After a bullshit 95% for 'Star Trek' (Dark Knight got a 94%), Rotten Tomatoes is worthless as tits on a bull in my book.
T3 was a masterpiece compared to this travesty. Words fail me on how you can fuck up a future-war Terminator movie. This was an abortion from the start.
I'll probably see the movie next week, but I have to say that the trailer for this film was just awful. Really uninspired. And that Nine Inch Nails song is annoying. A lot of folks I've spoken with say the same thing (i.e., the trailer turned them off). Plus, McG has a faggy name and a lousy resume. So even without having seen the movie, I can see why it's doing so lousy at the box office.
I liked the little background nod to when Kyle Reese found a length of rope to hang his shotgun shortly after arriving in the past. It sure seemed like the story was leading to Connor's death, possibly even his replacement by-or turned into-another cyborg with a human heart and brain. Overall, I believe I got exactly what I was expecting in a Terminator movie. The only thing I was hoping to see and didn't was the eventual victory over the machines and it's last desperate tactic of sending a T-800 back in time, just before the resistance arrives on the scene and sends back Reese, but that's not necessarily a bad thing, as it leaves room for more movies. Nitpicks: As others have stated, the human resistance seemed awfully well-armed and organized for so early in the war. How the hell is Skynet not able to track Connor's "you are the resistance" radio broadcasts? No Derek Reese, no appearance or even mention of Camren or anything like her, and Linda Hamilton in the picture. I guess this pretty much ignored the TV series, eh? The T-800 vs. the molten metal. A good nod back to T2, but this wasn't some random steel mill or anything. This was a terminator factory. I'm questioning whether any terminator should be able to break free of a hardened coating of it's own metal. And speaking of that big Skynet facility, if you've got dangerous intruders in your stronghold, and you presumably have a large force of infiltrator models on-site, why the fuck does a calculating, logical machine not send in an overwhelming force to neutralize them? One T-600 for Reese, one T-800 for Connor, and the wild-card cyborg dude gets no coverage at all until he interferes. That's an almost human level of arrogance.
There is also a small programming glitch with the T-800. When you have your quarry (the man who will ultimately defeat you) by the throat, do you: a) snap his neck like a twig, or; b) throw him into a cabinet so that he can get up and run away, and or fight some more? CLUE: b is NOT the correct answer!
Yeah, I meant to say something about that. It wasn't just the T-800, either. If you let a fucking infiltrator get a solid grip on you anywhere, you're done. Snap your spinal column, crush your heart, cave in your skull. Anything but a casual toss against a mildly shock-absorbing surface that lets you get up and run away. That said, I enjoyed watching the T-600 shoot off it's own foot to get free of those chains. That is how a Terminator should act.
Nitpick I was just reminded about, Skynet central, when Marcus Wright arrives. Is it just me or is that an Office with video screens set up for a human operator? machines don't need monitors to see information, they just plug in and get the info. GUIs are only something a human would need.
Hello, I didn't write the review. There was nothing I could do about length. You should have seen how long it looked BEFORE I added text, font, and increased the size to make it easier to get through.
Maybe infiltrators can't access their own data ports or something, and need to tap into something that isn't broadcast over "Skynet FM, all extermination, all the time!" Or maybe the entire room and set of interfaces was configured for that unique prototype dude Skynet upgraded.
Wow... This movie seems to invoke some very visceral reactions. I liked it and I'm planning to see it again this week if I get some spare time. Although this is not a prequel of sorts, it sort of is given the subject matter.... which is awesome, IMHO, that with regards to how you look at it, this was a prequel or it's not. With that said, I'm begining to wonder if prequels are flawed by nature. Creative teams are tasked with bringing a story to you, but the minute they throw the fans an unanticipated twist, we bitch and moan because we had a preconcieved notions of how things went. The Star Wars prequels dissappointed until the last installment when all of what we knew took place. I fear that this franchise may suffer the same fate because we want to see John send Kyle back, switch the T-800's and then send them back, and that's going to come later. What do we know happened in the human/robot war? John saved Kyle's life, john is responsible for winning the war and sends Kyle and 1 terminator back in time after reprogramming it and if T3 is canon, Kate sends one back. This is a trilogy. If they showed all of that in the first movie, then the last two would be sort of hard to fill... but that would be cool if they showed all of that in the next one and the third installment was totally off the chain. But for right now, I have to say that the idea of human John Connor dying and Terminator Marcus assuming his identity and carrying out his role was a fertile ground to tell some good stories on... It would explain a whole lot with regards as to how John was able to hack into and reprogram T-800s with very little exposure to programming. With that said, there were some incongruities here. For instance, Not only did SkyNet know that Kyle Reese was John's father, I could have sworn someone in the movie mention a rumor that John was the one that was going to defeat SkyNet... As if they'd seen the movies we had. Since I'm the only one to bring this up, I'll have to pay extra attention when I see it again. This is why John invoked the chagrin of his commanding officers as well as the respect of his peers even though his service record did not reflect it. I would have preferred it if neither the human resistance knew of Connor's destiny nor if SkyNet knew of Kyle Reese. When John first saw that Marcus was a Terminator, his instincts were to distrust it. After he'd been sent 2 terminators to guard him in the past, why? Suspicious, OK, but why be so opposed to the idea? Lastly, it seems that in marketing this movie, the first trailer I saw gave away the biggest spoiler in the movie. Just think of the shock that couild have been if no one knew that Marcus was a Terminator? That could have been a "Sixth Sense" moment and they blew it in the very first trailer. I still liked it and I'm going to see it again.
Hey... now that I think about it, that does suck. I really would've liked to come to that revelation on my own. In fact, that would have been fucking intense.
I doubt it could have been kept under wraps anyway. Isn't there a whole toyline out which would have spoiled it. I remember that's how I first found out Rodimus Prime took over the autobots. Saw the toy. I was then expecting Optimus Primes death in the first minute of the movie, no shock when it happened.
I might go see it again this week just for something to do. Big 'splosions, robot motorcycles, and A-10 dogfights VS HK's. There's just too much good stuff in this flick that overrides the bad.
I'm leaving the theater now after my second viewing... you know what? Fuck a fanboy... That was an awesome summer movie! More when I get home.
Yeah... it's pretty obvious from the get go, but with a little editing and a dream sequence here and there and you've got a twist as big as The Sixth Sense, IMHO. Well, I never thought I'd say this about a fucking McG movie, but I'm looking foward to a Director's cut. 40 minutes of this film was cut? The more dialouge heavy scenes for sure. But even then, the remnants of a decent story is still there. A murderer seeking redemption... an enemy relentless and cold as a calculator.. and a human resistence on the brink of destruction, poised to become more like their enemy in order to win. Connor's speech over the radio before the strike on San Francisco where he pleads for people to not abandon the very things make them human was good. How can anyone say that they were not invested in his character? It even had a memorable line... "If you're listening to this, then you are the resistance." My personal rankings on the T franchise is as follows: T2 T1 TS T3.
I've been to the theatre and seen TS twice now and I have to say it is an excellent movie and a great addition to the franchise. It has several great elements going for it: They did a great job of setting up the final installment in the series, the technology in the movie was just complex enough to be believable yet left room to be further developed in the final sequel. For example: The GUI's for the T-800's were nicely designed so that they could be improved upon in the last movie, the way that the T-800 identified shapes and objects with the thousands of mo-cap (motion capture points) and a more basic command line interface was a nice intermediate step and can be improved upon to become the highly sophisticated GIU's we see in T3 and hopefully in the final installment, to me this looked intentional and well executed. I think this was also carefully calculated and planned as well, the war has not progressed and things are not as desperate as they will be when Kyle Reese is sent back by John Connor to change the future or final outcome. In T1 the environments looked like they were in the final stages of the apocalypse with the machines having all the momentum and winning the war and Kyle Reese being sent back in time was a last ditch effort to save humanity? The final installment is setup to show the progression to that really, dark, desperate place with humanity on the final brink of extinction. This is backed up by the final narration in the film which states that "The Skynet Global Network is still stronger than ever" and I am sure will continue to develop technologically into the T-1000 sentient, liquid metal generation and maybe even further to the TX or nano machine generation as seen in T3. This was also deliberately done as well I think, if they bring the tech line forward as they should we should see Plasma rifles and mounted plasma turrets on the HK's in the final installment and we should see some really grim, apocalyptic environments too? Overall the acting was great with excellent casting, Christian Bale was made for the role of JC, awesome cameo by Michael Ironside! Christian Bale, Sam Worthington, Common and even Anton Yelchin are very believable and not the typical Hollywood whiny, crybaby characters we see so much of in action movies these days, they are throwbacks to a more masculine leading man era as somebody mentioned earlier. All the ladies in the movie do an excellent job as well and Moon Bloodgood is smoking hot! My overall rating 8.5
