[Stogieman]

I saw the movie last night and well...it's pretty bad. The movie does absolutely NOTHING to advance the Terminator saga, it was completely pointless. Now, there was lots of action, but with virtually no story to back it up, it was hard to care about whether or not the main characters (including John Connor) prevailed.

What I didn't understand was:

 

Kyle Reese (who is still a teenager in this flick) doesn't find out he's Connor's father, but Skynet knows, so they've targeted him for Termination...no Kyle Reese, no John Connor right? But get this: the machines actually capture Reese and keep him alive so that they can lure Connor into Skynet HQ to kill him. WTF??

Anyway, the film barely offers anything more than what we've already seen in the trailers, or read in the official premise that WB released. I guess you can check it out if you're a hardcore fan of the Terminator franchise, but if you don't see it, you won't be missing a damn thing.
__________________

[Chuckit]

That didn't completely make sense to me either.

 

My guess is that Skynet doesn't actually believe killing Kyle Reese would end Connor, but it knew he believed that, so it was playing into his fears in order to lure him out.

[Eug]

Box office estimates for this weekend are not stellar for a movie with a budget of this size ($200 million):

Friday $14.985 million
Saturday $14.750 million
Sunday $13.275 million
=================
$43 million (or $12184 per theatre)

It got beat by Night of the Museum, which got $53.5 million (or $13062 per theatre).

For comparison, Star Trek got $75 million (or $19539 per theatre) the first weekend. (This weekend Star Trek got $22 million.)

[starman]

This is what you get when you pop in the new T2 Blu-Ray. Wicked.

[Eug]

Piccie no workie.

[Chuckit]

A blue question mark? I knew HD-DVD should have won.

[starman]

grrr.

Well, here's the link:

Neat use of the Internet with the Terminator 2 Blu-ray on TwitPic

[ShortcutToMoncton]

Heard nothing but bad, horrible things.

McG? Seriously? He's delivered a long line of suck up to this point; why would anyone expect differently?

Too bad, but T3 had me prepared. Oh well.

greg

[mrtew]

I just saw it and I think it's good. It's got great action and pacing and special effects etc. There was none of that 'action' like in T3 where people stop and stand and watch robots fight for a while etc. Everyone was genuinely trying as hard as they could the whole time which is really nice for believability. Also I think there was a really good human story in the movie... it wasn't the story of Sarah and John like people were expecting but a new one about some other guy that is new to the timeline. But hey whatever, I loved the 'disappointing, shortlived' television series too.

[KCrosbie]

Seriously, like what Stogie said, it had to been one of the worst plot holes in movie history. Ugh, utterly disappointed.

[ctt1wbw]

Originally Posted by ShortcutToMoncton 

Heard nothing but bad, horrible things.

McG? Seriously? He's delivered a long line of suck up to this point; why would anyone expect differently?

Too bad, but T3 had me prepared. Oh well.

greg

What's the lowdown on why James Cameron didn't do it? I know he's making a movie right now that comes out in December called Avatar...

[mrtew]

That's weird... Avatar stars the same guy as T4 too.

After seeing Star Trek and then this movie I was just glad to see that there is at least ONE possible timeline where all guys don't pluck their eyebrows in the future. In a few years that's going to look as freaking stupid as DuranDuran wearing makeup all the time. Am I the only one that notices that?

[Eug]

Originally Posted by Eug 

Box office estimates for this weekend are not stellar for a movie with a budget of this size ($200 million):

Friday $14.985 million
Saturday $14.750 million
Sunday $13.275 million
=================
$43 million (or $12184 per theatre)

It got beat by Night of the Museum, which got $53.5 million (or $13062 per theatre).

For comparison, Star Trek got $75 million (or $19539 per theatre) the first weekend. (This weekend Star Trek got $22 million.)

To my surprise, this T4 opening weekend is actually worse than T3, and that was 2003. T3 got $150 mil at the box office domestically after its run.

However, there's still hope yet, as T3 got a whopping $283 mil internationally. That's almost as much as T2 got internationally ($315 mil).

[mrtew]

Originally Posted by Eug 

To my surprise, this T4 opening weekend is actually worse than T3, and that was 2003.

Of course it's worse! T3 followed one of the best action movies ever made and T4 followed one of the worst.

[Chuckit]

Originally Posted by ctt1wbw 

What's the lowdown on why James Cameron didn't do it? I know he's making a movie right now that comes out in December called Avatar...

Cameron hasn't been involved in the Terminator franchise since the early 1990s. He was semi-retired for several years and then when he came out of his retirement, he announced that he was going to do two movies back to back, one original story called Avatar and one based off the anime Battle Angel Alita. IIRC, they asked Cameron for his blessing on Salvation and he said something like, "I don't know if it's going to be any good. Best of luck, but I reserve the right to hate it."

[Eug]

Originally Posted by mrtew 

Of course it's worse! T3 followed one of the best action movies ever made and T4 followed one of the worst.

Yeah, but before T3 came out, my recollection is that the talk was pretty negative about it... like T4 I suppose.

[Chuckit]

Yeah, but coming next in a series after a well-loved movie generally provides a boost. It doesn't make the buzz any better, but it does induce nostalgia to dull the effects of negative buzz for a little while.

[Uncle Skeleton]

Originally Posted by mrtew 

After seeing Star Trek .... In a few years that's going to look as freaking stupid as DuranDuran wearing makeup all the time. Am I the only one that notices that?

By any chance is this a reference to how men always wore too much make-up on the original Star Trek?

[mrtew]

Originally Posted by Uncle Skeleton 

By any chance is this a reference to how men always wore too much make-up on the original Star Trek?

Ha! Yeah; no, the new Star Trek; but that's true. The worst was Data though!

[Eriamjh]

Just saw T4 (what part of this movie has any "Salvation"?).
I found it to be about 2.5 star out of five. Interesting, but not riveting. The whole save Reese/Time travel part tells you that this movie is more like a prequel than a sequel.

That means you know that certain characters are not going to die, etc. unless they completely change the storyline.

 

I actually cheered when I saw the "Arnold" Terminator. I hadn't read anything about it and it would have made sense for a T-800 to make an appearance. Well, it did.

I guess he was totally CG. Is there any actor whose wooden and stiff performance is perfect for replicating in CG? How would anyone be able to tell the difference?

I guess 2-3 years from now, we'll have another movie if this one breaks even. That, or the economy will kill the franchise for a lot longer delay.

Oh, and how can one NOT post this little item: Transforminators

[Eug]

Originally Posted by mrtew 

Of course it's worse! T3 followed one of the best action movies ever made and T4 followed one of the worst.

True to its nature as a fan-driven property, Terminator Salvation declined 62 percent to an estimated $16.1 million, increasing its tally to $90.7 million in eleven days. The sci-fi action sequel had a more precipitous fall than Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines, which was off 56 percent to $19.5 million at the same point and had generated $104.6 million through its 11th day. The disparity is even greater factoring ticket-price inflation, but Salvation is on course to retain more of Terminator 3's attendance than Terminator 3 compared to Terminator 2: Judgment Day.

So it's a bit of both. T3 benefitted from T2 more than T4 benefits from T3 for obvious reasons, but T4 is losing movie goers more quickly, and after considering inflation T4 is doing quite poorly in comparison to T3, despite having a $200 million production budget and Christian Bale of The Dark Knight fame.

[olePigeon]

I couldn't even watch all of Terminator 3. Terminator 4 was OK. Terminator 2 was awesome, I think one of the very few movies where the sequel was as good or better than the first.

They should have just left it as a two parter.

[Chuckit]

Should have waited for James Cameron to come back. I don't think he would have, but that's the only way I could see it being good.

Well, that or get Christopher Nolan to reboot the franchise.

[Atheist]

Terminator Salvation if they left out the bull****

I LOL'd.

[Dakar V]

Jesus, they really didn't miss a scene, either.

[Chuckit]

I thought one line summed up the movie pretty nicely: "Wow, it's all of the action of Terminator 2, without the reason to give a ****!"

[PB2K]

I've just seen it, it made me sick. Too many explosions and the action sequences were messed up. I didn't understand most of it. I'm bored with this movie, it's just too predictable and confusing at the same time. They should've hired Michael Biehn and Arnold Schwarzenegger, sure they are a bit old now, but the movie would be easier to watch by someone who has seen T1 in the theater

[andreas_g4]

I saw it the last week, and it was what I expected: Loud, stupid eye candy. Sometimes I like just that, and I think it was my half year dosage of it.

A cool summary from one of Rottentomatoes' critics:

"Guy dies, finds himself resurrected, meets others, fights."

:-)

[anthology123]

I thought most Terminator fans understand that James Cameron wanted to end the series at T2. There was no more story to tell. If you look at the alternate ending to T2, that is how he wanted it to end. It was the studio who wanted to continue the series.

[PB2K]

what annoyed me the most was that it resembled MATRIX so much, even the manually gearboxed "terminator-motorcycles" looked like matrix-machinery (red eye).

AND I HATE 4 YEAR OLD CHILDREN IN ACTION MOVIES

[brassplayersrock²]

what? you don't want your flare handed to you by a lil child?