Terminator Salvation

[Anguirus]

^ They would have covered it up.

From what I have heard, their frame is way too different. All T-600s in T:SCC are of average height and size, but these are a bit more on the hulk side of things.

The movie T-600s are a bit on the big side, I'll grant, but even the SCC ones aren't exactly petite...they got some pretty huge stunt guys to play them. Noticeably bigger than T-888s as per the submarine ep. Besides, it is the 600 "series" just like T-800s and T-888s are both in the "800 series."

It's not as bad as Bernd Schneider trying to make the new Enterprise a 300 meter ship, anyway.

[Nephtys]

It's time for Nephtys' Snarky Comments!

1. Apparently, Kyle Reese carries around a shotgun. In a city full of metal walking tanks. That'll be real effective.
2. How can Skynet see the future/past? Is it because it's made of magic? How does it know about Kyle Reese?
3. Skynet is a complete moron for developing those plasma gun things in T1, given how nothing Connor had could scratch Arnold.
4. Why is a submerged submarine transmitting the kill signal, instead of something... you know, not under hundreds of feet of water and operating hidden? Also, why was there an AWACS radar dish thing on top of it?
5. Who the heck built all those giant robot arms and stuff in the Death Camp and Terminator Factory? In T3, didn't Skynet just have a bunch of minigun-armed tankbots? How can it build an infrastructure at all?
6. Uncle Vanja's Gun was damned present in this movie. Connor telling people on the radio to stab T-600s in the neck, Connor pointing out the nuclear power cells, Connor looking at his dropped gun, Marcus having molten metal poured on his hand from the tippy-tron 9000 slag dispenser, collecting a hydro-killbot before you even got to see one in action...
7. Heart Transplant Surgery in a dirty, wind-blown hangar is apparently quite easy.
8. Why didn't Skynet just carpet-bomb that little bunker, or all those A-10s sitting open on the tarmac?
9. Hunter-Killers and the prisoner transport seem to operate off anti-gravity. Especially that prisoner transport. It doesn't have wings or any appreciable lifting body, but flies around like a spaceship. While carrying on board a giant robot and extra fighters...
10. Why did whats-her-name trust Marcus? Enough to commit basically treason? That was really poorly explained.
11. Why didn't Skynet just shoot Kyle Reese? Why take him to the 'overly elaborate and easily escapable death-trap room'?
12. Apparently machines, like puppies, make noises to express that they're happy. Only machines go 'BRRZGHH-KRRKGKHHH'.
13. So that's where Connor in T1 got that eye-scar from. Huh.
14. I honestly expected Connor to die in Skynet from his wounds (based on the famed movie principle of blood-in-mouth = goner), and he'd go to that surgery machine that fixed him up, and reproduce himself as Connor, to lead on or something. Even if that'd have issues (like with the mines), and even if that'd be a somewhat retarded ending. Alternatively, I have expected Connor to die, but not before telling Kyle Reese to go back in time in another five years.

[thecreech]

It's time for Nephtys' Snarky Comments!
11. Why didn't Skynet just shoot Kyle Reese? Why take him to the 'overly elaborate and easily escapable death-trap room'?
.

this one really bugged me. They had him and new how important it was for him to die but they didn't kill him. They made the terminators complete morons also. The terminators wouldnt kill them they would just "throw" them up against a wall grab them and repeat instead of just snapping their neck or punching a hole in their check. Badly written imo

[SylasGaunt]

I think the rumors said Connor would be killed and Marcus dons Connors skin and takes his position as leader of the Resistance. Though how they would have made the resistance trust a terminator as leader is beyond me.

Nobody but Connor's inner circle would have known but yeah that was pretty much how it was supposed to go.

Then it got leaked and a shitstorm ensued which is presumably the reason they changed it.

[Samuel]

I think the rumors said Connor would be killed and Marcus dons Connors skin and takes his position as leader of the Resistance. Though how they would have made the resistance trust a terminator as leader is beyond me.

Nobody but Connor's inner circle would have known but yeah that was pretty much how it was supposed to go.

Then it got leaked and a shitstorm ensued which is presumably the reason they changed it.

Why? That is an awesome ending and it makes a great way to distract Skynet who goes back in time... to kill the wrong person.

[Thanas]

...and it craps all over T1 and T2.

[SylasGaunt]

Why? That is an awesome ending and it makes a great way to distract Skynet who goes back in time... to kill the wrong person.

This was some time ago and I deliberately avoided a lot of it in my quest to avoid spoilers. But generally there was a vastly negative response so the ending was changed. I haven't seen anything confirming who is responsible aside from one article that says WB forced the rewrite though.

The irony now of course is that now we've got plenty of people saying 'hey that would have been cool, why didn't you go with that?'.

[Kuja]

This was some time ago and I deliberately avoided a lot of it in my quest to avoid spoilers. But generally there was a vastly negative response so the ending was changed. I haven't seen anything confirming who is responsible aside from one article that says WB forced the rewrite though.

The irony now of course is that now we've got plenty of people saying 'hey that would have been cool, why didn't you go with that?'.

Eh. I can't really say I like that option much either. I think it would have just been better for Marcus to live. It would have been a good way to give the resistance a much-needed boost in the arm since Marcus seemed to be downloading a lot of info while he was connected to the Skynet mainframe. He would have made a strong counterpoint to the other members of John Connor's inner circle. And I liked the character, dammit. Killing him off, especially after the near-death at the factory, was just a limp way for him to go (lolhearttransplant)

[TheLostVikings]

Sounds like you would have preferred the original ending to.

How did that go?

I think the rumors said Connor would be killed and Marcus dons Connors skin and takes his position as leader of the Resistance. Though how they would have made the resistance trust a terminator as leader is beyond me.

Actually the full leaked ending featured connor getting killed, his skin torn off and retrofitted onto marcus in order to keep the facade of john still being alive going. Only as Marcus opens his eyes after getting the face/off treatment he immediately grabs a gun and kills EVERYONE, including kyle, etc. Then cue his eyes flashing the signature terminator red and fade to black...

As you can see it is pretty damn obvious why that fuck-up made the fans mighty pissed.

[Nephtys]

I think the rumors said Connor would be killed and Marcus dons Connors skin and takes his position as leader of the Resistance. Though how they would have made the resistance trust a terminator as leader is beyond me.

Actually the full leaked ending featured connor getting killed, his skin torn off and retrofitted onto marcus in order to keep the facade of john still being alive going. Only as Marcus opens his eyes after getting the face/off treatment he immediately grabs a gun and kills EVERYONE, including kyle, etc. Then cue his eyes flashing the signature terminator red and fade to black...

As you can see it is pretty damn obvious why that fuck-up made the fans mighty pissed.[/quote]

Now that's a tremendously dumb ending. How can Kyle die?

[Galvatron]

Mixed feelings on this one.
Spoiler

• So Cyberdyne is still around in 2003? When did Judgment Day happen this time?
• Skynet Central is in San Francisco? What happened to being located in Colorado's Cheyenne Mountain complex?
• How did this Skynet acquire foreknowledge of Kyle Reese's significance?
• Coulda done without the CG Arnold. Seriously, it just perpetuates the stupid misconception that all T-800s look alike.
• For fuck's sake, can we please bring Brad Fiedel back to score these movies?

[Darth Wong]

...and it craps all over T1 and T2.

T3 already did that anyway.

[Adrian Laguna]

...and it craps all over T1 and T2.

There's really no reason why a sequel needs to be bound to the limits of what was established in the preceding works. Not unless you want to present the whole of it as a grand unified story. In the case of Terminator, only the first two movies are the same story. The TV show, the third movie, and now this one, are all alternate realities, with strong similarities in setting. Arthur C. Clarke did the same thing with his Space Odyssey books: Every single one of them contradicts the other three, and Clarke has said himself that they all take place in parallel universes.

[Galvatron]

Yeah, continuity is way overrated.

[SylasGaunt]

Mixed feelings on this one.
So Cyberdyne is still around in 2003? When did Judgment Day happen this time?

It picks up after T3 so 2004.

[*]Skynet Central is in San Francisco? What happened to being located in Colorado's Cheyenne Mountain complex?

Skynet's network is global. Basically they took out a big base but that's it. Also this is 11 years before the future war scenes in the other terminator movies.

[*]How did this Skynet acquire foreknowledge of Kyle Reese's significance?

Possibly data-dump from the T-X, or it could be that it picked up some of the police records from his arrest and didn't know he was John's father until it got the data from Marcus (it still would have known this was connor's choice to go back in time and protect Sarah though which would make him a target).

[Pint0 Xtreme]

Possibly data-dump from the T-X, or it could be that it picked up some of the police records from his arrest and didn't know he was John's father until it got the data from Marcus (it still would have known this was connor's choice to go back in time and protect Sarah though which would make him a target).

I don't necessarily buy this one. How could the T-X possibly know who Kyle Reese is? John Connor never reveals information about his father in T3 for the T-X to pick this up. The police records would have probably been destroyed in the nuclear fire. While it's possible that there would be enough data on Kyle Reese for Skynet to put two and two together, it still seems extremely unlikely. In either case, the film did a piss poor job on explaining how Skynet is aware of Kyle's importance. It forces the viewer to come up with a labored explanation of their own. The other alternative is to simply concede that the writers didn't really think the story through and should have been immediately fired upon their first draft of this film.

[Samuel]

...and it craps all over T1 and T2.

There's really no reason why a sequel needs to be bound to the limits of what was established in the preceding works. Not unless you want to present the whole of it as a grand unified story. In the case of Terminator, only the first two movies are the same story. The TV show, the third movie, and now this one, are all alternate realities, with strong similarities in setting. Arthur C. Clarke did the same thing with his Space Odyssey books: Every single one of them contradicts the other three, and Clarke has said himself that they all take place in parallel universes.

That sounds like an excuse about why the details don't match up especially since there is nothing to generate parrallel universes in the series.

[Pint0 Xtreme]

Another thing that sort of got me peeved a bit - why was the recording of Sarah Connor altered? One of the scenes where John Connor is listening to his mother was a paid homage to the end of Terminator 1 when she was recording herself in the Mexican desert. It included words that she never said in Terminator 1.

[Galvatron]

Kyle also never uttered the "no fate" phrase in his message from John in T1.

[Stark]

Amazingly, even 1984 tape recorder technology could be re-recorded. It makes sense in Sarah's broken-brained hoarding single-mindedness to keep the original tapes she dictated during John's infancy, but there's no reason she couldn't have re-recorded them at a later date to either update them or avoid the death of tapes etc. It's not difficult to rationalise.

[Pint0 Xtreme]

Amazingly, even 1984 tape recorder technology could be re-recorded. It makes sense in Sarah's broken-brained hoarding single-mindedness to keep the original tapes she dictated during John's infancy, but there's no reason she couldn't have re-recorded them at a later date to either update them or avoid the death of tapes etc. It's not difficult to rationalise.

Eh, it was unnecessary. Didn't Kyle Reese in T1 mentioned that it was safer to go out in the night rather than the day? Granted, 2029 is 11 years after the events of this film and a lot could have changed, it was still weird seeing Kyle Reese in T4 say the exactly opposite. And why would John fall for the voice-mimic trick by the T-800? Not only did he witness the T-800 mimic his voice in T2, but he and Sarah outsmarted the T-1000 near the end of T2, who pulled a much more clever ruse.

[Stark]

I'm not sure what any of that has to do with Sarah's tapes being slightly different.

[Pint0 Xtreme]

I'm not sure what any of that has to do with Sarah's tapes being slightly different.

Nothing. I was just asking about the other inconsistencies in the film.

[Gil Hamilton]

You mean like the increasingly loud jet noise that eventually got to the point where it was shaking the whole damn building right before the Harvester busted in the roof?

Well, there wasn't really. During that scene, you only started hearing the robot in the few seconds before it grabbed people through the roof. You'd think they'd hear both the carrier and the robot from a long way off.

Regarding this considering that Connor's bunch had strike craft still it's probable the defenses were blown up before they sent the choppers in. And obviously there's something shooting down there since there were wounded prisoners on the ground when the blackhawk landed and the door gunners were shooting at something on the way in.

That's the thing. Those strike craft should have been destroyed by Skynet's defense... except Skynet didn't bother to turn them back on after it allowed Marcus to turn them off. If the whole thing was a big trick by Skynet, then once its plan successfully got John Connor into its clutches, it could have just turn the defenses back on and kill Marcus and Connor.

Marcus used his direct access to the SKynet system to turn off all of Skynets defenses. For some reason this was not something that Skynet could quickly override.

Two problems with this:

1) Marcus didn't turn off all of Skynet's defenses. There were still Terminators milling about when John Connor sneaks in, so some of its defenses were still active.

2) Skynet outright TELLS Marcus that his infiltration of the base and his letting John Connor in was part of the Big Evil Plan. Given that the computer let Marcus do everything, there is no reason to think that Skynet couldn't just reactivate the defenses at a moments notice.

Besides, even if you discount Skynet personally controlling those units (in this case, it's feasible to claim that those units WERE Skynet), which is better at controlling system; a computer that haxxored the entire military network of the US to trigger a nuclear war... or a terminator that doesn't even think he's really a terminator. What could Marcus have possibly have done that could have stumped an evil superpowerful AI?

[Adrian Laguna]

That sounds like an excuse about why the details don't match up especially since there is nothing to generate parrallel universes in the series.

Alternate time lines are mentioned in the novels. Cyberdyne doesn't always win or lose.