Terminator Salvation – T-HOPE Edition

September 11, 2010 @ 11:14 am

*This rating was given before reviews were required*

October 18, 2010 @ 10:40 pm

This one has been on my CURIOUSITY LIST for a while now…

I really enjoy the whole TERMINATOR Franchise. I absolutely LOVE the now cancelled TV series (shame on you FOX). I haven’t really not enjoyed any of the previous movies. The first two are brillant. T3, while a bit too heavy on the humor, greatly entertained me in a otherwise dismal summer of blockbuster blunders. And I even like T4. Yes, even as a casual fan I noticed the continuity issues, but as a WAR MOVIE, I think it worked pretty well.

So when I read T-Hope’s thread and intention for this movie, I was very excited.
And now after watching, I am pleased to say I was not disappointed.

From a narrative restructuring point of view, this edit is excellent.
All cuts and reorganizing of scenes completely work and improve the overall story.
The new opening was very clever and I was impressed.
The editing of Marcus into a supporting character works well.
The handling of Kyle also works and makes more sense now.
So, again from the storyline perspective, exceptionally well done.

On the technical side, there a few minor issues, all which have been brought up by previous reviewers.
I too found the audio a bit quiet, but nothing distracting or significant. I just turned up the volume and
ate my popcorn!

A few cuts are very hard and noticebale. Also, many of transitions could use another pass to smooth them out.

But despite this, I still found this movie very enjoyable.
I would give this edit a solid 7/10.

Thanks for the fun T-Hope!!!

August 31, 2010 @ 11:19 pm

I came into this edit as a blank slate. I never watched the original in the theater, and because of the lack-luster reviews, the bargain-sale DVD I bought on clearance from Blockbuster remains unwatched on my shelf.

So with a fresh slate and no frame of reference I have to say that largely, T-Hope has crafted a movie that narratively, works fairly well and overall, I was able to enjoy the story and sights.

Technical
Visual quality was hard to evaluate as I was watching this on a small screen. It didn’t present anything that looked bad, visual edits worked well, however the new introduction felt occasionally off as the film quality from various sources varied wildly. However, the manner in which they presented Judgement Day far outweighed the visual inconsistency. The only scene I think I might have cut was the insertion of Dr. Silberman, its video quality was so drastically different and overall feel was so ‘cheap’ for lack of a better word that it pulled me out of the montage which I had previously been pulled into.
Audio wise I noticed many hard edits, but to be fair I was listening with headphones which are exceptionally unforgiving. But there were a few where the beat and pace of the music simply didn’t fit well, and then a few seconds later would have the same mis-step as the next scene came on. One that stands out is during the sequence where Marcus is learning about himself, and then makes his choice.

Editing/Story
Because I haven’t watched to original yet, I can say that I only noticed a few areas where something was obviously missing. While any overt mention of Skynet knowing who Kyle was, it was obvious from the footage left in that they were looking for him as the machines scanned him very specifically and reacted once he was Identified. Even without the supporting confirmation I could feel that something had been removed, which is further compounded by him being in specific isolation at Skynet and the fact that he was how Marcus leads John into the trap. More than enough was left on screen that I knew the subplot even with it being gone.
Marcus however was handled wonderfully. Reading the above reviews something was obviously cut at the beginning, but I never felt its absence, his story unfolded perfectly. I did not have a problem with the filter on his memory flashback. Not having seen the original i didn’t know that this was not original so good job.
Again, and this is not really in T-Hope’s hands, it was obvious that Marcus was suppose to be rescued in the final portion of the action sequence, if only because this is a big-budget Hollywood film. There are enough markers left that you know he’s supposed to get out of there somehow, and from reading the above reviews I guess this is true. T-Hopes method of editing out the heart surgery works well and seems a good choice, as described it’s a ridiculously over-the-top and contrived story point.

Overall Enjoyment
T-Hope has assembled a decent story out of what appears to have been a mess of a theatrical release, but even without seeing the original I could feel the edits and missing pieces.

Overall Score
7/10

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)