Terminator Salvation trailer thoughts to HQ screen captures and set reports
First off, this new photo above comes from The LA Times as a first look. Head over there for the full photo.
By now all of you have seen the full trailer for Terminator Salvation, if you haven't click HERE. Many of you know how skeptical I am when it comes to a McG directed Terminator and from the start I've been against it, also I've been against a lot of the casting especially Anton Yelchin as a young Kyle Reese--I just couldn't see it. After months of grumbling over the casting I finally decided just to give them a chance to show me their performances as any critic or pundit should do. I've been so angry at the concept of a McG directed Terminator I haven't been subjective and I forgot that maybe some actors have range, so we'll see what these actors can do. At this point the only actor that I think fits the role is Christian Bale as John Connor, however, that all can change after I see the film.
Although I've been very skeptical, little things that have shown up the past couple of weeks have started to make me a little more optimistic and think that maybe McG is actually on to something. With the release of concept photos that I've been ordered by the studios to take down and a concept art video showing a little footage have sprung some hope into my system and I found myself saying, "shit... this looks F-ing cool." Then this past Tuesday a Japanese or international trailer was leaked on the net and it body slammed the little optimism I showed. Thankfully after viewing the American trailer, I realized it was just a really strange cut of a trailer, also with a bad picture quality. We all know trailers that are cut badly can have an impact on someones out look. I wasn't feeling anything; I wasn't excited, pumped or even angry-I was "meh".
Several hours later, the American cut hit Apple.com in high definition. The different cut actually change my opinion, especially since I was able to see more details from the film and I have to say to McG, I may owe you an apology at some point. There is a lot of cool shit and cool detail that was shown in this trailer and I wanted to share what some of my thoughts are with some screencaps I made.
I might still be skeptical, but McG and co. may make me eat my words, which I'll be glad to do. I love the Terminator franchise. I love T1, T2 and The Sarah Connor Chronicles-it's an obsession really, however, T3 wasn't that great. I still like it though. Although I've said a lot of bad things about this 4th film, I still want it to be good and so far from what I've seen, I've gone from a prediction of no hope to maybe John Connor really can save us.
On that note, a couple of on set reviews have hit the net. While filming, a couple of news outlets and bloggers were able to take a tour of McG's New Mexico set, the site of the destroyed 7-11, and their thoughts are very optimistic. They say McG knows what he's doing and we should expect a kick ass movie-I hope they're right. Head over to Slashfilm, Gizmodo and ComingSoon.
A lot more on the set visits at the bottom of this post.
Lets go through a couple of screen caps and I'll give you my thoughts. Click to enlarge.
Damn, the HK's look real for the love of god. I'll admit, these look simply awesome and I can't wait to see these in action. I love how the surroundings look--It has that future post-apocalypticlook to it that we've seen in some of our favorite SciFi's.
A-10 Warthogs!!!! Oh shit... Skynetcan't handle those baby's. Nice touch going with the military bad ass planes instead of the new and improved F-22's that everyone wants to use for their movies now.
Ha!! They landed on a Terminator, but who's boot is that?!
I have a feeling that this is the first shot of Christian Bale. The way they rise up from his boot to his face with troops charging out of the chopper-it has a heroes entrance thing going on.
When I first heard of these things I thought it was a stupid idea but after seeing them in action in the trailer, I kind of now think that it's kind of bad ass. I mean... it's like a bad dream. Imagine trying to run away from a motorcycle that has 2 mini guns attached to it and it wants to kill you... you can't, your just dead.
Could it be that John just found the T-800 factory?
The T-600 looks like a monster. If I was a prison in a disposal camp, I'd probably try to climb out too just to get my life over with.
I mean really, just look at that shit. That thing is huge with the red eyes... damn. I'm impressed.
That might be the big tank think... but the crushing of skulls is a really cool touch. It's so sad.
Now, is this thing herding the human survivors or is it going to crush them... because if I was McG and I was directing this film, I'd use it to crush all the humans because it's horrible... omg, it's horrible. It's awesome!
Now this is interesting. Only a body builder would have veins coming out of his legs and arms like that. I'm going to go out on a lim and say that's the Schwarzenegger model played by Roland Kickinger.... Going for the gatling gun... it's gotta be.
Storming the wire of the camps....
That is the coolest thing in the trailer.
Just a thought. How cool would it have been for Sarah Connor Chronicle fans to replace those guys with Brian Austin Green and Stephanie Jacobsen as Derek and Jesse carrying John off the battle field? I would cream my pants for sure...
That's so scary.
Decepticons attack!!!!
So that's it. Basically all of this has raised my excitement level for T4... I'm still skeptical but I think McG might have actually done it and made me (hater) look stupid. Remember to click the images to enlarge.
Now I want to talk about a couple other set visits that have some interesting info that could be considered spoilerish but at this point, if you made it this far, it doesn't matter anymore. MovieWeb points out that John Connor isn't actually the leader of the world wide resistance, yet at least, and with this film we'll start to see him rise to the legend status that we all know. Here's what McG had to say about it:
"Here is one of the defining characteristics of this film: What is John Conner's role in the future? This is the story of him becoming the leader of the resistance. We literally come into this film wondering, 'Is this the John Conner?' You realize he's not the one calling the shots. He came out of the hole three years after the radiation cleared with some other survivors only to hear, 'I've got twenty years in the Marines. Get the fuck in line. I'm not going to hear about your mystic Cleo bullshit. We're at war!' You realize that Conner has to struggle. Through the body of the story, we will see how his fate is achieved. And how he becomes the leader of the resistance. I don't think anybody knows about that. I think this is the first time its been articulated. And that could be fucking dangerous. That's why I signed up. I didn't want to see Conner jump out and go, 'I'm John Conner. This is what I am destined to do!' No, I want to see him come out of the hole and have to struggle. Conner is eventually proven right and vindicated throughout the course of this movie. That could be heresy. To me, its one of the most exciting parts about making this movie."
You know what--I really like that idea. How does Connor become this leader he's destined to be, what will he go through? Does McG actually know the deal?
The last bit of info is this; We see John get that infamous scar he has at the beginning of Terminator 2. That's awesome... read about it at UGO.
So there are my thoughts. I'm still a little skeptical but with the new trailer, the details in that trailer, all of the positive set reviews, maybe I was terribly wrong and McG is the perfect man for the job. If that is so, I'll apologize at the end of May, but if I'm right.... oh man McG... hide.
-Phil
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the new trailer is so good.
i just hope the film lives up to everyones expectations.
the phtos are great gives you a bit of an insite as to whats to come.
thanks phil ……
It does look like the movie is going to kick ass. After seeing the trailer I had the same thought after watching Transformers. I want my battletech/mechwarrior movie damn it!
I still have high hopes for this film. As I think I said before (and I apologize if I’m repeating myself, my scatterbrain doesn’t always let me know what I wrote on which website and why), McG saw the script for this film and KNEW it was horrible. It was written by the friggin idiots who wrote the Catwoman and T3 scripts for God’s Sake. He can’t SAY it was horrible because you’re not allowed to say that in the film industry, but when you look at his face during the Comic Con interviews, you can see by his face that the original draft was horrid.
The studio hired McG to put some OOMPH back into the series. For people who are fans of Supernatural, McG helped spice up Kripke’s episodes when they were a little lackluster. They gave him license to do rewrites, and they told him to hire a GOOD John Connor.
So who’d the ****er hire? Christian Bale. And what’d Bale say? “I’m not doing sh**. It has to be a GOOD STORY.” So what’d McG do? The way the story goes, he leaned on Bale to hook him up with Jonah Nolan (Dark Knight writer) and had Bale and Jonah work on rewriting the script while he (mcG) oversaw the process.
Now mind you, I know nothing about Bale, but I do know Jonah, and he’s not going to put his name on something that sucks. McG brought in the two men who helped Chris Nolan make Dark Knight what it is, and made his movie better. And then Bale signed on, and the rest is history.
YES, we have to deal with Kate Brewster as played by Bryce Howard, so YES in some ways it’s a sequel to Terminator 3 because *that’s what the studio wants*. But McG has gone out of his way to say that this is closer to a sequel to “The Terminator” than it is to any of the other movies, and he expects that any fan of the first movie will be pleased by the callbacks he’s making here. So he’s taking the busted-ass franchise, bringing in new talent, and FIXING it.
I’m *salivating* to see this movie, Phil. I think Jonah, McG, and Bale, all worked together to make a good story, and that’s why Bale signed on. McG already publicly denounced the AICN news blurb about the John-Connor-is-a-Machine ending as “first-draft” material, he axed it, with Jonah’s help. He did also say it was an interesting path (and the more I thought about it, the more I agree), but it was not the path the franchise was meant to take (and that I agree with as well).
I’m standing behind McG and Jonah on this one. I think they’ve brought us a worthy sequel to the first movie. I hope I’m not proved wrong or you’ll flame me all to hell this summer
LOLOL!
I hope your right Soran, I really do because I want this movie to be awesome just like everyone else. I’m not going to flame for being optimistic because everything you said could be totally true and I hope it is. May is going to be a big month for sure.
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