma rifles specifically for the T800 models. This would have given SkyNet the upper hand against the Resistance as they would only be using puny bullets compared to their laser weapons along with the fact that the machines wielding these laser guns would be bulletproof. I imagine that maybe at the end of the Salvation sequel, we would have seen the resistance breaking into SkyNet's weapon facility somewhere in U.S.A and stealing crates of laser weapons thus slowly evening the score between SkyNet and humans. This would have been a gradual slow building step towards the Cameron vision of the 2029 war.
We also saw the prototype Arnold T800 in Salvation. Once again, the fans complained! "It looks nothing like him!" Okay yes the cgi is bad but there was a very good in-universe excuse for this: It looks nothing like the 1984 Arnold because this was a prototype Arnold. His facial appearance could have changed during mass development of the T800 infiltrators.
I loved the fact that they had young Reese in this and the actor who played him was amazing! (R.I.P) His facial expressions, mannerisms and voice was spot on! The homages to T1 Kyle Reese was amazing too: For example, in Salvation, we see Marcus Wright teach Kyle to always have a string attached to the shotgun so it cant be taken from him. We would then see Kyle in T1 sawing off the shotgun in the alleyway hooking a string over his shoulder.
This film had so many references to the lore of T1 and T2 that it is hard to dismiss this film as bad. Yes, Genisys and most likely Dark Fate will have references too, but they felt more like in-your-face fan service. The whole first 30 mins of Genisys was fan service. I am not even remotely excited for Dark Fate.

I do agree that Salvation was too bright, but upon watching it the other day with my wife (which she loved it btw!), I noticed that one of the bandits hiding in the gas station said that they needed the food or fuel for the "dark season". This made me realise, what if it was dark season in James Cameron's vision? What if he set it at night time not just for theatricality and mood, but also to compliment the colourful lasers and explosions and to possibly hide the special effects wiring etc?

The dark season could have been shown in the Salvation Sequel or even the sequel after that, where they would have most likely shown an older Kyle Reese and an older war torn grizzled Christian Bale sending him through the TDE back to 1984. Could you imagine Bale sending a young CGI Michael Biehn through the time machine? That would be movie gold!

Instead of giving us two potentially amazing lore-respecting sequels, Hollywood studios decided to reboot the franchise which has severely bombed.

Please feel free to share your opinions on this as I would love to know what people think about this film!

[–] howgamer (3679) 5 years ago

I enjoyed the film as well. It's my third favorite in the franchise and I think much better than T3 and Genisys, although I guess that's not saying much. As you noted, I respect that they tried to do something different and I think it worked for me for the most part. I would have liked the premise to be a bit different in that I would have preferred a story where Connor had already established himself as the leader of the resistance rather than an up and coming soldier. Additionally, I would have liked the world to be a bit more futuristic. I understand why others didn't like it, but for me, it was overall an enjoyable film and I would have liked a sequel to this world rather than Genisys.

With the return of Hamilton and Cameron, I am interested in seeing where Dark Fate will take us, but it kind of looks like a rehash of the T1 and T2 stories. I wish we could get another film of the future directed by Cameron.

[–] [deleted] 5 years ago

Hey thanks for the reply! Yeah i can see where you are coming from, but i liked the idea that John Connor was seen as a prophet by some and a loony bin by others. I mean think about it, if you were in the resistance and some guy was like "I know whats going to happen!" before he could prove it, you would be like "yeaaahhh.. okay.." until he started to prove things. This is what i thought was a nice little touch because by the end of the movie, everyone started to listen to him not just through the radio (in regards to bombing SkyNet central) but even his own men were saying how he was right about predicting the creation of the T800s and their skin etc

I do get it though, about wanting to see a more futuristic world but i am convinced that this would have definitely been on the cards for the sequels. But now, i dont think we will ever get them...

Dark Fate so far doesnt sell anything new or interesting to me: Going from the teaser trailer to the supposed plot leaks, i am afraid it wont be good... I hope i am wrong but how many times do we need to see a cat and mouse chase in a terminator movie?! lol I hope it does continue organically from the events of T2 but 24 damn years have passed since T2's events, so it seems odd that shit is still happening in that universe!

[–] howgamer (3679) 5 years ago

I guess if the plan was to make a couple of sequels to this, the idea of John being an up and coming soldier makes sense. By the end of the movie he is certainly the commander of the resistance.

[–] PrimeMinisterX (8369) 5 years ago

It's definitely better than T3 or Genisys.

T3 failed by being a fairly generic-feeling PG-13 sci-fi actioner and Genisys failed by using way too much CGI and having a messy plot. This film is not on the level of the first two films, but it's still pretty good. It's pretty surprising that it only has a 33% on RT. I'm surprised that more critics didn't see it as being a semi-return to form after T3.

I'm also surprised that, after such a long layoff for the Terminator franchise, that it didn't make more money. It made $371 million . . . which seems okay until you realize that it was budgeted at $200 million (?!).

[–] PrimeMinisterX (8369) 5 years ago

Upon your recommendation in TDF thread, I went ahead and watched this one last night.

I thought it was solid. Not great or excellent, but a good enough film viewing experience that I didn't feel like I had wasted my time. Perhaps knowledge of its poor reputation helped to keep my expectations at an appropriate level, but I had a good time with it. The story worked well enough, the cast is great, some of the action is decidedly above-average, and the effects were really damn good.

You had mentioned that McG chose to use a lot of practical effects for this film and it shows. Unlike Genisys (and it seems TDF as well), this film felt like everything had weight to it and was real and tangible. It didn't feel like a weightless CGI cartoon like so many action films do today.

You make some interesting observations regarding the time period. I am not into Terminator lore enough to catch stuff like that. It does feel like this film is setting up a sequel though, and I certainly would've rather gotten a sequel to this film rather than get Genisys.

I agree with you that Anton Yelchin was great as Kyle Reese. I was like, "Who is that dude?" I didn't recognize him. But then I saw that it was the dearly departed. RIP indeed.

I also thought Moon Bloodgood (now that's a hell of a name) was great in her role and I don't really have the problems with her character that you say you had. I can understand why she was sympathetic toward Marcus and why she did what she did. She felt he was an innocent and like she had a moral duty to get him out of there. What's the alternative? Sacrifice an innocent man?

While it's no T1 or T2, I do feel like this is a better film than its 33% RT score would indicate. It's certainly a competent sci-fi actioner. Now that I've given it a fair shake, I feel a little bad for McG. He deserves more credit than he got for this one.

[–] [deleted] 5 years ago

Glad you liked it, it's a great movie for sure!

I guess it's just me then lol, but I do understand the idea that she is thinking with her human emotion to care for him etc especially since he saved her once or twice.

Really wish a sequel for Salvation had've happened instead of Genisys. I cannot stress to you how much I despise Genisys (and Arnold especially because of that movie)

I have literally zero respect for Arnold now, and that's saying something considering in my younger years, I was a huge fan of him in general. Still like his older movies though, when he wasn't a caricature of himself yet.

[–] johnmarti59 (2356) 4 years ago

I'm not reading all of that.

[–] acidraindrop (3055) 3 years ago

You're no longer here, but I need to bust out a few points to show why I cannot stand this film and why it's my least favorite Terminator iteration.

This was actually good for plot sake. Why? Because at the end of the movie, we finally see the tide turning on the resistance! We see the implementation of the T800's being manufactured at SkyNet Central in San Francisco. This meant that the weapons which the resistance had been using would now be rendered obsolete against the titanium T800s in the next possible sequels

Unfortunately, the combat situations demonstrated throughout the film show how woefully underpowered the human resistance is. Look at how much effort it takes for John Connor to dispatch one machine. With the amount of destruction, and the intricacy of Skynet's plans (outside the absurdly abandoned final act), I can't believe that the resistance as depicted in Salvation would be able to survive at all. Even his little radio trick...you stun a machine for like 5 seconds while it shoots wildly and unpredictably while flailing.

I think they intended for the tide you described, but that is not functionally shown in the movie.

We also saw the prototype Arnold T800 in Salvation.

It's too bad the prototype was for some reason stronger than Uncle Bob and the T-1000 from T2. It's like McG got confused with the TSCC continuity for some reason.

I do agree that Salvation was too bright, but upon watching it the other day with my wife (which she loved it btw!), I noticed that one of the bandits hiding in the gas station said that they needed the food or fuel for the "dark season". This made me realise, what if it was dark season in James Cameron's vision?

I'm more of interested in why Kyle Reece told Sarah Connor in T1 that they only travel at night. Speaking of Reese...

[–] acidraindrop (3055) 3 years ago

For example, in Salvation, we see Marcus Wright teach Kyle to always have a string attached to the shotgun so it cant be taken from him. We would then see Kyle in T1 sawing off the shotgun in the alleyway hooking a string over his shoulder.

This is like...Solo-bad in terms of callbacks. That is NOT why Kyle hooked the gun like that in T1. I mean it could have been, but in all likelihood, that wasn't the reason. And this is part of what I was alluding earlier with the T-800 design or the whole night travel. It's like McG watched parts of the earlier films to find stuff to make fans happy, but didn't watch all the movies, and so as to introduce various inconsistencies.

I loved the fact that they had young Reese in this and the actor who played him was amazing!

This was great, except it looks like McG forgot that Reese was a kid. Because the dialogue where John Connor is confronting Marcus and says: You and me, we've been at war since before either of us even existed. You tried killing my mother, Sarah Connor. You killed my father, Kyle Reese. You will not kill me.

Marcus responds with something like, KYLE REESE IS ON A CARRIER TRANSPORT or something. Yes, that boy you just saw, is definitely grown man's father. This is incoherent dialogue. Something we'd get form Fast and the Furious. There are other internally illogical aspects to the film like this, but in dialogue and in actions.

Which is why I feel Salvation doesn't function as a Terminator sequel or even a good standalone action film.

[–] moviechatterer (13747) 2 years ago

how woefully underpowered the human resistance is

This is true . Its just unrealistic the resistance survived at all .
How do they keep those A10 planes and choppers running ?
Where do they keep them so the machines dont just come and blow the shit out of them?
And how come these machines are worse than stormtroopers at shooting?

Theres no way if the machines got that far in the war , they couldnt finish it easily.

[–] MickyMac (2972) 3 years ago

It had the potential to be the best movie since T2 because it changes the template.

[–] andersonb85 (1612) 5 months ago

You are spot on with your analysis of Salvation and I felt very much like you did after watching it the first time that for all the sequels that came after the original this was the only one that felt like a true sequel to the 1st Terminator movie.

I was so pissed when they decided to reboot the franchise with Genisys rather than make a sequel to finish the time-line Salvation set up to lead up to the future war that would ultimately lead John Connor into sending Kyle Reese back to 1984 to close the circle. Imho it could have been done in T2 and that was my biggest gripe with that movie.