UK Salvation Release Day!

Whilst USA & Canada got the first screenings of Terminator Salvation almost two weeks ago, us Brits had to wait almost two weeks more to see the latest installment of our beloved franchise. But today is judgment day and the Terminator is back!!

There were no advanced screenings as there were for T3 six years ago. I was lucky enough to be the first person to see T3 at my local Warner Village back then, dressed in full Terminator gear - black leather jacket, black bottoms, black boots and shades. But I'm no longer a 17 year old student with so much free time! The first showing of T4 at my local cinema was at 10am, which sucked majorly seen as I was working a day shift from 8am until 6pm! Knowing other people were seeing it before me didn't bother me that much at first, but when it got to lunch time and people's Facebook statuses said something along the lines of "Just about to see Terminator, can't wait!!", I started getting itchy fingers.

Sure enough I got through the day and headed straight to the cinema where I saw T3 all those years back, now renamed to VUE Cinema. It's only a five minute walk from where I work, so I was able to catch the 6.15pm showing. Walking in, still in my smart suit and tie job, the guy checking tickets greeted me and upon checking my ticket said "well it was either Terminator or Night at the Museum 2 and I had you down as a Terminator man!" (Perhaps he remembered me from my first T3 screening...). There were loads of T4 banners and standees, pics of which I will bring you later on.

The showing wasn't full, in fact it was more empty than it was packed. Not a good sign, but a positive too because it meant there'd be less noise and disruption throughout the movie.

Before seeing the movie, I'd seen every last clip of it that I could find online and had read up on everything. I was, however, still clueless at to what Marcus' actual role was and what the ending was going to be, though I had a fair idea.

Right, now to give my opinion on the movie.

Did I like it? Yes I did. Was it what I expected? Not exactly.

It was a good movie, but I have my issues. First off, it was clear after the first 15 minutes of this movie that it was missing one huge key element. Arnold. It didn't FEEL like a Terminator movie. No Terminator arrivals or stealing of clothes or cars or cool one liners. But I could live with that for now because I knew Arnold was coming and I was about to see almost two hours of future war scenes.

What confused me a bit was that in the opening scene, Helenah Bonham Carter has Worthington sign his body away on a piece of paper with a Cyberdyne Systems logo. Cyberdyne was blown to pieces in T2 and according to T3, Cyber Research Systems carried on with the Skynet design. The future had been altered and therefore Cyberdyne no longer existed, right? Wrong.

Anyway, Bale started off using his Batman voice in the opening few scenes that we see him in and I have to admit I didn't like this. But I warmed to him soon enough when he cooled it. The machines were big and slow and very primitive, an excellent depiction of Kyle Reese's description back in 1984. But the future didn't look as nightmarish as it did back in those first scenes we saw in T1. For a world where humanity has all but been wiped out completely by a massive nuclear holocaust, there were plenty of survivors. Healthy looking ones at that. And if we go back and look at the deleted scenes from T1, Kyle cries when he sees trees and flowers because that's the first time he's ever seen anything like that. "All this, this whole place, everything, it's gone. Just gone". In Salvation however, there seem to be some kind of super trees that survived Judgment Day.

"We stay down by day but at night you can move around". That's what Reese told Sarah in 1984. Salvation however is contrary to this, having more day time scenes than night, with Anton Yelchin's young Kyle Reese telling Marcus that they go out more in the day because it's too dangerous at night. Massive plot hole! And I just couldn't help but think that Star was a useless character and that the movie would have been no different without her. Kate Connor was also more of a supporting role this time around, appearing in only a handful of scenes, not important ones either.

And then we have Marcus, the death row prisoner who left his body to medical science after being executed and then had his heart and brain put into the body of a prototype infiltration Terminator. I think the writers were extremely brave to bring this idea in because this wasn't the story that Cameron told. "This is not the future my mother warned me about" Connor says to Kate after witnessing a machine with real human organs and a genuine belief of it's humanity. I'm sort of on the fence with this character. He didn't have the bad ass Terminator feel that either Arnold or Robert Patrick enthused, but he was a strong character none the less and this movie was very much so about his own inner fight of man versus machine and finding out who turned him into the hybrid cyborg he found himself to have become.

I liked the fact that Connor was not yet the leader of the Resistance. He's still a fairly young man and although Judgment Day ocurred 15 years prior, it was good to see him go through the hardships of prophesising the future, as his mother Sarah did and have to earn the respect and loyalty of the fighters. He wasn't just handed the command on a plate and had to make decisions that went against what his superiors believed was best. That's the Connor that we knew would become the saviour of mankind. And by the end of the movie, although he's not yet the saviour, he has taken control.

There were plenty of homages to the first two movies and one of these was the introduction of Sarah Connor's photo and the tapes she left to John. What I didn't like was that they over emphasised the fact that it was her, "this is tape 28 of Sarah Connor to my son John Connor". We all know it's her, even someone who has only seen T1 once or twice would know that! One question I found myself asking was, how did Connor salvage these tapes from the war? He was at Crystal Peak when the bombs went off and had no personal belongings with him.... but now I'm just nit-picking.

The machines looked great. Although I had initial doubts about the Harvester, it was a new injection into saga and introduced us to a whole new ball game of what was going on in the future aside from the hunter killers and Terminators. The T-600's were big and heavy and dumb and did Stan Winston's memory proud. One thing I had trouble with was identifiying a T-700. There's no reference to them in the movie, but Sideshow have released the figures. Perhaps there will be a deleted scene to fill us in on this at a later date.

The T-800 looked magnificent. I loved seeing the factory where they were manufactured and even though it's too early in the future for them to exist (seen as Reese said the T-800's were "new and powerful" in 2029) we know the future has been changed completely from the events of the previous movies.

What really gets me though is the way these machines throw about the humans, slamming them into this, that and everything. All it would require would be the fist of a Terminator closing around a human neck... crunch!!

As short as it was, Arnold's scene was the definite highlight of the movie. The sound of the drums when the camera panned up his body, the tenseness, the enitre audeience knew it was him before his face even appeared. The CGI was fantastic and whoever created it well and truly earnt their pay cheque. Bale didn't look too shocked to see his boyhood companion about to try and rip his head off, but seeing the real Terminator at last made up for this. Burning his flesh off 30 seconds later seemed very rushed, but we know it would have been a slightly longer scene if Arnold had been in it properly.

Another nice touch I thought was that Connor was impaled by the T-800. As depicted in T3, Connor would eventually be killed by the machine that protected him so many years before. I'd have been slightly more shocked if I hadn't read the ending before seeing the movie but as I knew what was coming, I wasn't on the edge of my seat screaming that they were killing off Connor.

What I am glad about is that the rumoured ending of Connor dieing and having his skin put over Marcus was rethought and rerouted to the scene of the heart transplant. As far as I know, this alternate ending was filmed, so we can all see what we prefer when the DVD comes our way. But the important thing is that we still have the real John Connor, even if he does have the heart of a different man/machine.

I'm going to stop there because some of you still wont have seen the movie and those that have seen it already know what happens so there's no point in me listing it all here. I'll be seeing it again in the next couple of days so I can make a more settled decision after multiple viewings. Although I seem to have done nothing but criticise the movie, I did like it. It just didn't feel like a Terminator movie due to the lack of Arnold, but that's something we're going to have to get used to if they do go ahead with more pictures.

All in all, I give it a 7/10. Not the best Terminator movie but a worthy addition.

GlobalArnold Staff