Terminator Salvation: The Essential Edition

August 28, 2010 @ 10:44 pm

I find Terminator Salvation to be an odd movie – not nearly as bad as many of the reviews I’ve read, but not as good as it could have been. I find it to be a entertaining movie for the most part, providing a neat view of the post-Judgment Day world we’ve only seen hinted at.

Q2′s edit is not a terribly radical cut, but I find it works very well in removing some the stuff that didn’t work, mainly the Marcus introduction and the heart transplant. I also like spots where the machines now fail to recognize Kyle, especially in the Skynet Processing line.

I did have a few minor quibbles with the edits.
-When Marcus/Kyle/Star are fleeing the flying machine in their jeep, there’s a shot of Kyle clearly speaking but his dialogue is cut
-As others have noted, I found the transition to the attempted rape of Blair came to fast.
-Although the machines no longer recognize Kyle out in the field, when Marcus accesses the Skynet computer to find Kyle, his name is there clear as day.

As I said, these are minor quibbles only. It’s still a much better version to watch.

Tech is fantastic, per usual with a Q2 release. Video is very good on the DVD-5 and the AVCHD looks fantastic. Audio is consistently well done as well. The only issue I have with the tech is the lack of chapter stops – it would be nice to get some on future Q2 edits.

I will be watching this one again in the future.

Oops, forgot a score – 8/10.

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!

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

July 4, 2010 @ 9:07 pm

*This rating was given before reviews were required*