The Terminator Thread: T1, Judgement Day, Rise of the Machines, Salvation & Sarah Connor Chronicles

Just got back from seeing it a second time and, much like Star Trek, it's much more enjoyable the second time around after you can properly atune your expectations.

The film really, really works for the first hour or so (with, IMO still, the misplaced opening scene) and is damn worthy of the Terminator name. Basically everything up until just after the harvester/moto sequence. It's when Blair and Marcus get to the hillbilly station that the film hits some speed bumps with a subpar amount of character moments- which, I believe, is the result of a lot of deleted material (besides the sex scene, there is something most obviously deleted between the rainy arrival at the hillbilly station and the rainless rape fight; there's also several John or John/Kate lines/scenes used in trailers and Tv spots that are not in the film, also the T-1 rising up from the sewer water that was in early trailers is not here at all)- and I think this hurts the film overall).

The escape from the base seems like a semi-pointless action sequence until Connor arrives (though McG does another wonderful single-take sequence there I didn't notice the first time 'round), and a distraction (especially for Williams, who recieves no consequences from her actions and basically vanishes from the film at this point). I think if they ahd removed that (or turnd the minefield thing into a "escape from Skynet" type deal, it would have worked better.

This time around I also really started liking Marcus's character and wish they had explored his backstory more thrououghly. A couple added flashback sequences (in addition to the opening execution scene, repurposed as a flashback) fleshing out the murders that haunted him, his feelings towards his brother (and the Alice In Chains song), and his relationship with Carter's character, would have all built up his struggle for redemption as well as made SkyCarter's appearance and scene a bit more devasttaing (and, as an added benefit, make it be able to be far less exposition-heavy, which would have made it more dramatic). This character shortcoming is the major flaw of the film, IMO- and, had they rectified it, this film would have been much closer in company to the first two films.

I'm hoping the DVD will have an extended cut that will provide the needed fleshing out.

I'm also digging some of Elfman's work here with the music- Marcus's theme is very catchy, and he does a decent job with the other themes (though I would have preferred they use the T-800 theme during the T-800 brawl). He's not my ideal choice for the material (I'd love to have Hans Zimmer or one of his Pirate brethern take a stab at a Terminator film score).

Visually, I also like how things are still gritty, even for Skynet- it hasn't yet attained the clean silver chrome look to it's Hunter-Killers, Terminators and Perimeter defense turrets that we see in T1, T2, Y2-3D and T3.

Hpefully that's something we'll see come to be in future sequels, alongside both factions developing more plasma-based weaponry (we gets hints of this with the Harvester's shoulder weapon and HK's sub targeting).

On a smaller note, I first saw T2 before T1 back when T2 first hit video, so after I had obssessed over a copy of T2 on VHS long enough, I rented T1 from the video store, and, not knowing what to expect, but absed on the still pics and description on the box, I got the impression there'd be more of a glimpse at the evil corporation behind Skynet and I envisioned Skynet's HQ to be a certain way (certainly different than the Pyramid we've all come to know and love).

So, I was very pleasantly surprised to see that the depiction of the San Fransico Skynet HQ as being more of an office tower design matched pretty closely what I had envisioned way back then off the back of the T1 VHS sleeve. i love it when things work out like that.

(naturally, though, the eventual LA Annex will have to have that pyramid )

 

It didn't need to necessarily be 2.5 hours- another 10-15 would have done fine (replacing some existing stuff).

The film as it is now is sort of like T2 with everything between the hospital escape and Cyberdyne strike cut out- it doesn't have that "downtime" to develop the film's theme.

Stahl was one of the weaker points in T3- he just had no command to him, and none of the growing-leadership qualities that even Furlong had. Thankfully the show's Connor can psuedo-erase/replace him.

 

The T-800 fight was a merger of the end fights in both T1 & T2 (the T-800 stepping up stairs, being stopped with it's hand just shy of it's target, etc from T1, the ramming metal into an opponent and molten lava from T2, etc) with a dash of T3's "heavy metal" fight (terminators smashing each other through walls and such). I think the encased metal cooling was a solid new twist on things, though. If the endo had just melted there, it would have been too much of a retread.

I was also amused how this film continued the little tradition of never showing an exposed endoskeleton talking (oh, sure, we [hear[/i] it talking, but it stops just before we see it). Even the TV show did this.

 

Though in T2 it's clearly able to survive in the molten metal for a good amount of time before it's compromised- I think the limited amount of exposure, combined with the cooling environment and gas (and, perhaps, the actual temperature and volume of material dumped on it) allowed it to survive.

Cameron didn't give his blessing because he wasn't going to do so without having seen a final film, which is only logical for something you're not involved with.

The crane chase was awesome (excusing the silly police car thing), but the moto-truck chase in this film was just as good (just less carnage to the environment given the setting).

 

No, I think they absolutely had to drop the "send a terminator back in time to kill someone" angle- it was that unnecessary repetition (among other failures) that turned people away from T3. People have been wanting the future war since forever, and that's what they expected the next T movie to focus on.

The movie will end up doing better than T3, though- it has less direct competition for the next month (the closest action movie/thriller is Pelham 123, which is a different audience target, and the next Big Action Movie is Transformers, which is literally a month away).

 

I wouldn't count the movie as a failure just yet, or rule out a sequel- so far it's about meeting T3's performance and T3 did 150 domestic with a 200 million budget (that was actually more since Arnie put some of his own cash up to enhance the crane chase). I think the key for WB will be the worldwide performance (T3 did 283 overseas), but I think Salvation's lack of competition (and mostly positive word of mouth, from what I've seen) will help it (T3 had competition from POTC, Bad Boys II, LXG and Tomb Raider 2 in the Big Action Film category for the first month of release, whereas T4 is pretty much clear till Transformers).

It won't have the legs of Trek, but it also won't have the competition, is all I'm syaing.

 

Oh, there's definitely been negative reaction- I've spoken to a couple people who didn't like it, but they are disproportionate to the negative critical reviews- all three screenings I've attended were mostly full (at a theater showing it on 4 screens), had plenty of cheers and applause (especially at the end) and most people I've spoken to said they liked it (even if some had reservations)- which is more than I can say about, say, Wolverine.


A couple funny things that came out of my third viewing- first, was my friend's husband who commented, after Blair Williams talks about being cold, "maybe you should get closer to the fire...", and, second, was made by a young kid sitting behind me who commented, after Connor blasts away the crawling T-600 (?) with the helicopter gun: "John Connor doesn't like Terminators."

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Well, NATM2 did gross more in it's first 3 days than TS did- so NATM2 has been outpacing it, though so far TS has a slight edge in overall total. We won't know if the final totals will reflect that for a long time, though. NATM2 certainly has more competition over the next month that will suck away families (Up, in particular, will crush it next week) than TS does with action, so TS will probably end up outpacing it in the long run.

Both movies will have big drop-offs next week.