Terminator Salvation Impressions

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choupolo
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Terminator Salvation Impressions - Jun 04, 2009 23:43
I dunno what I was expecting from this film.  4th in the series, already thought the 3rd was an unnecessary addition, after all they were supposed to have finished off Skynet in the 2nd one. Still Arnie was funny.

So this film was an all out summer action flic that was I guess meant to be a tribute the series?  It had too many nods and winks to the originals which all felt kinda forced, and it never really had a properly fleshed out and believable story of its own.

The story had too many points where you just thought, "nah thats just unlikely!", and seemed to be put in for convenience sake.  Overall made it just feel like a fan movie than fully fledged from concept to masterpiece like the originals.

If you thought the film Indepence Day was cheesy, this film could be compared to falling into a vat full of rotting stilton and asphyxiating.  There have been a lot of cheesy tribute films lately (Star Trek I'm looking at you) but Terminator Salvation was without a doubt the cheesiest film I've ever seen.  It was full of predicatable movie cliches, and Christian Bale needed some lozenges to soothe his permanently hoarse voice.  The end was just ridiculous - you'll just have to watch it to see how ridiculous.

Salvation was nowhere near as good or original as the T1 or T2, and just had no character of its own - in fact you could pretty much have the same film and call it Transformers or Star Trek, wouldn't make any difference.

I suppose the ony redeeming factor was how funny it was to see Arnold Schwarzenneger's face pasted onto a CG body that was more muscley than he ever was.

Anyone else seen it yet?  I dont want to spoil it for others, its still an entertaining movie with lots of explosions and graphics for people who like that stuff.
<message edited by choupolo on Jun 04, 2009 23:44>

mastachefbkw
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Re:Terminator Salvation Impressions - Jun 05, 2009 03:38
Silence thy tongue, harlot!

I thought if fucking owned. Obviously not better than T2, but it kicked the shit out of T3 and T1.

locopuyo
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Re:Terminator Salvation Impressions - Jun 05, 2009 06:02
T1 = Sci-fi/Action/Horror - awesome

T2 = Sci-fi/Action/Horror - slight advance in the storry but mostly just the same thing done even better.

T3 = Sci-fi/Action/Comedy - big progression in the story, not the same type of movie as T1 and T2. I actually liked it even more than T2, but I like comedies more than I like horror films. It was pretty much action and story scenes conected with one liners. A perfect choice for the style of movie considering it really isn't possible to top T2 as a sci-fi/horror film.

TS = Sci-fi/Action - a big jump further along in the story and not the same type of movie as the rest. I liked it but it was almost like the Matrix sequals. It was all action and the story didn't really do much. I'm glad they didn't call it Terminator 4: Salvation and just went with Terminator Salvation because it really seemed more like a side story than the main plot.
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Iad umboros
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Re:Terminator Salvation Impressions - Jun 05, 2009 15:32
mastachefbkw


Silence thy tongue, harlot!

I thought if fucking owned. Obviously not better than T2, but it kicked the shit out of T3 and T1.


You are obviously quite, quite insane.  T1 is miles better than T2.

Think I'll be avoiding T4 though, T3 was a highly polished turd of a film.
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mastachefbkw
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Re:Terminator Salvation Impressions - Jun 06, 2009 18:00
But this has John "The Goddamned Batman" Connor.

immortaldanmx
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Re:Terminator Salvation Impressions - Jun 07, 2009 02:56
mastachefbkw


But this has John "The Goddamned Batman" Connor.


"This is John Connor, and if you're listening to this you paid 16.50 for 2 drinks and some candy."
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Silentbomber
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Re:Terminator Salvation Impressions - Jun 09, 2009 03:24
9 euro for tickets and 7 something for med popcorn and drink... just saw it tonight, good movie, somewhat disapointing that it wasnt the movie it could have been, also too many 'wtf thats stupid' moments.  I like the clunky Terminators though!

immortaldanmx
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Re:Terminator Salvation Impressions - Jun 09, 2009 13:21
Silentbomber


9 euro for tickets and 7 something for med popcorn and drink... just saw it tonight, good movie, somewhat disapointing that it wasnt the movie it could have been, also too many 'wtf thats stupid' moments.  I like the clunky Terminators though!


Nice to see you guys get fucked hard by theaters as well. I just find it outrageous that a bottle of water is 4.50, when I can get a 24pck at a grocer for 3.86. There is a difference between profit and robbery.
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Terry Bogard
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Re:Terminator Salvation Impressions - Jun 09, 2009 20:33
Haven't seen it yet, would like to check it out this coming weekend. Saw Star Trek the weekend before last.

As for the food at the concession stand(s), I sneak in enough food that could feed a small group of people. NOT that I should be admitting such a thing to the young, impressionable minds on this board. I should remain a paragon of virtue and continue to set an awesome example for the rest of you. ;)
<message edited by Terry Bogard on Jun 09, 2009 20:36>
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mastachefbkw
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Re:Terminator Salvation Impressions - Jun 09, 2009 21:44

As for the food at the concession stand(s), I sneak in enough food that could feed a small group of people. NOT that I should be admitting such a thing to the young, impressionable minds on this board. I should remain a paragon of virtue and continue to set an awesome example for the rest of you. ;)
Its very easy to sneak stuff in when you have a chick with you, because they can just throw crap in their purse. However, the Terminator films aren't movies I would take most chicks to see, I think its more of a movie to see with friends. Besides, most chicks would ruin the movie from asking stupid ass questions.

choupolo
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Re:Terminator Salvation Impressions - Jun 09, 2009 21:56
Yup £7.00 for a ticket here, remember the days when it was a couple of quid.  No longer an impulse decision to see a movie these days.  But I've never bought cinema food/drink before, I refuse to.

I don't think Bale has been as good in any other film since American Psycho tbh.  Batman Begins and Dark Knight were good but not because of him.

Terry what did you reckon to Star Trek?

Terry Bogard
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Re:Terminator Salvation Impressions - Jun 09, 2009 22:20
mastachefbkw



As for the food at the concession stand(s), I sneak in enough food that could feed a small group of people. NOT that I should be admitting such a thing to the young, impressionable minds on this board. I should remain a paragon of virtue and continue to set an awesome example for the rest of you. ;)
Its very easy to sneak stuff in when you have a chick with you, because they can just throw crap in their purse. However, the Terminator films aren't movies I would take most chicks to see, I think its more of a movie to see with friends. Besides, most chicks would ruin the movie from asking stupid ass questions.


Never needed a purse, I hide things quite well in the pockets of my jacket and cargo pants. :D
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Iad umboros
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Re:Terminator Salvation Impressions - Jun 10, 2009 00:12
Terry Bogard


Never needed a purse, I hide things quite well in the pockets of my jacket and cargo pants. :D


Same here.  Also used to have a Cineworld ticket which was £12 a month for unlimited entry.  It still is, but I don't have the car anymore and can't be bothered with the cinema in the city centre as it's always mobbed.

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Joe Redifer
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Re:Terminator Salvation Impressions - Jun 10, 2009 00:21
I rarely ever need to eat or drink anything while watching a movie.  People who eat during movies seem to spend more time looking at their food as they grab it than the screen.  That really pisses me off when I am showing something I made and they miss half of it because they were eating.

Iad umboros
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Re:Terminator Salvation Impressions - Jun 10, 2009 00:25
Joe Redifer


I rarely ever need to eat or drink anything while watching a movie.  People who eat during movies seem to spend more time looking at their food as they grab it than the screen.  That really pisses me off when I am showing something I made and they miss half of it because they were eating.


That's fair enough.  With the 20 minutes of adverts and trailers before a movie, I've usually munched my way through my goodies before the movie starts.
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immortaldanmx
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Re:Terminator Salvation Impressions - Jun 10, 2009 01:53
Chocolate covered raisins are a MUST for every movie. And yes, I do devour them before the first few ads are even over.
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Silentbomber
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Re:Terminator Salvation Impressions - Jun 10, 2009 03:57
i only get popcorn, anything else is overkill 

immortaldanmx
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Re:Terminator Salvation Impressions - Jun 10, 2009 04:38
Silentbomber


i only get popcorn, anything else is overkill 


I had braces in middle school, so I really havent eaten popcorn since.
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mastachefbkw
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Re:Terminator Salvation Impressions - Jun 10, 2009 04:44
I fucking hate popcorn. Popcorn is how you get raped by theatres. You buy that, then when you're thirsty you have to pay six arms and 4 legs to buy a small softdrink.

Agent Ghost
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Re:Terminator Salvation Impressions - Jun 10, 2009 11:21
EDIT: Holy shit that was a long post, read at your own risk.  I do not accept responsibility for any face melting.



For some reason whenever I go to the cinema I like to eat the worst junk food, not snacks like popcorn but chilly dogs, burgers or tacos.  That kind of stuff.  It would be awesome if they served beer in theaters but they don't do that in Canada.  I guess I could sneak it in but I'm not motivated enough.


As for the movie I enjoyed it overall.  It's pretty much what I expected.  Sure it could have been better but I'm smart enough to not set my hopes too high.  The whole thing had a strong Transformers Vibe to it.

The worst thing about the movie is the character Marcus.  I didn't have an issue with the actor, he did better than Bale but the character and plot elements attached to him are so fucking dumb.  He's a major plot point and he feels tacked on.  Choup is absolutely right about the cheesiest ending ever and of course it involves dear Marcus.  For me every scene with that character was painful to watch.  I would have scrapped his character completely, kept the actor though.  They should have focused more on the signal, the concentration camps, John and Kyle Reese.  The movie needed more atmosphere, more suffering and more suspense.  The action is still very good, I enjoyed the setting of the movie too.  

The time travel business is inconsistent but not in the way that many people think.  As far as we know real time travel to the past is impossible but lets look at how its handdled in fiction.  When people talk about time travel even just in fiction there's two main theories that people choose from.  It's one or the other. 

One way to portray time travel is to have a single instance of time that would look like a line.  If you go back in time you affect the whole timeline for everyone.  This creates the famous parent paradox.  Can you go back in time to kill your parents before you're concieved if doing so would mean you couldn't have gone back in time in the first place? 

The first movies adopt this format.  So in essense you can greatly affect the present and future by travelling in the past.


The other theory is that time travel means you create or travel to another timeline (or dimension) so in essense you can't affect the timeline you exit from.  Which would render the premise of the series worthless if this was handled badly.

I like to see things as a combination of the two.

Time is not a linear line in real life.  Time has a lot to do with gravity, that's why they called it the space-time continuum.  Basically time progresses faster when there is more gravity.  Traveling in the future occures all the time with traditional definition of past, present and future.  Even on Earth there are minor gravitational fluctuations which affect the flow of time.  Astronauts who have spent time in space are a bit younger than they would otherwise have been.  I know it fucks with your head.  It helps to perceive every object/person as being in their own isolated instance of time.  Even parts of myself are experiencing time at slightly different rates.  Lucky for use these variants are close enough so we don`t even notice the difference?

How do you even define the present?  Is it infinitely small?  The way I see it.  Either the present does not exist and we mearly have the past and future or there is no past, and there is no future, we mearly have the present in relation to our point of origin.  Its practical for beings of our size and speed to think of the past as the cause and the future as the effect but in reality cause can come from either end, and it does. 

So how would I have handled the time travel in the Terminator series?  I would have probably done a similar job in handling it, I wouldn't have made it seem like it was so linear though, even if it would seem that way from the position of the time travellers.  Off the top of my head the one big inconsistency in T4 I can see was at the end of Salvation when John gets the face scar that was shown in the first movie.  What are the odds that that would happen again?  It was a shout out that wasn't worth it in my opinion. The biggest inconsistency in the whole series is that skynet and the Terminators seem to have knowledge of alternate timelines.  From their perspective the alternate timelines did not happen, unless there has been communication between time travellers and I don't see how skynet would get that information.

People always say that they should have prevented Judgement day because they blown up Cyberdyne.  Well that's assuming there can only be one cause.  I think the third movie did a good job of covering its tracks actually by offering another cause (even if it was stupid).  To illustrate my point.  Lets say I'm eating an icecream cone on a bus and drop some on another man's (lets call him Arnold) dress pants and he's fuming about it.  Arnold asks me where I bought the icecream and I tell him.  So Arnold skips his big important meeting and instead heads home to his time travelling device and goes back in time to set fire to the ice cream shop the day before I could have bought it, thus preventing me from dropping the icecream on his lap.  So the next day I see that my favorite icecream shop was burned to the ground and I think to myself hmm I can sure go for a tripple fudge.  So I head out to the next shop and bring my towering cone of icecream on the same bus.  The bus is packed except for a gentleman sitting alone in a nice suite, so i sit next to him and tell myself I better be carefull....

In that example neither myself or that Arnold have had any experience with the imminent mess.  Maybe I would spill the icecream again or maybe I wouldn't but you can see that a string of cause-effect doesn't have to be the only possible path. 

What's interesting about this example is that in this new present there would be two Arnolds.  One on the bus and the one from the future bumming around.  If old Arnold decided not to make contact with young Arnold and it happened again the young Arnold would likely decide to go back in time and burn down another icecream shop (he's not that bright).  LOL  Maybe old Arnold would attend the meeting, or maybe he doesn't have time to change his pants.      




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Terry Bogard
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Re:Terminator Salvation Impressions - Jun 10, 2009 14:36
Silentbomber


i only get popcorn, anything else is overkill 


On average, popcorn is the only thing I get as well. I bring my own drinks (and additional snacks) if need be. I always get a kick out of the people I see walking in carrying those big a$$ trays with various food items that the concession stand just gouged them for.
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Joe Redifer
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Re:Terminator Salvation Impressions - Jun 11, 2009 00:03
Agent Ghost


It would be awesome if they served beer in theaters but they don't do that in Canada.  I guess I could sneak it in but I'm not motivated enough.    



The theater where I am projectionist part time serves beer and wine.  We even have $1 beer on Tuesdays.

kukuruza
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Re:Terminator Salvation Impressions - Sep 13, 2009 18:43
4 part, than 3 has much more interestingly and better turned out
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