TAKE ONE Presents... - Pod With Us If You Want To Live 4: TERMINATOR SALVATION (2009)

Episode Date: April 22, 2026

Simon and Jim discuss TERMINATOR SALVATION directed by McG. They discuss the film's disappointing turn from the franchise's anti-war themes towards working directly with the US military and parroting establishment narratives, the dour over-saturated (by design!) late-2000s colour palette of the film, what specific voice Christian Bale is doing as John Connor, how the film represents (or doesn't) the nuclear and the horror of nuclear weaponry, the odd allusions to other films like THE SHAWSHANK REDEMPTION and MAD MAX, the interesting work that could be done tracing the production rights to this franchise and how that impacts the texts themselves, and Jim tells us about his legendary Worst Day of Cinema.Content warnings: incarceration and capital punishment; misogyny and patriarchy; nuclear war and apocalyptic destruction; militarisation and civilian casualties; murder and violent death; body horror and removal of skin; steroid abuse; heart surgery.Our theme song is Terminator Theme Song (32Stitches Remix) by 32Stitches available on SoundCloud at https://soundcloud.com/32stitches/terminator-32stitches-remixFull references for this episode available in Zotero at https://www.zotero.org/groups/5642177/take_one/collections/J4XVRVSM/collection

and welcome back to Take On Presents Pod with us if you want to live, a podcast where we're watching all the Terminator franchise films in order, contextualizing them and critiquing them. I'm Simon Bowie, I'm joined as always by my co-host, Jim Ross. Hi, Jim. Hello! Now, this is obviously the second time we tried to record this,

because I did have... I just erupted at Jim the first time we tried to recall it. I said, you know, fuck's sake, man, you're amateur. somebody should be watching and keeping an eye on you you know I'm trying to do a fucking podcast here and he's dancing

it serves me it serves me right for turning a light on the background of our video call you were trying to trash my scene you were trashing my scene like look you do it one more fucking time

and I ain't recording this podcast if you're still on it I'm fucking serious You're a nice guy. You're a nice guy. But that don't fucking cut it when you're fucking around like this on the podcast. God help anybody who doesn't get this reference

at the start this podcast, by the way. They're witnessing the breakdown of this hosting duo of life. Oh, dear. No, that is, of course, a reference to the most memorable thing about 2009's Terminator Salvation, which is Christian Bale erupting at the cinematographer Shane Halbert on the set after Shane Holbert was setting up lights for a scene while Christian Bale was trying to act.

Capital A, act. As evidenced by the fact that he maintains his American accent for the entire rant as well. No, he's in it. He's John Connor shouting about being a professional. Dear. But yeah, I have the whole rant in front of me, a transcript of it. And, yes, like I said. I don't want to jump the gun, but it is genuinely the most memorable thing about termination.

Like, you know, like, if you want to shoot out right now, it really genuinely is. We have interesting things to say, as we always do about the terrible entries in these franchises we go over. But, yeah, that statement is also true. genuinely the most interesting thing to happen around this film so this is 2009's Terminator Salvation this is the first in the franchise do not have a number for one thing which I believe we discussed in the last episode

but this is also very different in kind of structure and tone and stuff like that it gets away from the kind of time-travelling robots aspect that define the first three films and goes into something else. Is it successful? I mean, from what we've said, obviously not.

See you next time. It's shit, like and subscribe. So this film is directed by Muck G, Joseph Mginzi Nicol, known professionally as Muggee. And written by John Burkato and Michael Ferris. Sorry, I'm just

reeling for the whiplash in the statement known professionally as McGee. I think it comes up at the start. I think it comes up twice, actually, because there's an intertitle right and starts, a McG film. And then later on it says

directed by McG. I'm like, okay, unfortunately all the credits, I mean, uppercase. So it looks like it's directed by MCG. Which sounds like a robot. Directed by Chat MCJ. Directed by Melbourne Cricket Ground. What?

Some nerd shit. Yeah, what's your experience with Terminator Salvation? I'll say that I hadn't seen it before this viewing, like at all. I never had an interest in watching it. This film actually kind of lives in infamy in my... my head in terms of my cinema going history, right? So I saw this on the original release, and I can remember where I saw it, I saw it, the, um, the Cine World at Fountainbridge in Edinburgh, uh, 2009, so the year I graduated from university. So it was kind of, I was in that kind of interstitial

period sort of like after all my exams had finished, uh, but before the end of the year and before I'd graduated, right? So I went in for a triple bill of get this, wait for it. I saw these all on the same day. Angels and Demons. Ooh, nice. X-Men Origins Wolverine all the same day and this film. Wow, what a day.

Genuinely, and I think to this day, those three films are easily, probably the worst films I saw that year. And I saw them all on the same day in the same location, just getting gradually more deflated at the state of late naughty cinema as the day grew older. I can imagine you after each film going, well, that was a stinker, but this next one is one. I can't remember what, yeah, I can't remember what order I saw them in. But, oh, just dreadful. Terrible day.

Terrible day for the cinema. Yeah. Yeah, not good. Like, yeah. Like, angels and demons, Dan Brown for idiots, which is really saying something. Then X-Men Origins, Wolverine,

which, genuinely I can't actually remember anything good about whatsoever. And this one, like, that is a real tri facto of horseshit. Yeah. That's one for the poster. Which,

ironically, which ironically, which ironically, going into this film, actually gave this film a fighting chance because I'd been working on the assumption that maybe this was tainted by the fact that this was one of my worst cinema-going experiences and live it in memory.

You know? Like maybe if I take it out of that context, it has some merits. Yeah. You know? And yet, as we'll discuss. So, yeah, I mean, this film came about, after Terminator 3,

They'd already had the next film's premise marked out. It would centre on the war that we briefly saw at the end of three and, you know, in flashbacks in one and two. And they were going to get Nick Stahl and Claire Daines to return as John Connor and his wife, Kate Brewster. But then it languished in kind of production hell for a few years. There was some more tension about the rights. We discussed the rights to the Terminator franchise in previous episodes. at a certain point the production rights passed from Vanya and Casar who had had them previously to the Halcyon Company and those producers wanted to start a new trilogy and there were some legal shenanigans between MGM and

Halcyon who were buying it that led to lawsuits and court injunctions and stuff like that Ultimately, Warner Bros. paid $60 million to acquire the United States distribution rights, and Sony Pictures paid $100 million to acquire the international rights, and it got going. So, Muk G signed on to direct because he liked the first two films. He cast Robert Patrick, who had played the liquid metal T-1000 in the previous Terminator 2. and he met with James Cameron to discuss the previous films and what he could do in this film.

They wrote some screenplayers. They also had Jonathan Nolan do kind of uncredited punch-up. I think he's uncredited. But Mukji is on record as saying that Jonathan Nolan was actually the lead writer of the film. I don't think he has credit for it.

I don't think he has WGA credit for it. But, yeah, McGie has spoken very highly of him. Yeah, there's a funny story about the novelization for this, so they do novelizations by giving early treatments of the script to novelizers. Usually Alan Dean Foster, for whatever reason. I know he did, did he do Alien Free, I think, or a couple of the alien ones. He had to rewrite the entire novelization because the shooting script he was given at the start

was so different from the shooting scripts by the end of production that he had to throw away and rewrite his whole novelisation. Originally, it was much more influenced by Jesus Christ and John Connor would more obviously be Jesus Christ. The idea was that John would be killed at the end and he would, the idea of him would be kept alive by Marcus, who is the kind of robot hybrid in this film, John's skin would be grafted onto Marcus's body and Marcus would lead the resistance as John, as this new John figure. You know, there's a kind of Jesus sacrifice element to all that. They can't save word of Jesus.

Yeah. In terms of filming, McGee wanted to do a lot of practical filming, and that leads to its challenges in that there were a hector. of a lot of injuries on set, more than you would expect. So the special effects guy, a guy named Mike Menardis, who McGee says did Tropic Thunder and did our film.

This is an interview with Sci-Fi Wire. He basically had his legs severed off, and they had to reattach it. But he speaks about extremely casually. Super casually, yeah. Like he's like he's scraped his knee or something. Yeah, right. He was hit by one of his own special effects. you'll see when they escape the minefield,

they kick open this sort of manhole cover, and it goes tumbling and tumbling, and it caught him right in the bottom of the leg, and it just absolutely shattered his leg, and they had to reconstruct it. You know, Christian broke his hands, Sam hurt his back, everybody really took their licks.

Well, it sounds like Mike Menardis took more of a lick than either Christian or Sam, because he almost lost his entire leg. Yeah, everybody took their licks, you know, everybody came across to losing a leg, Lim. You know, Christian broke his hands. That's not normal, Joseph.

That's the same thing. They also did some stuff with, some post-production stuff with the film, which I'll talk about later. And yes, lots of practical effects and whatnot. This film was released on May 21st, 2009.

And we've already discussed 2009 in film a little bit, with Jim's trifecta of shit but we can also talk about what else came out in 2009 so the top box office grossing films of that year are

Avatar at number one and it is quite a number one like it is far ahead of the next lowest one which is Harry Potter and the Heartblood Prince followed by Ice Age

Dawn of the Dinosaurs Transformers Revenge of the Fallen 2012 Up The Twilight Saga New Moon Sherlock Holmes That's the

Guy Ritchie one Yep Angels and Demons which you've already discussed And the hangover So just Just wall-to-wall quality Yeah

This doesn't seem like a great Just wall-to-wall Titans of Cinema Up is good up is good up is good yeah yeah up it's good

to be honest right I don't actually mind the guy Richie Sherlock Holmes if I'm being perfectly honest I don't remember a lot about it but it was at least doing something different is what I remember like

yeah and I actually don't mind Guy Ritchie as a filmmaker to be powerfully honest but I mean the rest of it Jesus Christ like you know I read The Hangover and there is a very funny bit. I've just finished reviewing Glasgow Film Festival, covering Glasgow Film Festival,

which happened in March of this year. And one of the films I saw there was Nirvana, the band of show, the movie, which was probably my favourite film of the festival. It's great. Really good, really good time with an audience. Don't know how wider release it's going to get, especially in the UK, because currently there has been one year. UK screening and I was at it.

But we'll see. But there is a tremendous joke about the hangover in there. I don't want to spoil it, but it's the funniest thing I've seen all year. But no, I mean, that's that all day, man, it's not great. I mean, look, I mean, the other thing, I mean,

the one of my voided talking about is Harry Potter and Half Blood Prince, because, like, as a film, I actually do it, like, I don't mind it, it's fine, but then, you know, that, like, that's wrapped up in the whole JK, right, like, nonsense there. Like, you know, if it, you know, like, it's, um, I feel like it's a decent film, but I don't think it's, um, I don't think it's so good that you, anybody needs to patronise it now. Um, you know, so, like, it's not, it's not great. I mean, even once you go down, I mean, like, I didn't realize you got, what else? It's, you know, the second night at the museum. There's an Alvin the chipmunk sequel. Like, this is grim stuff, man. Like, you know. Dear God. Not a great year.

Not a great year for film. I mean, Avatar is at the top, which is interesting because that's a James Cameron film. That's all that James Cameron does these days. And James Cameron obviously started this franchise, and at this stage in his career has moved on completely to Avatar, which, you know, people like, they're not for me. But it is grossing a lot more than Terminator Salvation. The one thing I can't, I genuinely,

I genuinely can't remember about this film is whether I saw it in 3D or not or if it was released in 3D because I think the thing with the Avatar thing that you see is the show this is the real height of like you know 3D cinema like it kind of like kicked it

you know I mean it existed before it still exists now but like this was the this was kind of like the point of which it became like a big thing for quite a few years in theatrical movie going you know and the reason I bring it up is I think it is also part of the reason for the avatar's huge gross, right? Because it was shown in 3D so much,

which came with a premium. I reckon if you're not paying for 3D tickets, I reckon you could probably knock half a billion off that gross, probably, you know? And I think that's notable there. Yeah, so I mean, James Cameron obviously saw this film and he's quoted in a podcast that I didn't manage to listen to as saying that he didn't hate it as much as I thought I was going to. which is, you know, not great praise. But then later, in an interview with Slash Film, he said the series has kind of run its course. Frankly, the soup's already been pissed in by other filmmakers.

It's a charming way of a charming way of discussing that. So, yeah, I say we crack on and get into the film. Because, oh boy, what a lot to discuss. So yeah, Terminator Salvation opens in 2003, in a prison where Sam Worthington is being met by Helena Bonham Carter. He's on death row, and she convinces him to donate his body to her cancer research. He basically turns to the camera and says, I'm not looking for salvation, or something similar to that. That will set the course of his arc throughout this film. She works for Cyberdine Systems, who are for some reason doing cancer research.

They strap him down on the lethal injection table in a literal Christ pose. You know, he's got his arms out wide, and then they murder him. Then we get some background text about Skynet and the war against the machines, etc., etc. Over the credits, I noticed that Danny Elthman did the music for this, and Helena Bonham Carter is in this because Tim Burton is a big fan of The Terminator films and he was married to or involved with Helena Bonham Carter at the time so I think he encouraged her to get involved

and it's just funny that Danny Elfman's in it as well because he worked with Tim Burton a lot It doesn't sound like a Danny Elfman soundtrack It doesn't sound No this game is a surprise to be The Distinctiveness of Elfman But none of this film has the distinctiveness of anything Yeah, pretty much.

And the only thing, the only thing I want to say in terms of this, the idea, the fact that this film opens on what I think is very clearly set up at the start as the exploitation of an incarcerated person is fascinating. The film goes on to do absolutely nothing with it, but in and of itself, I'd forgotten this ahead of revisiting it. I do think that is interesting, right? And it's interesting that it also relies on previous films, right? Because it lingers on a Cyberdyne Systems letterhead once you kind of signs it away, right? So it does... Yeah, exactly, right. So that's kind of interesting.

And the fact that it opens on that is an interesting statement. It doesn't then go on to develop it in a particularly meaningful way, I don't think. But it's just... It's interesting. It's boldered in anything else that this film then goes on to do. Yeah. Yeah, no, I think that's true. It's an interesting starting point that does not get developed adequately.

So we cut to the future. It's 2018. The dark future of 2018. Christian Bale is playing John Connor from the previous films, the son of Sarah Connor, the prophesied leader of the resistance. He's on a mission to infiltrate a Skynet facility. They find human bodies being experimented on, they find plans for the T-800, you know, the Arnold Terminator. And the first thing I noted here was how incredibly grey the colour palette looks for this film.

And this doesn't change throughout, but the colour palette is murky greys and browns. The ground is grey and brown, the sky is grey. You only really get splashes of colour from SkyNet's computer displays. So you end up in this weird position where you're like, like, oh, I'm glad Skynet is involved now because at least there's some colour on the screen. And there's more of this later when they encounter, you know, chatGBT version of Helena Bonham Carter. But you only get these colour from the displays. It looks, it really sucks the life out of the visuals.

And it's done in a very late 2000s way. You know, it kind of reminds me of Gears of War from 2006, which is a very grey brownie video game. yeah it has a bit of a video game aesthetic as well i find it interesting you mentioned gears of war actually because the thing they actually the color palette and the setting and the dustiness of everything i think the thing that actually reminds me the most of um was actually metal gear solid four oh yeah that's a good shout right and like because it like a lot of the settings there you have with kind of like old snake and things like he has that same sort of like

beige sort of sort of feel to it and it's obviously just something that has been latched on to basically yeah it's interesting especially given that that came out and that came out the year before right

so like obviously wouldn't have picked up that it's probably more likely they've picked up gears of war if anything but it's clearly just an aesthetic that's floating around Yeah, it's something that's floating around at the time, yeah, like you say. So, I mean, this was deliberate. Like, there's a crew interview we've seen it, which I'll link in the Zatero Library that we put out for all these episodes.

But it's a really good interview, actually. It gets really in depth on how they made this film in a way that no one else cares about. But they did, this is what they wanted. So Muk G. and Shane Hilbert, who was shouted at by Christine Bale, shot the film using an experimental version of the Oz process in film processing. They took an old film stock from Kodak and they let it sit in the sun too long to degrade some of its qualities. Then they processed it in a way where they added more silver than you would traditionally add to a colour film stock. Then they went even further to manipulate that in the digital version to give the film an otherworldly quality.

To give you the impression that something is just off with the way the world looks, which is in keeping with the mood of the entire picture. Now, I do think it gives you the impression that something's just off, but it feels like something's just off with the way they shot it. Because, I mean, for me, it just sucks all the visual interest out of the scenes. It just looks boring. Yeah, I think the other thing is, it's not really, it's one of these things where, like, to hear them talk about it, right, in that way, is actually kind of, it's actually kind of interesting, right?

There is some thought that has gone into what they want to do, but it doesn't actually really end up in service of anything. It's just kind of an art, it's just kind of a, it's a curio. Like, it's not, it's not really deepening anything, really. Yeah, no, I think it's, I thought it was interesting to find them talking about it in such a deliberate way. Like it's not just picking up on an aesthetic that's going around. It is also deliberate. They'd thought about it. They had a reason to do it.

And yet, I don't think it works at all. No, it does it. And you see this pop up in other places, like this idea of like taking film stock and doing strange things to it, right? Like, the thing I think of is kind of like bleaching processes and things like that. I mean, I think...

I'm thinking about stuff that Mike Lee did with naked and things like that. Like, you know, there are... But then the thing is, like, when you think about some of the themes, like, you understand why that aesthetic has been paired with the story, characters, or themes, that then they're telling on the film. I don't really see why they've done that here, right?

Um, like, why? You know, and I think the fact that, like, something's a bit off. Of course, something's a bit off. It's a science fiction. Topia. Like, you don't need, like, I'm sorry, you don't need additional silver in the film stock to convey that, right? It's, um, no, I mean, there's something weird about it. It doesn't quite, it doesn't really work. It's not in service of anything. Yeah, I'm about to describe a scene where a nuke goes off in the background. Like, I can tell something's off. I can tell this isn't right. Yeah. But yeah, so Connor escapes this facility, but just before it's nuked, uh, he fights a Terminator skeleton, which I guess is a, an early version of the Terminator and then

rides off and this whole sequence is a bit weird in the sense that there's a few things going on here there actually so the first is this entire sequence up to the kind of like you know there's the he's in a helicopter and his explosion like

just what is any of this for like it's just kind of noise it's just noise and then but then there's like this tiny hint of something interesting right Because the one thing I will say is this scrappy has with a torso of it. I think it's a T-600. I don't think you've established...

I don't think this is established at this point, but I think like later... You know, so it's kind of like... Yeah, so like a T-800 kind of, you know, predecessor, right? It feels dangerous. Like, this thing feels powerful and weighty, and, like... But it's dispatched with it about two minutes, you know? Now, admittedly, because he has a massive mini-gun on the side of a helicopter,

and we'll come back to the militarism of this film in a minute, right? But, you know, there's something there, but it's just like, it's just glossed over noise, bang, crash. It's like, you know, I basically remember very little about that action sequence. It has absolutely no bearing. There's nothing that leads up to it of meaning, and it has absolutely no bearing on anything that happens immediately afterwards, including, I might add, the goddamn nuclear. bomb. Yeah. So I have lots to say, and I think I'll say it later, around kind of the representation of nuclear in this film as compared to previous films. But yeah, the fact is he's like

half a kilometre from this nuclear blast and he doesn't get radiation sickness or, you know, torn to shiverines by the blast. He's just fine. He's got a few scratches. Yeah. And there's a lot of say about it. We'll talk about it more later because that's not where some of the concepts I think you want to lead to end in this film but this is the first indication that there's something different going on here, not for the better.

And one man emerges from the bombed facility and it's a very muddy Sam Worthington who we last saw die in 2003. He steals some clothes off a corpse. I just want to pop out here while we're on this out. Was this a Shawshank

reference? Because he's like dirty and stuff and he's in the rain. Yeah, like insanely, so... Yeah. I can see the visual similarities. I didn't think it was a reference as such. It's just because there's little bits here. I'll pop them up as we go through, but there are references to other kind of pop culture artifacts, which is kind of like

another indication to me of... That's interesting. Kind of the emptiness of this film, because like, I feel like this maybe was, but why? yeah like it comes out of nowhere really

I mean like aside from him aside from him being incarcerated like what's the echo there like like you know are we gonna get a Morgan Freeman voice over about kind of like

some birds aren't meant to be caged like what is the point of this you know whatever I'll shelve it for later but there's a couple of other points where I saw stuff like this and I think it's indicative of this film's vacuousness basically. Yeah, reason when we get to it.

So Connor jumps into the sea to access the human resistance command submarine. Michael Ironside is the kind of the leader of the resistance. He doesn't care for Conner's or his kind of prophesied role, which is understandable since Connor just got his entire team wiped out. They have a plan to take down the machines once and for all, but the machines have a kill list for the human resistance, including some civilian called Kyle Reese. Dump, dum. I'll just say Michael Ironside's not in this nearly as much as he could be. He's pretty good.

I mean, Michael Ironside's always good, but he's barely in this, which is a real shame, because he's a real presence. So Connor goes back to his bass, and he listens to some. tapes that Sarah Connor left for him, especially one about his father, Kyle Reese. Bryce Dallas Howard is Kate, his wife, she is pregnant, and Connor tests the signal that will disable the machines on some kind of robot snake thing. A hydrobot. A hydrobot. I believe it was.

You're into law on this one. Meanwhile, Sam Worthington wanders up to the Hollywood sign and he looks down on a devastated Los Angeles. He encounters a T-600 with a mini-gun who crushes one human skull. There's not as many human skulls yet in this future as they will be in... Got to have it, though. In the flashbacks. Got to have it. Yeah, it's still there. And he gets saved by Anton Yeltsin as Kyle Reese, who says, come with me if you want to live. And I just inject a... Can I inject a Cinemason's moment into this for a minute? Because I just want to see this is just me. So we go on to find it, right?

We're not interested in spoilers on this, right? Because, I mean, very few people will listen to us who have not seen the film, right? So it goes on, so you go on to find out that, like, Marcus is a, you know, human robot hybrid. And, like, they were tested, like, you know, his skin over, you know, and then the T-800 appears later. But, like, all the other Terminators are very obviously machines, right? why does this T-600 have t-600 have tattered clothes on it and a pair of boots he was trying to start that out because it's not because it's not because it's not because it's not an infiltration unit like they're saying all the like the subsequent ones are so beyond kind of the boots looking a bit like the ones

that arnold wore in the first two films and a third one for that matter why why he was an early experiment you know the robot's started by just dressing up a metal skeleton in like some boots and in coat. Yeah they just put a vicar jacket on in boots and they found that you know they still had a massive metal skull and that didn't really

work as an infiltration tactic. Yeah I don't quite work let's try something try something else. I get it now it's an artificial intelligence learning through reinforcement training. Yeah yeah yeah okay I see. It's getting there, it's getting there he's a step on the road to Arnie. So it's all coming together now

and then in the first terminator that was kind of an echo of the original training here we go. Okay, I see, see. We can write a novel about that. That's good. I just wanted to check it wasn't just empty horseshit, you know? No, but it's not. Of course it isn't. Nothing directed by Joseph McGee

McGee McGee could have empty horseshit in the area. So, Marcus fixes the radio to bond with Kyle Reese and some kid. There's a kid, I won't mention this kid again. But there is a kid hanging out with Kyle Reese and Marcus, and she does nothing, the whole film.

She's just there to be in distress sometimes. They hear a broadcast from John Connor telling them how to kill robots. And Reese wants to go find John Connor, Worthington wants to go north to find someone. Connor orders some planes to go check out robot activity around L.A. It's kind of unclear, I think, throughout the film what Connor's role is in the resistance. because sometimes he seems like he's in a position of command and other times it seems like he needs to prove himself and the film tries to have it both ways

so he's kind of a messire but this is really only expressed through the radio broadcast that he does and the kind of loyalty that some members have towards him but like he's not he's not the leader that's Michael Ionside and Michael Ionside doesn't like him and so it's kind of unclear what position he's in. Yeah, it's not clear at any point, really. No.

He's both a leader and not quite a leader yet. It doesn't really work. Also, like, Christian Bale doesn't seem like a continuation of the character played by Stahl in the previous film. Like, Stahl was plagued by doubt and resistance. Bale doesn't really bring any of that. he's kind of doing the Bruce Wayne voice but not really bringing any of the levity

that he brought to his performances as Bruce Wayne he's just super intense and throughout the film John Connor is the least interesting character without a shadow of a note and also I know what voice he's doing because I've seen a few... because you said he's doing the Bruce Wayne voice

I've seen some people saying he's doing the Batman voice he's not. I know exactly what voice he's doing. He's doing precisely the voice where he is Batman, but not in the Batman suit. Okay. Right. If you go back and watch Batman begins, right, or the Dark Night, there are a couple of scenes where he's just in a bala clava, right? Because he needs to go somewhere as Bruce Wayne. He doesn't have his suit. But he needs to do his gravelly Batman voice, so he doesn't sound like Bruce Wayne. That's the voice. That's the voice he's doing. A half-assed Batman. But yeah, either way, he's not bringing the gravitas that he brought to... No, it's not.

Batman and Bruce Wayne. He's not fun or interesting. He's just... No. Po-faced, just po-faced and gloomy and serious. So, Reese and Marcus have some adventures. They meet some other survivors. There's a big Kaiju robot.

There's some motorbike terminators. There's a car chase. It kind of reminded me of Fury Road in terms of production design and setting, but it is like 100 times less visually interesting. I think there's a sense that they're going for kind of Mad Max post-apocalypse in production design and stuff, but it never looks as good as Fury Road or Furiosa. Visually at this point, it really has settled into that sort of mid-to-late naughty's

garbage I can't really put it any other way I think we're onto like our third or so major action sequence at this point maybe four and can you tell what's going on I don't know maybe do I care no

it really does just look like visual drivel and I think the thing the thing that it's kind of a mashup of is so you mentioned Fury Road there right it definitely has a sort of mad max thing, particularly in the sequence actually.

Scavenged cars. It's all rusty and everything. Yeah, right. It has that look at it, but it's basically like, it's basically like taking the most generic worst parts of that and mashed it up with, the thing I actually got the biggest vibe of it off

this and kind of across a lot of the film as a whole but particularly this sequence and then like some of the hydrobot stuff, transformers, right? It has that, you know, which was which had been a big hit just only a few years before. It really has that sort of feel to it. But the problem is,

it has the same absolute vacuousness of kind of like anything going, anything of meaning going on to this point and this desire for bangs and crashes and spectacle. But it has none of the visual sensibility of that, or Michael Bay. And I have a lot of problems with Michael Bay. I don't particularly like his films. His filmmaking has a lot of problems.

I would struggle to say that any of his films are visual sludge, right? I mean, I think that he is a very visual filmmaker. I don't always like the story he's telling or the things that he finds himself preoccupied in doing that. But there is some degree of craft there. I don't get that here.

You know, it combined with, like, there's just some, like, adolescent-level ideas here. I mean, like, this entire sequence what if we had a Terminator but it was big like really big you know like that's effectively

what this is and like you honestly you've completely glossed over the fucking motel terminators like what in God like this is and like even this massive Terminator

it's it has arms and legs right we have this advanced artificial intelligence in a science fiction future with all this

incredible technology and everything, and this is where the Moto Terminators are, I just about did a fucking spit take of these things, right? Everything is still designed within the parameters of human ergonomics. Yeah. The Moto Terminators are a motorbike. And in fact, later on in the film, one is hacked so John Connor can use it like a motorbike. Is it, what is the purpose of these things. You have hunter killers and flying shit. What do you need a motorbike for?

It's mental. It's just like, you know, this thing, but what have we made it? Like, how did these things come into being? It makes no sense. It's just nonsense. It is just nonsense. Yeah, and I think that gets into kind of the lack of visual inventiveness in this

film. Because you go back to the flashback sequences of the future war from James Cameron's films. T1 and T2 and they look distinctive like they have this kind of dark but almost neon

aesthetic there's something about the way they're shot that makes them look kind of neony and cool there's lasers and stuff the machines you know to speak to your point like the hunter killers

look robotic they don't look like humans they're not anthropomorphized they're kind of otherworldly and they're shiny and chrome You know, they're not grimy and scuffed. They are brand new.

They look like they've just come off a production line where these robots are being produced just to kill humans. And they only look like humans when they're infiltration units like the Terminator. There's no reason for a big robot the size of a petrol station to look like a human.

That doesn't make sense. It's like, compare the idea of these Mototerminator. I've realized this is a wildly unfair comparison. Harrison in some senses, right? But, you know, whatever. They're part of the same series of films. Compare the idea of the Moto Terminators, which, again, is a motorbike, right? With... A robot motorbike, to be fair. A robot motorbike, right? Compared that with the idea of the T-1000, right? the T-1000 is like and the thing is, right, the fact that it

makes itself look human and you've got the T-800 like they're infiltrating humans in the past. So that kind of makes some narrative sense, right? There's a reason for it, right? But even within that framework, you have something like the T-1,000 which is inconceivable, right?

And it goes back to that idea of, you know, any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic, right? That is the magic of those films. the idea that you can look at that and you cannot comprehend what this thing is, right?

Now, there were more intelligent films in terms of they had more ideas going on and the action sequences about, they're just generally better films. But in this one example, you have something in the T-1000 liquid metal, this thing that is mental, it's like, how do you stop this thing? Right?

I can't even conceive of how you come to deal with this. You then fast forward into the actual dystopian future. that this thing is meant to have come from and you're dealing with a motor terminator the same way that you deal with like

a car you stretch a wire across it it's just it takes any of the kind of like wonder is the wrong word there's no awe here there's nothing to be there's nothing to be impressed by it's a motorbike

like it's just so lacking in imagination But again, like, in this interview we've seen it, McGee makes it clear that this was a choice. He says, I didn't want a shiny robotic world. I didn't want a clean future. I wanted a distressed future. I wanted a dirty patina on the metal of the machines.

Like there were a bunch of Soviet-era tanks that haven't been able to go in and get painted or tuned up in a long, long time. So again, it's a deliberate choice, but I think a bad one. I think one that makes the world look less visually. interesting, less distinctive. And ultimately, you know, the reason why this is the case is because this is a transitional period between kind of the present day of the previous films and the dark future envisioned by James Cameron. Like, this is not the grown-up John Connor.

This is an in-between John Connor. But then this raises the question, why tell this story? Why are we in this boring transitional phase between? the fun future war and what happens in the past in the originals. It makes it feel transitional in a way that undoes a lot of the interest. Yeah, I don't... And it's just that... I realize I'm fixating on the bloody Moto Terminators here,

but it's just like they do feel like it's a micro example of what is wrong with this film, right? It's just like, you know, what if this thing, but a bit more terminatory? So what? Yeah, so what? So Kyle Rees and this kid eventually get captured and they get put in a big basket full of humans and Marcus falls in a river. Marcus comes out of the river

and he meets a pilot called Williams, played by Moon Bloodgood. They travelled together for a bit. She cuddles him for Body Pete at one point despite being mere meters from a fire that she could get close to. Like it's in the background of the shot. She's like, let me cuddle you for one. Garbage. Sorry.

I'm trying to be, like, there are things to say about this film, and I'm trying to be considered about it, because there are, like, points of me. Some of it's just straight up nonsense. You've got to call it that. You know. At some point, kind of goes out into the field, test his machine jammer signal on a hunter killer and the resistance are planning a worldwide

assault on Skynet but Connor objects to put in human prisoners in danger so he knows the human prisoners in Skynet bases and he don't want to put them in danger and this will turn into a big kind of dilemma of the film uh Worthington gets blown up by a landmine and he gets taken to kate now prepare to have your mind absolutely blown because it turns out he's a robot. He's like a human robot hybrid. This is obvious from the second he appears on screen because we saw him die

in 2003, but nonetheless. He has organs and a heart and a metal skeleton. He's upset to learn that he's a robot because he thinks he's a human. And Marcus tells Connor that Reese has been taken prisoner.

So Williams, the pilot, argues that he can be trusted because they spent a few days together and she frees him in a thrilling escape. There's a confrontation with Connor where Marcus tells Connor that he's the only one who can save Reese and so Connor lets him escape.

So at this point Connor is concerned that the future has diverged from his mother's prophecies because he's never heard about Marcus and he wants to avoid Cairoes being bombed because then I guess he's worried he'll never be born or something.

But you can't convince Michael Ironside who relieves Connor of command. But Connor rallies the resistance with the message that they shouldn't make decisions like machines. You know, if they kill human prisoners, then they lose their humanity. They should assault Skynet but save the prisoners and be more human about it, blah, blah, blah. And kind of goes off to rescue the prisoners.

And there's a contrived dialogue scene with Bryce Dallas Howard that just gets him to the point where you can say, I'll be back. She's like, what do I tell people who ask where you've gone? And he says, I'll be back. Harrah! Cheers, etc. Yay. I got that reference dot GIF. So yeah, while the humans are planning this big assault,

maybe this is the point to talk about the military aspects of this film and the kind of militarisation represented in this film. So there's a good piece by Matthew Alford in his book, Real Power, Hollywood Cinema and American Supremacy, which is all about the representation of American hegemony in cinema. and he devotes four pages to Terminator Salvation, which is more than anyone else has written about it, let me tell you. But he says, consider the Terminator franchise, variously described as anti-nuclear and anti-authoritarian. This was indeed the tone of the first three films, but by the fourth, the series had been co-opted by the Department of Defense,

with the result that it was a much more direct champion of the US military. He says, for a world that is set just 15 years after a global nuclear holocaust, the survivors are a fancifully healthy. Indeed, people hang around the streets of Los Angeles, a US submarine patrols underwater, and the US Air Force still functions above ground. Radiation poisoning seems to be of little concern, even though two nuclear explosions occur during the course of the film. It's what we mentioned earlier about, like, not caring about the nuclear aspect of things anymore, which was so important for T1 and certainly T2. Yeah, and it's truly, it's truly bizarre, right, that

you, basically, so I presume the second nuclear explosion is referring to is at the end of the film. Is that the end of the film? It's at the end of the film. Yeah, right, because, you know, it feels like, anyway, we'll cover the specifics of that

when we get to it, but it is kind of remarkable to me that if you think about the way that in particular Terminator 2, right, treated the idea of nuclear apocalypse, right? The fact that one of the, and we discussed this when we were talking about the episode

that one of the things that is seared into my brain from watching that film is the kind of like Sarah Connor holding onto the fence and being like basically vaporized by a nuclear explosion. Right. Into a screaming skeleton, screaming the whole while. From a nuclear

explosion which by the way looks further away than the one that John Connor, you know, let's put that to one side for the moment. But like the idea that that basically looms over the entirety of the first film, right? Not even visually, just conceptually. And it looms over the second film, also visually in that said.

Like, it absolutely looms over these films, including, like, even Terminator 3 to the extent. Like, it is a moment of horror the end of that film seeing that happen, right? The idea that it's dispensed with, within, like, the first half hour, they're like, oh, yeah, it's a nuclear bomb. That's about shit, mate. you know like it's just it's so it's just so lacking kind of like understanding what what is the anxiety that drives these films right and i realize at a certain extent you need to do something different here because this is in a scenario where it has already happened right so i'm not expecting it to be like

a direct photocopy of that but like the idea they did there is some middle ground right and in trying to find your distressed future that he talks about, there is some middle ground between not being incredibly anxious about something which has already happened in this world and treating it in such a perfunctory way that it's window dressing. Right? There is something in between here, right? And it doesn't find that in between.

And as a result, it is incoherent. It doesn't make sense. Like, what are you fighting for here? Like, what? Because this just looks shit. Well, yeah, Alford makes the point that this turns the franchise towards establishment narratives. This turns it towards American military narratives about war and takes the sting, crucially, takes the sting out of war by presenting nuclear weapons as just big explosions. rather than, you know, devastating, you know, life-rending horrors, abominations that should not exist, as the previous two films did.

Like, they are absolutely horrific and clearly horrible things that shouldn't exist. Here, they're just like big bombs that we use to beat the enemy, because that's what we do, because we're the US military. And he compares it to on the beach, the day after, and the British film Freds, which, you know, present bleak onion. inspiring worlds following nuclear conflict. And he says even the flash forwards from the first three Terminator films hinted at a horrible future scape of pain, deprivation and ad hoc guerrilla warfare. In contrast, and he talks about producer Jeffrey Silver, who explains that the Department of Defense gave fantastic cooperation to Terminator Salvation because they recognize

that in the future portrayed in this film, the military will still be the men and women who protect us no matter what may come. So it has this sanitised depiction of nuclear war, which completely emits the politically disturbing material, the horror of nuclear war, but breaks the narrative. But eventually breaks the themes that made Terminator 1 and 2, and to a lesser extent 3, successful. And I think this quote from Matthew Elford, like, where everyone is a soldier, everyone is in the US military, really highlighted what is. is so grim about this future for me. It's not that, you know, the world has ended and everyone's in a perpetual fight against machines.

It's that everyone has been forcibly enlisted in the US military. Like, everyone is a soldier governed by US military logic. Like, it's not, you know, a fight, a resistance movement. It's an army. And you've got no choice but to be in it. It's very grim. And that's, I, and this is where,

kind of like, I'm going to circle back a little bit to some of the stuff at the start of the film. Because this kind of crystallized a little bit for me, some of what doesn't, like, not only that didn't work about this film, but frankly, I actually find a little repulsive, right? And when you're in the opening of the film, in particular, and particular, and I have to assume that this is a choice, right, based upon everything else that we said, that there is a deliberate choice here, right? So you've got to think about the era in which this film is being released as well, right? 2009, we are, you know, this film would have been in production probably when Bush Jr. was still in power in the States, right? You know, all the shit that's been going down in the Middle East in the wake of Iraq is still kind of ongoing. Yeah. And all this stuff is going on, right?

So at the start of the film, I got a really strong vibe in those initial sequences of it being rather Vietnam-like, right? You know, like, you know, there's a little bit of Vietnam in there. There's a, with the, you know, the appearance of it, there's a little bit of kind of like a bit of a Middle Eastern war feel to it. And, you know, it's very obviously US military hardware. Now, okay, like, you know, people can argue the toss about, oh, of course, because, settled the continental United States, like whatever, right? It's a choice, right? And the film then goes on to to engage with this in such a way that it's not, this, this is not the horrifying thing, right? This, in fact, kind of like this militaristic future with people engaging with each other

on the base of kind of like a sort of like very sort of like structured military hierarchy and this sort of thing. That's what you need to do in this situation. That's your point. That's your path to victory. And there's something about it where I'm just like, you've gone from this very anti-war message kind of like percolating through the first two films in particular. And the third one to an extent, to the complete opposite. And it's just, it's really jarring. And I'm going down to just the Transformers analogy earlier, because this is a real feature of kind of like some of these type of films at the time, right? So Transformers, I think, Revenge of the Fallen is the one that was kind of like in the box office rundown you did earlier.

One thing that is really kind of distasteful about those films, and right, this is where you can, not that I want to make this the Michael Bay thing, right, but like, you know, some of the problems I have with some of his filmmaking, those films are really notable for the amount of involvement they had from the US Department of Defence, right? And there were a lot, there's a lot of military hardware and a lot of Air Force cooperation on those films. It is effectively kind of like, glamorising and legitimising their role in keeping world order, right? And that's something that this film, which I don't think it's something that I recalled about the film from my initial viewing, but it's really crystal clear on watching it this time, is how much it is, you know, the military and the apparatus of the state and the way they operate, that's what will lead you out of the darkness. that's what will bring order to the world.

And that is grim. That is grim. Yeah, it's a very grim. And, you know, like you say, borderline offensive. But yeah, similarly, this film had cooperation from the US Department of Defense. They filmed on Curtland Air Force Base with the Department of Defense's permission. And they said, producer Jeffrey Silver said, we figured the resistance would model itself after the discipline of the armed forces today.

So they went to Chuck Davis, who is the coordinator of the Department of Defense in Los Angeles. He introduced us to the Air Force and they opened their doors to us. We got all the hardware we needed. We were able to shoot an Air Force property. They had fantastic cooperation from the Department of Defense. And yeah, it's grim the way that this, like you say, anti-war franchise, certainly in the first two films, explicitly anti-war. James Cameron said he was making a violent film about peace.

Has been twisted into an establishment narrative about the importance of war and the necessity for war. Like the big dilemma in this film is not whether to wage war or not, it's how you wage war. So Christian Bale thinks you need to save civilian prisoners, Michael Ionsides, more draconian and just wants to defeat the enemy. But both sides want to wage war. Like there's no doubt about that

The guy is your hero here Is the one who doesn't want to nuke humans That's your revolutionary figure Yeah That's your Messiah figure The one who's got the absolute baseline of thing Maybe we shouldn't vaporize people In a nuclear explosion

Yeah Whereas Terminator 2, you know, the whole point is how do we avoid war? How do we avoid this horrible fate? How do we rise above these baser natures of ours and produce something more hopeful, more beautiful? And this just entirely misses that point, which is the fatal flaw of the film for me. It just entirely misses it and goes in the other direction. And, you know, completely gives in to American hegemony, American military hegemony.

In such a grim way. In such a grim and offensive way. Getting back to the film. Marcus infiltrates Skynet. It has a physical presence in San Francisco that he enters. There's again a splash of colour through Skynet's displays, where Marcus hacks Skynet, turns off its defences, sends Kyle Reese's location to Connor, but then he gets overloaded.

So Connor frees the prisoners and he looks for his dar. I haven't said much about Anton Yelchin. by the way, but he is very good as Kyle Geese, I thought. He's clearly, he's got a performance that is subtly informed by Michael Bain's performance from the first film, but he's kind of younger and less confident. He seems a lot more human than Bale. It's kind of a shame that he has such a minor role, really, because I think he's really good. Yeah, I think, I'm probably a little more tepid than you are on this,

I think that's more a reflection of what he's given to work with than the actual performance. I think his performance is good, is engaging. It does feel like the most human performance of the lot of them. And I think when you, you know, and like I don't want to criticize a film for not doing something that I think it should have done when it has no interest in doing it, blah, blah, blah. I've made this qualification before. but in a parallel universe I do wonder there's a more interesting version of this film where the star is

Anton Yeltschen as Kyle Reese and a younger version of Kyle Reese I feel like that is a potentially more interesting film right and he would be given more to do as a result of it so I think his performance in this is amazing no

I don't think it is to be honest but I think he does very good I think he does very good work with a very, very thin part. Yeah. You know, and I could have done with more of that. Like, there's a sequence when he's been taken to Skynet and, you know, he's talking to the other people that are captured and kind of like, there is some genuine, like, the idea of kind of like growing from a kind of like young man trying to find your way in this crap future into something more akin to kind of like a leader. There was just the slightest hint of that. Yeah, there's a glimmer of it.

there and basically it only really comes from his delivery of that little sequence and the film then does nothing with it so I like his performance here but he's really not given a lot to work with. No no absolutely not but it is

the most interesting arc perhaps of all the characters yeah so Marcus wakes up he's been renovated and there's an AI Helena Bonham Carter who is Skynet telling him he's not a hero

anymore. He's been being controlled by SkyNet the whole time. He was sent to infiltrate the humans to bring John Connor to them. That signal that jams the machines is a trap and Skynet uses it to blow up the resistance submarine. So Marcus is mad at this and he rips out his control chip from the back of his head and he goes to save John. Also, just as another kind of empty references thing. So after he's done this, he picks up a chair and he hurls it. the screen. Right. That's a reference to the Apple Big Brother advert. Oh yeah, I can see that. Yes. Clearly. But again, apart from the fact that, so I had to look this up just to double check. I wasn't making up, right? And I think that advert came out when the original Terminator film came out. That feels like a coincidence to me. Again, why? why? Yeah.

You know, like, even down to kind of like the fact that I think it happens as a bit of slow ocean, I guess, like, why? I just, you know, the whole thing just confuses me a bit. Yeah, I know a cinema sins bit, but if I was Skynet, I would make it so you couldn't rip out your control chip without killing yourself. But they don't. And he does. And also, like, this is Skyde-Higrant. Like, again, why why is everything designed around human ergonomics?

Yeah. Like, it's just, it's one of these things where again, it's like, this film, it has no vision. No. It just has no vision. Like, why, you know, it's weird. It's just a deeply weird film. It doesn't feel, it doesn't feel considered, right?

And the funny thing is, in trying to create, this distressed future that it gets spoken about so much and kind of like, you know, the vision he wanted for the film, this is McGee, right? It doesn't think, it doesn't feel like

the world building, right? And I hate this terrible because people use this to excuse all manner of shite in films, right? The world building feels very poor. I don't understand how this world works.

I don't understand it And the film doesn't do a very good job of setting that up either Beyond the stuff that we've discussed around kind of like military hierarchy governing how the humans are operating Yeah But the rest of it This is meant to be like whatever it is like 15 years after judgment day But I don't understand how things have developed to this point

I don't understand it And if you don't understand it Why are you meant to care about what happens in it? Yeah so. Yeah. So kind of finds Wiese and together they face off

against a big, naked, proper Arnie-style T-800 which you don't get a good look but it appears to be smooth down there like an action man. Or, or maybe it was just cold.

Yeah, it is surrounded by like free of... It was shadowed and thought, you know. We don't want to judge. Also, under certain side effects of steroid abuse. abuse. Is that not saying?

I'm going wildly off-beast now, but I'm pretty sure that's a side effect of steroid abuse. But anyway, this isn't the real Arnold Schwarzenegger. I believe this is a CG version of kind of young Arnie, like with his CGI face grafted onto the body of some younger actor. CG face of Arnie grafted onto Ronald Kickinger who is a young bodybuilder who previously portrayed Schwarzenegger in the 2005 film See Arnold Run But yeah, Arnie was Governor of California at this point

And was unavailable to film Because he was governing California But he gave his permission for the crew to use his likeness It's actually pretty cool when the full version of the old Terminator theme kicks in as soon as Arnie appears. I enjoyed that, but this is a shining light in a very dull, dull film. Yeah, I mean, it's also one of those things. It's like, you know, it's not lingered on enough to be, you know,

like it's not a narrative crutch, right? So it's not one of these sort of like member berries type things that annoy me so much in modern filmmaking. because it moves on from it reasonably quickly. I don't know how well the CG face works. I feel like it's not terrible, though. They don't know how well it works, because it gets blown off fairly quickly,

so he just has the metal skill underneath. I think he does the job for the few shots it's in. You know, in a more interesting film, it would seem annoying that they've gone to this well, but it's not an interesting vellment, this is mildly interesting. So they end up in a T-800 factory.

Marcus saves Connor from the T-800, but he gets punched in the heart and he dies, but then Conner defibrillates him to bring him back to life. They dump molten metal on the T-800, then frees him, and he gets some scars in the process. I think he gets the scars that he's seen

within James Cameron's future. Marcus carries Conner to safety, and they blow up the T-800 factory in the second nuke of the film. Kate confirms that Connor's heart is busted but Conner gets to have a tender moment with Kyle Lee's da. And then obviously Marcus offers his heart for a full heart transplant

in a makeshift medical tent in the middle of a desert. Which I find... Great. Yeah, which I find interesting because I realised he was defibrillated and came back to life. But wasn't this heart just absolutely smashed to fucking smithereens?

by a Terminator. It seemed like it got absolutely punched. Like, there's a targeting, you know, U-I on his heart, and he gets punched right in his heart. Like, don't be wrong, it's lovely and selfless, but, like, you know, I mean,

swathing your busted heart from my one, which looks like it's been put through a sort of, like, enormous fucking washing machine. Like, it doesn't seem like much of an upgrade to me, if I'm perfectly honest. It's better than nothing. And in some sense, it gives Marcus his salvation

he gets a second chance he gets a second chance just in case you were not sure this film was about second chances he gets the chance to do the right thing and live on through John Connor Marcus who we don't know anything about seems like a nice enough guy but we don't know anything but it's also

on death row for some reason you know yeah who knows so Marcus Monarchus monologues about how he's actually human and this transitions into Connor monologuing about how the war rages on. The perpetual

forever war. And then the film ends. There's a credit in loving memory of Stan Winston who developed the practical effects for the first two films. And that is the end of Terminator Salvation. Boring. A boring film.

Yeah, I think you know, I think that and actually for kind of like for folk who don't want to delve into you know readings of the film and kind of like

underlying ideology and things like we like we're doing here and we've done with the whole bunch of series now I think above all else the thing that is actually the most damning about this film and the reason why I don't think it lives long in the collective consciousness anyway is it is just kind of

unforgivably dull like it is not an interesting film you know there's not there's not really a single like you can point you can point to multiple things in the first two films that are memorable sequences right

in terms of like an action sequence or where it develops tension and you know there are lots of things there the third one less so but it does have its moments right this one good God

like I actually I and this may be informs a little bit kind of like why I had the reaction I did in the cinema so I watched this at home this time obviously right and I I got it on

Apple TV or something right because it was the quickest route for me to get it in decent quality and genuinely I think it was around about the point where Marcus is breaking out of each Q maybe or something. I can't remember

exactly where it is or it might have been the fucking Kaiju Terminator sequence. I had to pause it. I had to pause it and just give myself a minute because it was just wall to wall noise and beige

and grey and absolute charisma vacuum performances and I had to just pause it and go and get a drink for five minutes. I'm like this is just intolerable. Yeah, I didn't do quite the same thing, but I did the inverse of what I described during the Terminator 2 episode, where I had paused it and thought like only five minutes had

passed and, you know, 15 had passed or whatever. But at some point I paused this, I think, to answer the door, and I saw that 50 minutes had passed and it felt like 90 minutes. It it felt like two hours had gone by, and I still had so much film left before me, a heartbreaking amount of film left. Yeah, I had a sort of weird inverse of that, actually, right? Because at one point, I paused it a little bit earlier to just put the dishwasher on,

and actually kind of window into my domestic life there. But I paused it, and I think I was about 45 minutes in or something like that. and I looked at it and it wasn't a case of kind of like oh it felt like 90 or something it was kind of I looked at it and was like

I'm 45 minutes into this film and nothing has happened nothing like genuinely what has actually happened in this 45 minutes I'm like gee you know so like in that sense

it was also getting that's when it circles back a little bit to your experience so I was like Jesus Christ there's over an hour of this left you know like it's it's just

at a base level. I mean, even if you put aside on, like, the ideas that offend me in this around kind of like, you know, US military fetishism and all this sort of stuff that I think is going on this film and I think makes it a bad film from an idea standpoint. I also think just at a filmmaking level, it's just a bad film. I mean, the editing is terrible. We spoke about the editing in Terminator 3 and like, and like how that really undermined some action sequences there compared to, in particular, the second one. This isn't exactly the same boat. I mean, like, in particular, like, the chase sequence where Marcus and Kyle Reese and Star is the name of the young girl, which I'm going to come back to in a minute because I'll look something up while we're talking about it.

When they're driving out of L.A., it's just, it's choppy and dreadful. And, like, there's no sense of momentum. I mean, you look at that and you compare that to kind of like the motorcycle chase in the L.A. River in, like, Terminator 2, for instance. It's just, it's just, again, and it's a little bit like the way things were undermined the Terminator 3. It's just, it's just, it's just, it's just bad filmmaking. I'm sorry, it just is. Like, it's not, there's nothing, there's nothing to glom on to here in terms of stuff that's interesting or interesting or noteworthy. And I think when you layer on top of, like, I mean, Terminator 3 went too far with the kind of like comedic elements and, you know, kind of undermined its tone.

but here it goes way too far the other way. It's just like it's so devoid of any like winking moment or anything. It's just, it's so grim and noisy and boring. Oh, dear God.

It's just, it's, it's, it's the boringness. Like, Connor isn't interesting, as I said, he's the least interesting character in his own film. Kate doesn't do anything. She's just there to occasionally do medical stuff. The Marcus thing might have been surprising if it wasn't immediately obvious the second he returns on screen.

It's just so by the numbers. It misses out on all these earlier themes. So we've talked about atomic weaponry. But also fate and predestination, there's no interesting stuff. They allude to something. The idea that the timeline has diverged from what John expects is alluded to but never developed. there's none of the interesting stuff of the previous couple of films in this respect.

Yeah. No, it's... It's just not that interesting. And it's like, even the things that you see him talk about and interviews about... And again, I will turn to this idea of the distressed future, right? And sort of like dirty futurism, I suppose, as another way of thinking of it. Like, other films have done this.

Like, other films have done this. And films that predate, like, you know, in particular I'm thinking about it, you ever heard it that's just a little film, not a big impact on cinema history? Fucking Star Wars? Like, you know, it's just, I look at this and go kind of like this idea of kind of like a dirty future. I mean, like, that's like the bloody Star Wars canteeneal all over. It's the tattooing of the original Star Wars. Like, you know. Exactly, right?

Like, this has been done before, right? there is a blueprint for how to do this stuff interestingly, right? And again, you look at something like Star Wars and it's like, there are things in there that as a human being, particularly one in 1977, right, that you cannot conceive of, right? There's nothing in this film that I cannot conceive of. And there are other films that will go on after this to kind of do similar things, but we'll again do it in a more interesting way. Like this is something, this idea of a recognisable future, right, a sort of. sort of a gentle dystopia, let's say, you can

see in the likes of Ryan Johnson's Looper. That's something which I think pops up in that film. It's like it is a recognisable future. It looks a bit distressed and, you know, it's rough around the edges. But there is something there.

Here, it's just nonsense. Like, again, I keep turning back to the Moto Terminator and the Kaiju Terminator. It's just like, this is not imaginative. This is not imaginative. It's an embellishment of what we have now. And if you're going to put forward these ideas about how do you retain your humanity

in the face of this inconceivable war, then that question is not interesting when you're fighting forces that retain all the hallmarks of humanity. like it's not an interesting it's not an interesting notion like how do you retain your humanity well there's echoes of it everywhere like you know it's it's it's it's just so lacking in anything of imagination really and then when you combine that with like the poor in my view the poor craft in cinematography, editing, the direction, the performances. When you combine it with all of that,

it is an unforgivably dull film. Yeah, it really is. It's just incredibly dull. You had something about the little girl? Oh yeah, no, no, so I, because I look this up, right? When you were saying, sort of like, you know, what's she there for? Just in the background there, I went and looked something up, right? And I'm on, so this is from the original website for the film, right? It's in the way back machine. It's not live anymore, right? But it's the production notes for Terminator Salvation, right? And his talk is, given the background of the characters, right? And he says, but Kyle Reese is not alone in his journey. He's accompanied by Starr, a nine-year-old girl rendered mute by the trauma of war and

displacement. Okay, fine. I'm not sure how much should I pick up from the film itself, but okay, fine. But this is one that in particular, right? Star has the uncanny ability to sense the presence of a Terminator before it appears but more importantly her presence gives Kyle a greater sense of purpose Did you get any of that?

No I feel like there's an entire subplot with this character that must have been cut because I don't get that at all 100% At all I don't even recall her having the ability to sense the present

of the fucking stomping Kaiju Terminator, let alone anything else? Like, what are we talking about? This is just nonsense. That's not in the text. That is not in the film. It's really not. I looked this up, because it was, like, when you said, like, you know, I'm not

sure, I went and looked up, kind of like, I followed the rabbit hole down to this old PDF, and it's like, that is just nonsense. I don't don't get that at all. That's not in the film, and if it were, I think I would hate it. Yeah. This psychic little

little girl who can sense robots can fuck right off. No, that's not even alluded to it. That's your letterboxed review. There you go. The psychic little girl can send the presses robots. I can fuck off. I know that there is a

director's cut of this film. I watch the theatrical release, because I made two of it. But there is just reading from Wikipedia here after the critical and commercial failures of Terminator Genesis and Terminator Dark Fate Movie Webb reported that Terminator Salvation had developed a strong cult following

No, it hasn't and fans had begun petitioning for McG's R-rated director's cut to be released So I don't, I think this is another director's cut actually on top of the director's cut that was already released There's a director's cut which has an extra three minutes.

But yeah, this is an article on movie web with hashtag release the McG cut, which is horrible. No, no, don't do that. Yeah, no, I mean, that's ridiculous. I mean, I think that what I do find interesting about that, though, is that that is actually an echo of something that's happened in a lot of modern cinema culture, where there's this idea that attaching and our rating to something will automatically make. it better. Yeah. Right?

There's this idea that kind of like censorship for consumption by their audiences can make a film worse. And I'm sure it can in some respects, but a lot of the time, if the film is completely devoid of ideas that are in any way interesting, allowing a more explicit exploration of that complete vacuum does not make it a better film. I'm reading about what was actually cut to make it PG-13 in America. And there was one shot cut of Marcus stabbing someone with a screwdriver. And there was also a topless scene for Moon Bloodgood. You know what?

When I... Yeah. And you know what? In particular, given the way that that character... Is it Blair? Is that the name of the character? Is introduced, Moon Bloodgood's character. given the way she's introduced and is handled,

it in no way surprises me that that is what was cut. Yeah, at all. No, I can see that fitting in. Yeah, doesn't surprise me in the least, though. She's very immediately into Marcus, for reasons that are unclear. Not only immediately into Marcus, willing to actually kind of like put her life on the line, having known this.

And actually, this is how you really, didn't bring up earlier, but I think it also speaks to a little bit about how this film has abandoned the earlier ones. So there's the entire sequence there where they're assaulted by those other people, right? And I do find it kind of incredible that this

fighter pilot, this female fighter pilot character who's clearly obviously meant to be kind of like an established skilled combat soldier, right? Now,

admitted like you're not meant to kind of like know at this point also he's a goddamn Terminator right but she needs the big strong man to sort things out for her you know and that's a you know like that like even the fact that that sequences in this film off the back of Terminator 2 is wild right it also just speaks to like how far

removed this is from the ethos of those original films is also quite indicated by that sequence basically. Well, yeah, it's a continuation of the kind of background misogyny of Terminator 3. Yeah, exactly. Not as sharp, but it's still there.

Like, yeah, the big beefy man rescues her from these fugs, and then she immediately wants to cuddle him for warmth and apparently take her top off in a delete scene. Yeah, just nonsense. It's gross and exploitative, and doesn't work within the context of the text. Yeah. So yeah, I didn't enjoy Terminator Salvation.

I went into this, right? So going into this, my memory of Terminator 3 was better than I found it. And I think Salvation I probably come out, kind of roughly the same kind of like level of sentiment as I had at the time on it. but it's really at this point in this history the series has really

has really dived off a cliff right? Yeah speaking of diving off a cliff this film killed the Halcyon Company Stone Dead like the Halcyon Company

was a film production company that was founded in 2007 they acquired the rights to Terminator acquired the rights to Philip K. Dick it released Terminator Salvation it went bankrupt like that was the entire history of the Halcyon company.

You know, it was bought... Filed for bankruptcy in 2009 as a response to a lawsuit and the poor performance of Terminator Salvation acquired in 2010 by Pacific Hall, a hedge fund company. And so the Terminator rights go somewhere else. It's really interesting.

I think there's something really interesting in the rights of the Terminator franchise and how they shift from film to film and how they're so thrown about I think in a way that we haven't seen from the previous franchises we've covered on this series the rights are thrown about

with such abandon for such a big franchise it's wild the extent to which these small companies can just acquire them make a Terminator film go bankrupt and then the rights move on I think they're... Yeah because it's what we said about Terminator 3

is technically an independent film Yeah, yeah, exactly. I think there is something really interesting in there. And if I were more interested in doing research into kind of rights and production companies and the acquisitions by hedge funds and blah, blah, blah, I think there is something to do, there is something with how this production process impacts the films. I mean, we're kind of more interested in kind of director-led decisions on this podcast, you know, creative decisions around the production of a film,

and stuff like that. But I do think there's something interesting here, a kernel if someone wanted to pick it up and run with it, around the rights to this franchise and how it impacts the production of the texts in kind of a material way. These are texts that are made in time. These are texts that are made in context.

And there's something interesting about just the capitalist and kind of neoliberal nature of how this franchise moves. I don't think I'm going to get into because I'm not terribly interested in tracing it all, but just... But yeah, you're right, it's interesting. And I think kind of like the right situation with these films impacts the text of the films in a way that it doesn't in the other ones we've looked at, right?

In particular, you know, in particular, I'm thinking about kind of like, you know, we just finished the Impossible pod, like the Mission Impossible series. I mean, that's... It's rock-solid certainty about that, right? Really, for a huge part of its runtime. I think it's also true of... Jurassic Park You know

Like it was definitely true of that series An alien kind of like That's a little bit more of a complex one But it's still You know It kind of sits with You know Consistent ownership certainly for like chunks of it

Whereas this it gets tossed around like a It gets tossed around like a Like a football And it impacts on the text of the films And it's like There's an interesting echo there in terms of like modern Hollywood and investment vehicles and it's almost like it's kind of like people have failed in asset stripping this you know um it's it's interesting yeah it's i'm not qualified to speak about it i don't think because i don't know enough about kind of like what somebody would approach this from a kind of like financial standpoint would think about it and what their goals would be with it but i think it ends up being reflected the incoherence of that approach it ends up with the text of development's quite marked markedly, I think.

Yeah, and this is all against the background, certainly at this point, of the TV show, Terminator the Sarah Connor Chronicles, which we're not covering on this podcast, but they are being produced from 2008 to 2009 by a range of different production companies, including Warner Boevers, C2 Pictures, and indeed the Halcyon Company.

So, yeah, another interesting aspect to, to how these are produced. But yeah, in the next podcast, in the next episode of this podcast, we'll be covering Terminator Genesis. Genesis is spelt funny. Which is a 2015 film that brings Arnold Schwarzenegger back

to the franchise and does something new with Sarah Connor. I haven't seen it, so I'm yet to see it. But yes, we'll be discussing Terminator Genesis. for now, thank you for joining us to listen to our episode on Terminator Salvation. Please share this on social media if you enjoyed it.

Do a review on the various podcast platforms like Apple podcasts and Spotify and whatnot. Tell your friends, we spread by word of mouth. So please let people know if you've enjoyed our analysis. And yeah, we will see you for the next episode next month. Thank you, Jim. Cheers. And we'll be back.