So I threw that in.
My seven year review of T:S Director's Cut (after seeing T:Genisys a bit back on redbox):
It's...actually not that bad.
McG tried really hard to keep the film in continuity with all the other Terminator films to that point:
T1:
- The death factories that were mentioned by Reese in T1
- The T-600s
- The photograph from T1 makes a re-appearance.
- Arnold in his CGI'ed prime as the T-800 Model 101 Serial #001.
- Kyle Reese as a young man scrabbling in the ruins
- Cyberdyne reappears in various "phantom" forms -- from their logo on the consent forms that Marcus signs in prison to various logos scattered around the Skynet Central Core on the walls.
- Katherine Brewster
- The nuclear fuel cells that power the T-8xx series are a crucial plot point
- Advanced versions of the T-1.
It's kind of hard to elaborate all this in maybe thirty minutes (fuck spending hours on this brief essay, I have better things to do lol); but it seems to me that the FUTURE WAR [tm] itself would logically go through multiple phases -- some possible ones being:
PHASE ZERO - THE ORGANIZING:
The immediate post-nuclear aftermath. John Connor is in Crystal Peak, helping organize survivors in his immediate area and maybe across the country through the facilities available there. Both sides (Skynet and Humanity) are recovering from the nuclear war -- Skynet's big problem is that the industrial facilities that it needs (prototype automated factories under USAF contract) are inconviently located near human population centers; and would be heavily damaged in any credible exchange.
Nobody other than John Connor and Katherine Brewster actually know about Skynet (except maybe a few USAF officers and scientists off-site who may have survived Judgement day.
Skynet itself would also be in a very weak position -- it only has very primitive Generation 0 Terminators from T3 (T-1 and the mini hunter killer) and maybe a few other experimental pieces of USAF equipment to help it. Being able to control every computer device in the world does you no good when about 60% of them got vaporized in Judgement day and the rest have no power.
What it does have is control over the few remaining comms nodes still active in the world. So it could "use" human survivors for it's own ends. Send out fake orders and comms calls to various survivor groups and have those survivor groups do missions for Skynet while it slowly readies it's automated forces.
"This is the acting president of the united states to anyone still alive in the San Bernando Valley."
"12315th Military Police Company here, sir."
"Son, we need you to get something for us. We need [x]."
John Connor might even have done a few missions for Skynet himself without realizing it -- because even though he controls a key communications node, he's still very junior in rank at this time -- meaning he would have to defer to the surviving military officers.
Phase Zero would end with Skynet showing it's cards and revealing itself through various actions to be basically what John Connor said.
PHASE ONE - THE WAR OF BULLETS:
Salvation appears to take place at the very end of this phase. During this phase, Skynet and Humanity are largely using plausible extrapolations of real world technology:
- Simple Non Human Terminators like the "Hydrobot" robot eel.
- Derivatives of existing technology like the Moto-Terminators.
- Advanced Generation 0+ stuff like the sleeker looking T-1s seen in two scenes.
- T-600s (possible to build these, just look at Boston Dynamics' stuff today)
Additionally, Skynet doesn't have complete control of Earth yet.
The Resistance is able to contest the skies in limited amounts (A-10s), and has a small amount of surviving aerial hardware (C-130s, CV-22s, etc) in addition to (sigh) the Virginia SSN that acts as Resistance HQ.
There are also scattered bands of survivors (Gas station survivors) who think that Skynet might leave them alone if they don't make too much of a fuss.
There has to be a reason for this belief.
What I think Salvation is about is the transition between Phase 1 and Phase 2.
PHASE TWO: THE WAR OF PLASMA
Skynet starts deploying increasingly advanced magitech, like hyperalloy terminators (the T-800 prototype seen in this one took repeated small arms hits at virtually point blank range with no damage), cloned flesh coverings (again, T-800 prototype), advanced power generation (the nuclear fusion batteries for the T-8xx series) and eventually man portable energy weapons.
Using all of these technologies applied to its stable of machines (bipedal terminators, tank terminators, and hunter killers), Skynet drives the Resistance from the skies and surface in a hail of firepower, starting the road to the familiar "future war" that we see in T1/T2 where the resistance moves slowly under cover of darkness.
Additionally, Skynet would have finally felt that it had enough capability to simply start exterminating people left and right instead of using them as production labor or ignoring them -- before the development of compact nuclear fuel cells or fusion reactors, it was too cost ineffective (efficiency wise) to send out HKs and combat units on roving search and destroy missions to eliminate human survivors -- if it costs 'X' tonnes of jet fuel to get 1~ human kill in a forest via aerial HK surveys...Skynet won't do that; causing a false belief amongst the hiding survivors that Skynet won't do anything to them if they don't make any problems.
But once Skynet has near unlimited energy...
Okay, that was a little sidetrack. Back onto Salvation.
The acting and plotting was generally pretty good and I felt I got my time's worth; with the exception of several sequences:
1.) Marcus' Wright's role for Skynet
It was never really quite fully adequately explained; other than "lol, this is my XANATOS GAMBIT TO LURE JOHN CONNOR IN TO KILL HIM."
Some exposition could have been done, defining him as an important experimental prototype unit required for the development of T-800 infiltrators.
Imagine the problem -- Skynet's been running the T-800 program and has cracked all the various little problems -- hyperalloy to allow it to resist small arms and virtually obsolete the resistance's entire stable of weapons -- cloned flesh covering to allow infiltration and avoid the close up detection issues the Rubberized T-600s have....
...but the T-800 Prototypes are just ... off ... somehow.
Whenever Skynet sends out a prototype T-800 to attempt infiltration of a human survivor group, it's cover keeps getting blown, because something about the T-800's behavior creeps out other humans.
Enter Marcus Wright -- his corpse recovered from deep cold storage in the original Cyberdyne Genetics research division.
Skynet essentially was I think, using him as an instrumented test dummy to gather various performance/behaviorial profiles to get past the 'uncanny valley' for T-800 behavior.
2.) The Virginia SSN as Resistance HQ.
Enough said.
3.) The Resistance Leadership / Connor's 'Stand Down' speech.
This was a key plot point to the movie and crucial to the development of Connor as the ultimate leader of the resistance; and it was...badly botched. A lot more thought should have been put into it, because as it is; it just doesn't work.
They could have preserved the original intent by specifying how many humans were going to die in the assault and made it a serious non-trivial number on the order of maybe 10,000+
Something like:
"Skynet has fifteen thousand humans working it's production lines in Los Angeles. I know. They're making more machines to kill us against their will, but if we assault Skynet, they'll all die. Fifteen thousand."
4.) The T-800 Prototype's playing with Connor instead of just killing him.
They should have rewritten that whole sequence totally, or done some extrapolation through showing the T-800 Prototype's POV showing repeated commands overlaid from Skynet to JUST FUCKING KILL JOHN CONNOR and the T-800 ignoring it, because it became a sadist during the prototype development process where it terminated several humans...and found that it liked it.
This would then explain why Skynet set T-800s to read only as shown in T2.
5.) The ending involving HEART!
That should have either been deleted entirely, or reshot so that Marcus Wright assumes John Connor's position. It's not like we have ID cards or fingerprints in 2018. After all, if Katherine Brewster says that's John Connor, it's John Connor.
Additionally, Marcus Wright rooted around in Skynet's head for a little bit before he broke loose, so he'd have...*badum* Detailed Files on Skynet *tish* and how it behaves; explaining "John Connor's" miraculous skills at out-thinking Skynet.
I still liked it far more than Genicashcowsys.
Genicashcowsys' only good moments were the Temporal Displacement Facility sequences.
