Terminator Salvation – T-HOPE Edition

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7.9 (9)
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9 reviews
 
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89%
5-7 stars
 
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3-5 stars
 
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1-3 stars
 
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Overall rating
 
7.9
Audio/Video Quality
 
7.8(4)
Audio Editing
 
7.7(3)
Visual Editing
 
7.7(3)
Narrative
 
8.7(3)
Enjoyment
 
7.7(9)
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Overall rating
 
8.6
Audio/Video Quality
 
7.0
Audio Editing
 
9.0
Visual Editing
 
8.0
Narrative
 
10.0
Enjoyment
 
9.0
Was finally able to get ahold of this classic edit after, no lie, YEARS of searching. Boy am I glad I did, because it's a shelf-replacer. The standard T4 dvd is dead. Long live the T4 fanedit.

The problems with the theatrical version of T4 are threefold:
1. We finally get the badass future war with John Connor the badass soldier that was glimpsed back in the original film. And then McG pushes John to the background and focuses more of the movie on this Marcus dude and a zit-popping Kyle Reese.
2. The logic in this movie is dumb, dumb, DUMB. It's constantly undermining the intelligence and capabilities of both the Terminators and the soldiers in favor of making everything connected in a neat little package for a theater audience.
3. It goes overboard with trying to show the cyclical nature of the connection between John and the Terminators. What everyone knows in this film just breaks the time travel of the other films because it creates paradoxes.

What this edit does:
1. Makes lots of artful trims to the Director's Cut of mostly Marcus and Kyle scenes. The result is the remaining footage is far more John's movie, which is great because Christian Bale is doing a killer job (I don't care how many lighting guys he had to tear a new one.)
2. Cuts so many small lines and small moments of stupidity. The Terminators are smart, the soldiers act quickly (except for the scene where they light up their whole secret base to chase one guy.) The Arnold cameo is trimmed down too, which I actually really liked, but in this state only the very best shots are kept and it looks phenomenal. Also rearranges scenes to make plot developments more surprising.
3. References to what Skynet knows are cut so that this film is not some future-past worm eating its own tail. John knows who Kyle Reese is, and unfortunately him trying to save the life of his own dad is a central plot point in the movie. No avoiding that. But at least most other people aren't aware of the significance of all these time travel events and the story just plays more straight. The original ending did have a certain poetry to it that built on T2, but it was also so convenient it was cringey. This is probably better.

Downsides of this edit:
The extensive added footage to the beginning is an impressive and cool way to start, but the video quality on it differs wildly. The music levels are also way off there and in the ending. The ending video quality also differs a bit, as do several deleted scenes that were added in. (Maybe it was like that in the Director's Cut, too?) The beginning in particular has a very noticeable stuttering effect as the video plays. There are also a number of noticeable hard cuts where scenes were moved or deleted, and the filter applied to the flashbacks is distracting... perhaps it was used to cover poor video quality of the original source, but it can't have looked worse than here.

Overall, despite the technical issues, the narrative restructuring and edits make this a FAR superior film to the theatrical cut. The bad news is... it's unnecessary at this point. Terminator: Dark Fate works as a direct sequel to the first two films, and it's a much better movie than even this fanedit. For me, that's the trilogy, and no need for any other Terminator films. But if you wanted to watch Salvation, then this is definitely the cut to watch!

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Do you recommend this edit?
Yes
Format Watched?
DVD
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(Updated: August 13, 2022)
Overall rating
 
8.0
Audio/Video Quality
 
10.0
Audio Editing
 
8.0
Visual Editing
 
8.0
Narrative
 
7.0
Enjoyment
 
7.0
A good edit if you want ideas on how Terminator Salvation could have been resequenced to make something that made more sense.
I enjoyed the use of the prison scenes being repurposed as flashbacks for Marcus. The ending gave me a lot of new ideas on how to integrate Marcus' ending in a way that was far better than the original.
The video quality is what you should expect from DVD, I think I have been spolied with HD over the years, but give it a try, it will definitely flips some switches.

User Review

Do you recommend this edit?
Yes
Format Watched?
Digital
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1 reviews
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Overall rating
 
7.2
Audio/Video Quality
 
7.0
Audio Editing
 
6.0
Visual Editing
 
7.0
Narrative
 
9.0
Enjoyment
 
7.0
First of all: the opening sequence is fantastic, I watched this edit over the course of two days, always 30 minutes and before i would continue with the film i would watch the opening sequence to get the terminator vibe. T-Hope deliberately inserts very disturbing pictures into this sequence which makes the viewer uncomfortable and wouldn’t pass for a big budget mainstream movie since it would make us think about the horrifying consequences of a nuclear war instead of just looking at explosions tearing down the planet.

The good:
Said opening montage cannot be mentioned often enough. This is the first t4 fanedit i finished until the end and most of this probably lies because the opening created such a great terminator vibe

Removing Skynet’s knowledge of Kyle Reese gets rid of a lot of plot problems as well – at first I thought it doesn’t really make sense that skynet takes reese into a single cell, but from the edit this could either mean: reese was taken into the cell just by chance for possible experiments or skynet knew from marcus that connor was interested in reese and took him as bait but wasn’t aware of reese’s importance
reordering the discussion with serena also does the trick of making it less obvious that marcus is a robot
removing some cheese sequences like connor jumping into the water and terminator throwing around is also a big plus

the bad:
There are a some real glaring audio and video problems as well as transitions that don’t really work:

The shot of Silberman while being a great reference to the other movies is of bad video quality
As the previous reviewer already noted there is an awkward filter when we get marcus’ flashback which distracts and just looks fake, furthermore it wasn’t really necessary because the light itself indicates that this is a flashback and the video doesn’t require further filters

the opening sequence with connor has a hard cut where the t600 attack originally was

the altered audio where a guy says that connor is the nr1 target (originally it was kyle reese) is a good idea but the change is way too obvious and doesn’t sound well

at the end there are a lot of scenes with interlacing which shouldn’t be in any edit

there are also a lot of transitions that don’t work, but i can’t list them from my memory

the cut after kyle reese finds the photo is way too abrupt and we barely have time to realize what it’s about…probably because the original footage is not that much to work with

the cutting of the heart transplant works wonders, the only manko is the slight quality loss that is a result of zooming in to cut out marcus

overall this fanedit suffers from a lot of problems audio and video wise that i didn’t expect from a faneditor like T-Hope and it’s a real pity because the opening works just too damn well – I’d appreciate a redone version with the fixed errors so that i can finally put this edit into my shelf as the official T4

7/10 (6 for the edit but 1 big plus for the opening)
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