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.

Going into this edit i wasn't expecting much considering how badly i was dissapointed with the theatrical version.So i'm glad i gave Q2's version a chance and from the first scene to the last scene i noticed that the movie had a faster pace and the story no longer revolved around marcus and his self discovery.It was now focused on john connor and how he was becoming a bigger threat to skynet and the new ways skynet was coming up with to stop him.
The story is not perfect by any means but that is the screenwriters and directors fault not Q2.
Overall Q2 delivers a thrill ride of a movie which would now fit perfectly in any terminator fans collection.

December 10, 2011 @ 4:50 am

I originally rated this back in December 2011 and am writing a review in September 2012, so I don't remember everything. The tech quality (as is usual with Q2 edits) was spectacular. The entertainment and story on the other hand were still painful as hell for me to watch the entire movie. Not enough was cut for my tastes. So if you more or less liked T4 (as opposed to hating every second of it) you'll probably get a kick out of this edit.

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

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