I hated T3, but when I saw T4, I honestly found little to complain about. The motorcyclebots were ridiculous, Marcus' CG metal face did look pretty shoddy, but the overall story was much, much better. I even went into the theater expecting something awful, and it truly wasn't.
@Meredith Woerner: They make a point of showing her pick up the Detonator after it drops. And as for the others, obviously she isn't shooting much, so the most useful thing for her to do is lug things around that people can use like a small pack mule. Why are these things so hard to believe when you are accepting killer future robots?
i'm going to have to dissagree on the kate connor comparisons, setting aside your opinion of clare danes which appears to border on the fanatical at least T3's kate did something. reguardless of which actress you like more the mere fact that T3 has kate picking up an assault rifle and gunning down an prototype HK sets that kate miles ahead of the T4's.
what happened to the kate that's second in command and outlives john connor? it felt like someone on the writting or directing staff was having trouble working with a strong female character so they smote her with a baby and replaced her with moon 'don't my boobs look perkey in the post apocolypse outfit' bloodgood. who the hell actually belives anyone would have teeth or hair that perfect in that future anyway? i guess paul mitchell survives judgement day too...
The only thing in T3 that I liked was when the T-X was gunning down all of John Conner's lieutenants, the kid at the drive through and the kids party. It seemed like Skynet was finally going to start some shit with the time travel business, just go back in time and kill everybody.
T3 looses big points with the female robot though. The scene where she makes her boobs bigger when she's pulled over is so pandering it takes you out of the movie. I get it's for the fanboys or whatever, but it was extremely lame. She's got boobs, we get it.
The action sequences were way better in T4, though. Those robot-motorcycles were pretty great.
@Fate'sBitch: using boob size as a method of distracting a male cop long enough to still his gun seems like a perfectly logical thing for a machine to take advantage of and demonstrates skynet's growing understanding of humans in desgining a terminator that picks up on that.
@Fate'sBitch: The only problem with the whole use of time travel as a weapon, though, is why the machines simply don't go back and kill Connor's mother when she was a baby. Or her parents. Or their parents.
It's the problem I've always had with Terminator as a series. If you have the ability to go back in time and the will to disrupt timelines (such as machines would have unless they directly interfered with their own creation) I don't see why you wouldn't "go back to the source" as early as possible.
It's just... such a huge plot hole that gets over looked because the machines just so happen to only go back in time far enough to a point in time when the people can protect themselves (and rather effectively so) and make for an action packed film. For this reason I've never been able to "get into" Terminator.
@AldoraGreel: if they go to far back in time they could disrupt their own creation as well. assuming they have imperfect information on human history, which the first terminator indicates is true since the machine did not know which sara connor was the right one, they might fear killing off both an ancestor of the connors and of their creators.
@EverettAsclepius: sorry throwing in one line of dialog then "fixing" him off camera is akin to magic in my book. They spent ZERO time explaining the mechanics of Marcus and what they needed to be fixed they used the "he's a machine magic" paint brush to gloss over important facts. Lazy.
I dislike T4 because it was a bad movie that had the capability to be brilliant. But I still defend some of it above. Not the magical healing part, but
Where were the dogs in T4? I seem to recall in Reese saying in T1 (or was it Arnold in T2?) something about how they use dogs because they can sense the presence of a terminator quicker or something. I never heard "Oh, in the future, we use this little mute kid..."
Dogs detect the Infiltrators, (T-800s with flesh, like arnie.) The fake humans don't smell right or something and upset the dogs. So no T-800s, no dogs, since right now dogs would be taking up valuable food resources to maintain, not to mention being good food for survivors also.
All the people bitching about T4 couldn't construct a logical thought to save their lives.
"Why did Skynet have a control room? That doesn't make sense?"
It makes perfect sense given the fact that said Skynet HQ appears to be the Skynet HQ designed by humans - so it makes sense that it looks like an office buidling complete with clean room.
Secondly, Skynet has basically created (or operates) an assembly line. They are just completing the T-800s. I don't see them building any tiny multi-functional robots that could relocate or redesign Skynet HQ do you? No. Why? Because the HQ is satisfactory and they are focused on war.
Why waste time and resources redesigning your HQ/command center when you can just stock the place with some Terminators and protect your vulnerabilities. You do the best with what you are given.
why would the machines ID kyle and then keep him alive if killing him would, in fact, kill john connor? (I am convinced that given the time travel of the first three films that this kyle is from a different timeline than john's actual father and that killing him would have no effect but this is not addressed in the film)
why would anyone, especially john given what he knows from T3 about a T-800 gaining his trust and killing him in the future, even for a second trust an organism with a machine core like marcus?
given the trouble skynet has had eliminating john in the past why would it not use overwhelming force after spriing the trap on him instead of pitting him against one T-800? would gasing the room have been too hard? hell, wire a nuke to the door or something it's certainly worth it to kill john right?
@SkaHimself: Exactly. In T3, it was established that Skynet doesn't exists in one location but is a worm that infiltrates the computers of the world. So it is likely that the command center in T4 is a human created system that the Skynet worm finally nested in.
@badbob001: And it just happened to survive in pristine condition after San Francisco got burnt to a crisp? I don't think so. It's easier just to say that the clean room was built for Marcus. See? All done. The key-pads are best left ignored.
"Why waste time and resources redesigning your HQ/command center when you can just stock the place with some Terminators and protect your vulnerabilities. You do the best with what you are given."
Yes, stocking the place would have been a good idea, where "stocking" > 3 killer robots.
@tetracycloide: I don't know if I missed a key line of dialogue that would confirm/deny what I'm about to type in answer to your questions, so here goes:
My guess is that by the time of the events of Salvation (2018), Skynet knows that John Connor exists and that he is important on some level, but it doesn't know for sure yet just how important he is. Since Skynet's primary goal behind the trap it set was to wipe out the leadership of the resistence and that the leadership was all located at one location (the sub), it had to set a secondary trap for Connor. Since over a decade had passed between T3 and TS (2004-2018), Skynet probably learned from a captured soldier during that time that Connor has been looking for Kyle Reese, so it used Reese as bait for Connor in a way to coincide with the trap it set for the rest of the resistence leadership, thus killing all known points of leadership in one stroke. Also, since it doesn't know yet just how formidible Connor is, it felt satisfied that having a T-800 and a few T-600s around would be enough to kill him.
As for why Connor trusted Marcus, I don't think he trusted Marcus as much as he was determined to find out exactly what Marcus is and if his appearance could change the outcome of the war. Connor spent a good chunk of the movie trying to see if his mother Sarah said anything about Terminators like Marcus in her tapes, and he didn't. Thus, the only way to find out was to let Marcus go and follow him to Skynet.
@Trystero: it wouldn't have to 'just happen' to survive since skynet controls where the bombs fell and knew how large the blast radius was. it's possible, perhaps even probable, that wide swaths of useful industrial complex were left unbombed to be cleaned out later by various terminator units so the machines could use them for their own projects.
@Butts_McCracken: but that doesn't jive with T3 unless you assume T3 and T4 aren't on the same timeline. in T3 skynet was not just a military defense grid but also a virus propagated by the TX. it's possible when the TX began propogating skynet that it did not transfer any knowdelge from the future into skynets system but why wouldn't they? would this knowledge of future human tactics, future information on the human resistance not be invaluable to the machine's war effort? it seems silly to design a robot that can unleash skynet in the past only to have skynet come online exactly the same way it did before sans the myriad of possible enhancements the TX could have delivered.
@SkaHimself: it's impossible for T4 to take place before T1, T2, and T3 because john has the tapes from T2 and skynet knows about kyle reese. the only possible explination is that the original past happened, the original future happened, T1 happened and changed both the past and the future, the chages from T1 directly lead to the events of T2 which changed the past and future again, then the events of T2 lead to the events of T3 where the future is changed, then T3 changed the past again and T4 is the new future that resulted after the cumulative events of T1, T2, and T3. T4 most certinaly is not the future as it existed before the events of the original 3 films, it expressly cannot be that future. Nor can it be any future that does not include the events of T2, and be extension T1, in the past at the very least.
if your interpretation of T4 is a prequel that takes place in the unaltered future before T1, T2, and T3 then the tapes of sara connor that john listens to is an even more glaring plothole than any mentioned above. if TS is a prequel those tapes shouldn't exist yet. since they do exist it's a huge leep to assume the TX did not transfer any knowledge to skynet when it had the chance.
T3 because it was a Terminator film from beginning to end. Basically a chase film? Check. Pursuer from future? Check. Defender from future? Check. Arnold? Check. Some sign of a sense of humor? Check. Downer ending? Best downer ending of all the Terminator movies. And the dark secret to success of the franchise: Did it have Arnold beating up on some cops? Check.
And while I initially scoffed at Nick Stahl, he actually had a very haunted look about him which is befitting a man who's never really known peace his entire life.
I don't understand the hate. I really don't. I saw T4 on Monday and was expecting to be completely disappointed thanks to i09 and the like but I wasn't.
I thought it was f'ing awesome. Not as good as T2 but so what? It was awesome in it's own right.
Character development for Bale? Blow me. It's called T2 and T3.
Action sequences sucked? Piss off. The movie was nothing but one big action sequence.
Storyline was lame? Fuck you. It wasn't supposed to resolve anything - except to move the franchise forward. It did so admirably. John Conner is now part Terminator. He has his father Kyle Reese. The stakes have been raised (i.e. Time travel will now be explored as the machines realize they're more vulnerable than before).
His relationship with his wife? Ha! Who gives a fuck about their wife and child when their existence hangs on Kyle Reese? No Reese. No Connor. No Connor baby. Wife and child don't have to be major plot points.
I honestly fail to see what all the bitching and moaning is about.
@SkaHimself: It's because if Terminator 2 did anything right, it left no plot holes to be found. It tied everything up perfectly, had action, character development, and lots of Guns N' Roses.
The most important rule of screenwriting is to make a movie where the audience has nothing to ask questions about. There should never be a "why didn't he..." or "wait, why would they do that" question in their minds. T2 is one of those rare movies that follows that rule, and T4 recklessly abandons it.
There were no... brains in T4. In addition, no chasing, no time travel, little humor, John Connor being changed from a military man to a bit of a mystic prophet who "foresaw the future," John Connor not leading the resistance, but just being some influential commando...
It goes on. The worst scene, I think, was on the submarine where we had some sort of multicultural resistance thing. If they were a bunch of people in ragtag uniforms, it would have been cool, but everyone was wearing their "home country" uniforms, and it was a really reality killing moment.
@DocSeuss: The biggest argument against T4 is that it probably did not need to be made, or a different part of the future would have been more compelling to cover.
But I watched T3 again the other day (first time was in the theater) and it's sort of embarrassing. Arnie's age aside, why send a robot back to kill the generals? Why not just send them to kill Sarah Connor again? Because it's not the 80s anymore?
@Smeagol92055: Yeah, I don't remember that either. I thought that it was the police officer that he kills in the beginning, but I guess he could've already been Robert Patrick and then took on the officer's clothes or whatever. I don't know.
Honestly, I think the character is a little better without an attachment to that form.
Kinda reminds me of the deleted scene from T3 that showed Arnold as the scientist who designed the prototype Terminator (which doesn't make any sense, but that's why it wasn't in the actual movie), but he has a country accent, which they replace with Arnold's accent from a smaller scientist.
I thought that the T-1000 had copied its appearance from a police officer that it encountered -- it would make no sense for the scientist who invented it to look *just like* that police officer.
@OlavRokne: actually it makes perfect sense, in this timeline the scientest went back in time and had sex with his great great great aunt who's son became a police officer.
If you don't want "The Unit", you're missing out - especially this season. His character is gritty, often manipulative, but also very heroic. It's a great show.
@NonElitist: It's surprisingly true. I started watching it by accident and am generally completely not into "military" TV shows. Don't watch NCIS; didn't watch JAG; don't even watch 24; and I'm sure there are others I didn't and don't watch.
But I'll be damned if The Unit hasn't become one of my favorite shows on the teevee.
@omgwtflolbbqbye: *Two thumbs down* BOOOOOO. What kind of parent lets their kid do that? "So, sweetie, what did you do today?" "Well, we were being attacked by a robot, and the people in the back kept getting snatched up, so we hid. Then when another robot came along, I got my gun (Is's really big, too.) and I shot in the head a lot of times and then I ran some more. Can I go play now?"
06/04/09
05/27/09
I hated T3, but when I saw T4, I honestly found little to complain about. The motorcyclebots were ridiculous, Marcus' CG metal face did look pretty shoddy, but the overall story was much, much better. I even went into the theater expecting something awful, and it truly wasn't.
05/27/09
05/27/09
05/28/09
05/27/09
what happened to the kate that's second in command and outlives john connor? it felt like someone on the writting or directing staff was having trouble working with a strong female character so they smote her with a baby and replaced her with moon 'don't my boobs look perkey in the post apocolypse outfit' bloodgood. who the hell actually belives anyone would have teeth or hair that perfect in that future anyway? i guess paul mitchell survives judgement day too...
05/27/09
05/27/09
05/27/09
05/27/09
I give T4 props just for the opening helicopter shot alone.
05/27/09
05/27/09
05/27/09
05/27/09
T3 looses big points with the female robot though. The scene where she makes her boobs bigger when she's pulled over is so pandering it takes you out of the movie. I get it's for the fanboys or whatever, but it was extremely lame. She's got boobs, we get it.
The action sequences were way better in T4, though. Those robot-motorcycles were pretty great.
05/27/09
05/27/09
It's the problem I've always had with Terminator as a series. If you have the ability to go back in time and the will to disrupt timelines (such as machines would have unless they directly interfered with their own creation) I don't see why you wouldn't "go back to the source" as early as possible.
It's just... such a huge plot hole that gets over looked because the machines just so happen to only go back in time far enough to a point in time when the people can protect themselves (and rather effectively so) and make for an action packed film. For this reason I've never been able to "get into" Terminator.
05/27/09
05/27/09
Is the only reason you hate T4 so much because SCC got canceled? honestly, I saw the movie and enjoyed it, plotholes and all.
05/28/09
I dislike T4 because it was a bad movie that had the capability to be brilliant. But I still defend some of it above. Not the magical healing part, but
05/27/09
05/27/09
05/27/09
Dogs detect the Infiltrators, (T-800s with flesh, like arnie.) The fake humans don't smell right or something and upset the dogs. So no T-800s, no dogs, since right now dogs would be taking up valuable food resources to maintain, not to mention being good food for survivors also.
05/27/09
No shit.
All the people bitching about T4 couldn't construct a logical thought to save their lives.
"Why did Skynet have a control room? That doesn't make sense?"
It makes perfect sense given the fact that said Skynet HQ appears to be the Skynet HQ designed by humans - so it makes sense that it looks like an office buidling complete with clean room.
Secondly, Skynet has basically created (or operates) an assembly line. They are just completing the T-800s. I don't see them building any tiny multi-functional robots that could relocate or redesign Skynet HQ do you? No. Why? Because the HQ is satisfactory and they are focused on war.
Why waste time and resources redesigning your HQ/command center when you can just stock the place with some Terminators and protect your vulnerabilities. You do the best with what you are given.
Fucking A - the hate and stupidity pisses me off.
05/27/09
why would the machines ID kyle and then keep him alive if killing him would, in fact, kill john connor? (I am convinced that given the time travel of the first three films that this kyle is from a different timeline than john's actual father and that killing him would have no effect but this is not addressed in the film)
why would anyone, especially john given what he knows from T3 about a T-800 gaining his trust and killing him in the future, even for a second trust an organism with a machine core like marcus?
given the trouble skynet has had eliminating john in the past why would it not use overwhelming force after spriing the trap on him instead of pitting him against one T-800? would gasing the room have been too hard? hell, wire a nuke to the door or something it's certainly worth it to kill john right?
05/27/09
05/27/09
"Why waste time and resources redesigning your HQ/command center when you can just stock the place with some Terminators and protect your vulnerabilities. You do the best with what you are given."
Yes, stocking the place would have been a good idea, where "stocking" > 3 killer robots.
05/27/09
My guess is that by the time of the events of Salvation (2018), Skynet knows that John Connor exists and that he is important on some level, but it doesn't know for sure yet just how important he is. Since Skynet's primary goal behind the trap it set was to wipe out the leadership of the resistence and that the leadership was all located at one location (the sub), it had to set a secondary trap for Connor. Since over a decade had passed between T3 and TS (2004-2018), Skynet probably learned from a captured soldier during that time that Connor has been looking for Kyle Reese, so it used Reese as bait for Connor in a way to coincide with the trap it set for the rest of the resistence leadership, thus killing all known points of leadership in one stroke. Also, since it doesn't know yet just how formidible Connor is, it felt satisfied that having a T-800 and a few T-600s around would be enough to kill him.
As for why Connor trusted Marcus, I don't think he trusted Marcus as much as he was determined to find out exactly what Marcus is and if his appearance could change the outcome of the war. Connor spent a good chunk of the movie trying to see if his mother Sarah said anything about Terminators like Marcus in her tapes, and he didn't. Thus, the only way to find out was to let Marcus go and follow him to Skynet.
05/27/09
05/27/09
@SkaHimself: it's impossible for T4 to take place before T1, T2, and T3 because john has the tapes from T2 and skynet knows about kyle reese. the only possible explination is that the original past happened, the original future happened, T1 happened and changed both the past and the future, the chages from T1 directly lead to the events of T2 which changed the past and future again, then the events of T2 lead to the events of T3 where the future is changed, then T3 changed the past again and T4 is the new future that resulted after the cumulative events of T1, T2, and T3. T4 most certinaly is not the future as it existed before the events of the original 3 films, it expressly cannot be that future. Nor can it be any future that does not include the events of T2, and be extension T1, in the past at the very least.
if your interpretation of T4 is a prequel that takes place in the unaltered future before T1, T2, and T3 then the tapes of sara connor that john listens to is an even more glaring plothole than any mentioned above. if TS is a prequel those tapes shouldn't exist yet. since they do exist it's a huge leep to assume the TX did not transfer any knowledge to skynet when it had the chance.
05/27/09
And while I initially scoffed at Nick Stahl, he actually had a very haunted look about him which is befitting a man who's never really known peace his entire life.
05/27/09
I remember being in the theater thinking "thank you".
05/27/09
/end
05/27/09
I don't understand the hate. I really don't. I saw T4 on Monday and was expecting to be completely disappointed thanks to i09 and the like but I wasn't.
I thought it was f'ing awesome. Not as good as T2 but so what? It was awesome in it's own right.
Character development for Bale? Blow me. It's called T2 and T3.
Action sequences sucked? Piss off. The movie was nothing but one big action sequence.
Storyline was lame? Fuck you. It wasn't supposed to resolve anything - except to move the franchise forward. It did so admirably. John Conner is now part Terminator. He has his father Kyle Reese. The stakes have been raised (i.e. Time travel will now be explored as the machines realize they're more vulnerable than before).
His relationship with his wife? Ha! Who gives a fuck about their wife and child when their existence hangs on Kyle Reese? No Reese. No Connor. No Connor baby. Wife and child don't have to be major plot points.
I honestly fail to see what all the bitching and moaning is about.
05/27/09
The most important rule of screenwriting is to make a movie where the audience has nothing to ask questions about. There should never be a "why didn't he..." or "wait, why would they do that" question in their minds. T2 is one of those rare movies that follows that rule, and T4 recklessly abandons it.
There were no... brains in T4. In addition, no chasing, no time travel, little humor, John Connor being changed from a military man to a bit of a mystic prophet who "foresaw the future," John Connor not leading the resistance, but just being some influential commando...
It goes on. The worst scene, I think, was on the submarine where we had some sort of multicultural resistance thing. If they were a bunch of people in ragtag uniforms, it would have been cool, but everyone was wearing their "home country" uniforms, and it was a really reality killing moment.
05/27/09
But I watched T3 again the other day (first time was in the theater) and it's sort of embarrassing. Arnie's age aside, why send a robot back to kill the generals? Why not just send them to kill Sarah Connor again? Because it's not the 80s anymore?
05/21/09
I could actually see that playing over Sarah Connor's time in the South American jungles... IF FOX HADN'T CANCELED THE DAMN SHOW.
05/21/09
04/01/09
04/01/09
Honestly, I think the character is a little better without an attachment to that form.
Kinda reminds me of the deleted scene from T3 that showed Arnold as the scientist who designed the prototype Terminator (which doesn't make any sense, but that's why it wasn't in the actual movie), but he has a country accent, which they replace with Arnold's accent from a smaller scientist.
04/01/09
04/01/09
04/01/09
04/01/09
04/01/09
But I'll be damned if The Unit hasn't become one of my favorite shows on the teevee.
03/23/09
03/23/09
"Well, we were being attacked by a robot, and the people in the back kept getting snatched up, so we hid. Then when another robot came along, I got my gun (Is's really big, too.) and I shot in the head a lot of times and then I ran some more. Can I go play now?"
03/23/09