Terminator Salvation: The Essential Edition

Quality - Good. A little soft for my liking, but perfectly fine.

Visual editing - pretty much flawless, except that the fades on the flashback to the prison cell felt unnatural to me (might be a true black thing?).

Audio editing - excellent for the most part. Although, once again, the flash back to the prison didn't really work for me. Narratively, it was fine. But it was the only part of the editing that just felt off - plus, the audio on Sarah's tape was a bit too quiet and difficult to hear. A direct comparison to the audio from the other tape scene shows a relatively big difference.

Narrative - good. An improvement? Not so sure. Q2 fixes some problems, but creates others. The removing of the rain scene robbed Marcus and the girl of development, and made both the attack seem abrupt and the "I'm cold" scene feel rushed. The removal of her willingness to offer antibiotics also just felt off to me and robbed the scene of a conclusion (she shoots him in the leg, but we don't see him exit?)

I was pleased to see that the twist that Marcus is a Terminator delayed, but it also felt that as a result the reveal of how he came to be what he is was less clear. Its a case of picking the lesser of 2 evils, unfortunately.

Enjoyment - Good. I enjoyed it. I recognise Terminator Salvation as a flawed film, but I've never thought it as bad as many people seem to. It's by no means a work of art, but it's competently made, has decent effects, good action sequences, a reasonable story (granted, with holes) and a good twist. I think both this cut and the original have thier strengths and weaknesses.

Terminator Genysis - now THAT'S a bad film.

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.

August 19, 2012 @ 3:55 am

Q2′s work has served as an introduction to fan edits for me. I’ve always wanted to make one myself, but didn’t find this community until recently.

My first exposure to fan edit was Q2′s Phantom Menace. An amazing job technically (the pod race was an exceptional improvement), but unfortunately that movie just has a poor story line. I had high hopes but was moderately let down, due in no fault to the work of Q2.

Terminator Salvation, however, is a movie that exists for no other reason then balls to the wall action. Bale is psycho status in this one. For me, that’s a good thing. The film runs on pure adrenaline, and story comes second. All it needed to do was stay out of the way of the action. Leave it to McG to mess up a sure thing.

Yet now, somehow, this film has been redeemed. It would be impossible to remove every single cliché, wink/nudge, or poorly delivered line of dialog, but what Q2 has created is a VASTLY SUPERIOR film to the one I first saw in theaters 3 years ago.

The edit is absolutely seamless. The pacing perfect. At no point was I bored. Eye rolling was at a minimum. The new intro set the tone and clip perfectly for the rest of the film. And the new conclusion works better then I could have imagined it.

The only complaints I have left are aimed at the original film makers more then anything else. I still wish Helena Bonham Carter’s character could be completely eliminated. But I realize this would be extremely difficult to pull off (impossible?). And Anton Yelchin was horribly miscast. He becomes Michael Biehn? I think not.

Addressing other reviewers concerns:
I suppose the inability of Skynet to properly identify and handle Kyle Reese is a bit of a hole. It would make more sense if they never knew they even had him. Q2 addressed this somewhat, but there is still that one scene where it shows what cell Kyle is in.

I think the canceled attack of Skynet was handled beautifully. It cuts out an over the top speech (didn’t we already have enough of those?) and honestly, it was redundant in the first place. The commander on the sub explains it for us when he blatantly says “They wont attack unless Connor gives the order” If your dialog is unabashed exposition, at least don’t make it repetitive exposition.

Finally, the transition to the attempted rape of Moon Bloodgood’s character seemed totally fluid to me. Not really sure where people’s complaints are coming from on this one.

Wrapping up, I’d give the original movie a 6/10. I’d give Q2s version an 8/10.
I’ll be burning this copy for all my friends. (Yes they own the original) And I cant wait to see what else this community has to offer me. Cheers!

September 18, 2011 @ 10:05 pm

Just finished watching this edit & I have to say it’s a big improvement over the original. I applaud Q2 & as of now it is my master version of Terminator Salvation.

There were two stand out problems with the edit in my mind.

#1. There was a problem with the video in the Marcus flashback prison sequence where I had a green line appear & disappear on the right side of the screen. Could be a burn problem IDK.

#2. I really liked the way Q2 tweaked the story but as TV’s Frink mentioned above the scene where Marcus finds the cell where Kyle is held is the big stand out problem since skynet hasn’t identified him yet so he shouldn’t be in the database. If there was a way to cut the whole let me know what cell kyle is in part it would be better but I realize the problem of John just stumbling across kyle by chance. Not sure how this could be resolved.

So because of this story problem I have to give this edit a score of 8 & it is a part of my Terminator film 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.