Terminator Salvation: The Essential Edition

Although I never really disliked this movie as so many others did, it was still not as good as it could have been. Q2 has turned it into a vastly superior film to the original, the editing is perfect and the pacing is much improved and at no point was I bored like a few times in the original. The new intro set the tone perfectly for the rest of the film and the new conclusion also works better then the original. So thanks Q2 for improving this movie and turning it into how a Terminator should be and a worthy inclusion into the series.

August 25, 2010 @ 4:21 am

This edit was, technically speaking, perfect. No hard audio cuts, no flash frames, audio levels were even throughout, video was absolutely beautiful for a DVD5, hell, even for a DVD period.

As for the edit, great as well. One comment, though. First was the cutting of the scenes before John goes out to scope out Skynet. While it worked, we’re left with the small issue that the Resistance cells suddenly just refuse to attack. Why was this? Cutting the scene was fine as far as pacing, but left a gap in the story. Where is Connor going? Do his men know he’s putting himself on the line? Why isn’t the Resistance attacking?

At any rate, a minor quibble. Well done. So very well done. Video was great, audio was great. Edits were seamless. This is definitely worthy of its fanedit of the month title.

9/10

A stripped-down and well-told take on Salvation, this edit makes what was previously a pointless epilogue/prologue to the franchise into an indispensable interlude between the first two films. It's entirely possible to watch this as the future prior to John's having encountered the good T-800 and the T-1000 as a child, and the film works perfectly, without spoiling any of the first-act plot twists in T2.

The pacing, action and motivations are all repaired and streamlined here, with character motivations and choices much clearer. My only quibbles are that now it's less clear why the machines pick out Kyle from the rabble of humans and why John is able to survive such a seemingly mortal blow at the end without the "heart transplant" section, but neither of those are major problems and a moment of head-scratching is still a worthwhile trade-off for the countless improvements. The chance to see the John Conner of the future as a struggling but good-hearted leader rather than a generic warrior god/saviour has no longer been squandered, thanks to Q2's skillful editing.

Having really enjoyed Terminator Salvation I didn’t really have many problems – the only thing I mind is the heart transplantation which I now have seen two versions

T-Hope’s letting the T-800 freeze and cut to the helicopter
and Q2′s stabbing connor but letting him survive anyway

I must say I can’t decide which works better but I lean towards the second since the terminator slowly breaking free is a great suspense scene

All the edits are solid and especially the dream sequence with Serena is handled very well with echoes and ghosted-images.

Technically this edit is pretty flawless, video and audio are great, no hard cuts or jumps

Storywise there is still one problem: Kyle Reese is number 1 on skynet’s list, they don’t identify him, i assume he just gets taken by chance by one of those grappling arms, but when marcus goes into the data of Skynet they have clearly identified him as Kyle Reese – maybe cutting the line about Kyle Reese being on the list might have done the trick

On the other hand I always saw the Terminator universe as a “multiple worlds” universe, so every timetravel creates a new timeline. So to me T4 made sense in the way that John Connor believes there is only one timeline and he needs Kyle Reese whereas Syknet knows that killing Kyle Reese won’t erase John Connor in this timeline, so they bait him thinking he needs to save his future to ultimately kill him

Two things I missed:

1) The speech Connor gives about being human, I liked the angle. I liked that Connor in this movie starts off like a Terminator, having almost lost his humanity until he realizes that sometimes being human is doing things that cannot be rationally explained – i think it’s a great message and one of the bright spots of T4 which while not terrifically great like T1 and T2 was still a fun movie for me – that being said it still works so the faneditor did a good job regardless of my complaints

2) Marcus’s mission: again I think it was a nice twist that the perfect infiltration unit doesn’t even know for itself that it is an infiltration unit. The hints that Marcus was there to get John Connor are gone, but the story-thematic doesn’t change. From all that’s said and done it is still implied that Marcus was constructed to lure John Connor into a trap.
And even if the intention is to remove this completely then marcus turns out to be just an experiment that happened to stumble into the story so I think I go with the original explanation

So while this is a great polish that will probably be ok for many people who disliked T4 it still won’t replace my original dvd (although it came close) – maybe merging the fantastic opening of T-Hope’s Terminator Salvation with this and reinserting the speech of connor will be the thing I was looking for

Anyway a very good edit that I don’t regret watching

8/10

I'm a huge Terminator fan, and Arnold's fan in general, but out of the six movies we have gotten so far, only the first two remain the only ones I watch again and again. The sequels were progressively worst, with the exception of Salvation where they tried to do something different, with a good cast and a competent director, but they kind of lost it in the narrative part.

The only reason I gave a shot to this edit is because I found an excellent edit of Terminator 3 called The Coming Storm, which salvaged that train wreck of a movie that was the original, but, the only way I would consider watching that in future terminator marathons is if I found a good edit for Salvation and that I did!

Q2 made a very good job with this edit technical wise and on the narrative part. The movie now makes more sense, it's more streamlined and far more enjoyable. The cuts were seamless, both visually and audio, with the exception of the new flashbacks. Especially the first of one, it felt kind of out of place and abrupt. I liked the idea though!

Another thing that really through me out of the moment, because I was 100% sure that it would have been removed, was at the beginning when we briefly see the corpse of Marcus. I mean, this betrays that he is not human from the very get go, so why leave it there? And you could go a step further and trim down the scene where Connor sees the information about the new terminators. That way, the actual reveal that Marcus is hybrid would be revealed at the middle of the film where the mine magnetizes to his leg.

Other than those issues I mentioned, I most definitely recommend this edit to anyone who kind of liked the original, but thought it could be much better with some editing magic and I assure you it will be your new go-to version! It will be for me!

Thank you Q2 for all your hard work and thanks to anyone who read my review!