Biggest problem was the director and the script, it should have been about John Connor from the get go not Sam Worthington’s character. I don’t like the idea of a Terminator leading the resistance either.

Not the best Terminator movie ever but at least we got the infamous Bale out!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YTihsJQHt48

I liked Salvation Waaaaaaaaaaaaaaay better that T3

@jeebs said:

I liked Salvation Waaaaaaaaaaaaaaay better that T3

TS was quite a bit edgier than T3, but there were some really brilliant, under-appreciated elements to T3 that get missed.

The first, most incredible aspect, was the way in which Arnold had to play the T800 as just another machine from off the assembly line. While John Connor and we, the audience, "recognize Arnold", and want to invoke all the emotion and relationship that was built up with John and Sarah, it cannot be, for indeed this is just another one of the machines. In terms of acting, it was neat that Arnold betrayed no sense of familiarity or kinship with John, no vestige of what once was.

The other aspect is the kicker of the plot itself. Throughout the movie, John is convinced they either stopped SkyNet, or could stop SkyNet, and we the audience followed him all along until he gets to the end and realizes "hold on a tick, we can't stop SkyNet at this point in time - if they've been sending machines back to kill me, and the resistance has been sending back people/machines to protect me, then everything leading up to that point must have occurred." But, of course! How could we be strung along thinking he's going to stop it - this was not just another spin on what happened in T2 at all!

These two elements raise my view of T3 quite a bit.

I did not dig TS very much at all. So many ideas we'd had about the future, according to recollections of Kyle Reese, etc., never materialized...and then, several elements about which we had no inkling (Marcus Wright? Who in hell is Marcus Wright?).

@DRDMovieMusings said:

@jeebs said:

I liked Salvation Waaaaaaaaaaaaaaay better that T3

TS was quite a bit edgier than T3, but there were some really brilliant, under-appreciated elements to T3 that get missed.

The first, most incredible aspect, was the way in which Arnold had to play the T800 as just another machine from off the assembly line. While John Connor and we, the audience, "recognize Arnold", and want to invoke all the emotion and relationship that was built up with John and Sarah, it cannot be, for indeed this is just another one of the machines. In terms of acting, it was neat that Arnold betrayed no sense of familiarity or kinship with John, no vestige of what once was.

I agree, Arnold did a good job with this.

The other aspect is the kicker of the plot itself. Throughout the movie, John is convinced they either stopped SkyNet, or could stop SkyNet, and we the audience followed him all along until he gets to the end and realizes "hold on a tick, we can't stop SkyNet at this point in time - if they've been sending machines back to kill me, and the resistance has been sending back people/machines to protect me, then everything leading up to that point must have occurred." But, of course! How could we be strung along thinking he's going to stop it - this was not just another spin on what happened in T2 at all!

I never looked at it in this perspective before and yes it does bring a new layer to the film.

(Marcus Wright? Who in hell is Marcus Wright?).

I hated that about the film... if only the took that element out and just focused on John.

@jeebs said:

I hated that about the film... if only the took that element out and_** just focused on John**_.

You're so right. Seeing the story of John and Kyle in the context of the resistance would have been incredible. Imagine, the whole time, John knows - and we the audience know - that Kyle does not know he's the father of his hero! Some great movie maker said the essence of suspense is when we the audience know something an on-screen character must discover (remember in T2 when we knew Arnold was there to protect John, but Sarah did not, when they first met in the jail? My gosh, we could just feel her abject terror when the nightmare of the Terminator was back, and everything she may have thought she was crazy about was materialized all over again...and then she sees John, and it's okay, and she's in utter disbelief, but has to pull it together...classic sequence...but I digress...

Back in TS, but we spent most of this movie thinking "what's going on? How's it going to connect with the story we'd known through three previous movies?" There was just too much we did not know.

I will admit, though - given how much anticipation we all had, it must have been difficult to decide what way to go. And, yes, the screenplay in TS was splendid - stark, raw, cold...

@DRDMovieMusings said:

What went wrong with Terminator Salvation?

Possibly the Yellow Submarine bit

@DRDMovieMusings said:

@jeebs said:

I liked Salvation Waaaaaaaaaaaaaaay better that T3

TS was quite a bit edgier than T3, but there were some really brilliant, under-appreciated elements to T3 that get missed.

The first, most incredible aspect, was the way in which Arnold had to play the T800 as just another machine from off the assembly line. While John Connor and we, the audience, "recognize Arnold", and want to invoke all the emotion and relationship that was built up with John and Sarah, it cannot be, for indeed this is just another one of the machines. In terms of acting, it was neat that Arnold betrayed no sense of familiarity or kinship with John, no vestige of what once was.

John Connor "recognizing" the T-800 was one of the worst things in the film (and yes, that is saying something). it betrayed a fundamental misunderstanding of the character.

@BarkingBaphomet said:

John Connor "recognizing" the T-800 was one of the worst things in the film (and yes, that is saying something). it betrayed a fundamental misunderstanding of the character.

Why shouldn't Connor recognize the T-800? Would you forget everything you went through in T2:JD?

I think I'll separate from the pack a little. While I agree that Salvation was a terrible movie, I wanted to see the film focus heavily on Kyle Reese instead of John Connor. From that article you linked, the idea was to keep Connor sequestered so that Skynet never became aware of him. I think that makes far more sense than putting him front-and-center. Anton Yelchin was far more charismatic and interesting than Bale--god, he was almost as bad as fat Michael Ironsides--and I'd have loved to see a character arc involving how Reese went from a run-of-the-mill fighter to the father of John Connor.

The biggest problem, though, was McG. It's been demonstrated time and again that he, like Zach Snyder, is more obsessed with the visuals than the plot and characters. Had a solid action director like (of course) Cameron, Verhoeven, or McTiernan made that same picture they'd have insisted on a completed script from the get-go and would never have let Bale run the show.

@AlienFanatic said:

I think I'll separate from the pack a little. While I agree that Salvation was a terrible movie, I wanted to see the film focus heavily on Kyle Reese instead of John Connor. From that article you linked, the idea was to keep Connor sequestered so that Skynet never became aware of him. I think that makes far more sense than putting him front-and-center. Anton Yelchin was far more charismatic and interesting than Bale--god, he was almost as bad as fat Michael Ironsides--and I'd have loved to see a character arc involving how Reese went from a run-of-the-mill fighter to the father of John Connor.

The biggest problem, though, was McG. It's been demonstrated time and again that he, like Zach Snyder, is more obsessed with the visuals than the plot and characters. Had a solid action director like (of course) Cameron, Verhoeven, or McTiernan made that same picture they'd have insisted on a completed script from the get-go and would never have let Bale run the show.

Hear, hear!

@DRDMovieMusings said:

@BarkingBaphomet said:

John Connor "recognizing" the T-800 was one of the worst things in the film (and yes, that is saying something). it betrayed a fundamental misunderstanding of the character.

Why shouldn't Connor recognize the T-800? Would you forget everything you went through in T2:JD?

it's not that he remembered what the thing looked like, it's that he treated it like a person, like the very same person who he knew during the events of T2.

this is someone who was raised from birth to be the Skynet usurper? maybe all the animal tranquilizers were supposed to've deadened the functioning parts of his brain...

@BarkingBaphomet said:

@DRDMovieMusings said:

@BarkingBaphomet said:

John Connor "recognizing" the T-800 was one of the worst things in the film (and yes, that is saying something). it betrayed a fundamental misunderstanding of the character.

Why shouldn't Connor recognize the T-800? Would you forget everything you went through in T2:JD?

it's not that he remembered what the thing looked like, it's that he treated it like a person, like the very same person who he knew during the events of T2.

this is someone who was raised from birth to be the Skynet usurper? maybe all the animal tranquilizers were supposed to've deadened the functioning parts of his brain...

Ah. OK. To the best of my recollection, I can't recall him treating the T-800 like the "very same" person. But, if it struck you that way, I can't remember sufficiently to the contrary to argue with you.

In other news, you get bonus points for correctly using "to've" in a sentence, in an age when people are beginning to accept "should of/could of/would of" (egad, I shudder to even type such grammatical monstrosities).

What went wrong? Everything! Sam Worthless is awful, pg-13 rating and the fact that there are no terminators in the movie just throwminators. Besides the first 2 all Terminator movies and series suck ass.

I like Terminator Salvation more in subsequent viewings than I did initially. Not a great movie but not without some merits. I think I don't have the same expectations as I did when I first saw it so I can enjoy it more now, if that makes any sense.

@FunRoyal said:

What went wrong? Everything! Sam Worthless is awful, pg-13 rating and the fact that there are no terminators in the movie just throwminators. Besides the first 2 all Terminator movies and series suck ass.

The film sucks, the PG13 rating is irrelevant.