Terminator: Salvation (If They Left Out The Bullshit)
What if Terminator: Salvation was only ten minutes long, and was made by someone with two names who had actually seen the first few Terminator movies? Would the film, like Skynet, have become self aware, and realized how much it sucks? The-Editing-Room.com's Rod Hilton answers all of these questions and more with the least retarded Terminator script produced so far this year.
FADE IN:
INT. SKYNET BASE
CHRISTIAN BALE and a team of ROBOT FODDER break into a SKYNET military base which, despite the fact that it is made for machines instead of humans, is designed to make it easy for humans to move around.
CHRISTIAN BALE
It looks like Skynet is taking human prisoners. Something's different. This isn't the future my mother warned me about. That future definitely had lasers, I'm sure of it. That future would have been totally sweet.
MICHAEL IRONSIDE
Bale! You're a loose cannon! You've destroyed over half the city! I've got the mayor breathing down my neck!
CHRISTIAN leaves the BASE only to discover a bunch of TERMINATORS taking more humans prisoner.
CHRISTIAN BALE
I must chase after them! If only there were an easily damageable vehicle that, when damaged, would maximize my chance of fatality! Oh, a helicopter, perfect!
CHRISTIAN grabs a HELICOPTER, which results in a CRASH that somehow leaves him unscathed. A CRIPPLED TERMINATOR chases him, but it is killed by bullets. Plain old, regular bullets. The kind that couldn't kill terminators in the other movies.
EXT. POST-APOCALYPTIC WASTELAND
SAM WORTHINGTON wanders into the ruins of a city. He is attacked by a TERMINATOR THAT LOOKS LIKE DOLPH LUNDGREN but rescued by ANTON YELCHIN.
ANTON YELCHIN
Come with me if you want to live.
SAM WORTHINGTON
Actually I've read the rest of the script for this movie, I'll just stay here, thanks.
ANTON drops some TRASH on the TERMINATOR and kills it.
SAM WORTHINGTON
What the hell was that thing?
ANTON YELCHIN
Where have you been? That was a Terminator!
SAM WORTHINGTON
No it wasn't. Terminators are scary. That thing was wearing a headband.
ANTON YELCHIN
So who are you anyway?
SAM WORTHINGTON
I'm a prisoner that was executed in 2004. I donated my body to science because Helena Bonham Carter asked me to and she was bald with perfectly plucked eyebrows, the international moviemaking symbol for someone with cancer.
ANTON YELCHIN
Nothing suspicious about that, let's become reluctant partners!
INT. RESISTANCE BASE
CHRISTIAN BALE gets a lecture from MICHAEL IRONSIDE while IVAN G'VERA translates.
MICHAEL IRONSIDE
You don't play by the rules, Bale! You think you're above the law! I'm taking you off the case!
IVAN G'VERA
Mr. Ironside wants you to be aware that you and your teenage father have both been targeted by Skynet.
CHRISTIAN BALE
My father? I can't let that happen, it would create a time paradox that wouldn't really matter since this whole franchise just seems to make up the rules of time travel whenever it wants!
MICHAEL IRONSIDE
Turn in your gun and badge! You're suspended until further notice!
IVAN G'VERA
Mr. Ironside also wants you to know that his team has figured out how to turn the machines off using an audio clip.
CHRISTIAN BALE
Does it secretly mimic the remote shutdown code?
IVAN G'VERA
Nah, it's just a track off Eminem's new album. When the machines hear it, they kill themselves. I'm pretty sure he rhymes "rubbers" with "rubbers."
EXT. POST-APOCALYPTIC WASTLAND
SAM and YELCHIN drive an amazingly-still-functioning car around a bit until they attract the attention of MEGATRON.
An incredibly LOUD action sequence follows with a bunch of EXPLOSIONS.
ANTON YELCHIN
Wow, it's all of the action of Terminator 2, without the reason to give a shit!
DIRECTOR MCG
Dude, what do you expect from me? I only have one name. And it lacks vowels.
MEGATRON captures them along with a bunch of other people. SAM escapes and runs into MOON BLOODGOOD, whose name is MOON BLOODGOOD.
MOON BLOODGOOD
Who are you? And why is McG introducing a bunch of new characters nobody cares about?
SAM WORTHINGTON
I don't remember anything. Surely that's not alarming to someone who ought to be living in a constant state of paranoia.
MOON BLOODGOOD
I see. Well let's set up camp for the night. We can start a large fire to attract as many invincible murderous robots as possible. Tomorrow I'll take you to see Christian Bale.
SAM WORTHINGTON
He's not going to do that stupid Batman voice is he?
MOON BLOODGOOD
Hilariously enough, he is!
MOON and SAM make their way to the SUPER SECRET RESISTANCE HIDEOUT, SOLD SEPARATELY.
CHRISTIAN BALE
Sam Worthington is a machine! Strap him up, no ultra-powerful cyborg can possibly break out of a couple chains.
SAM WORTHINGTON
I'm a cyborg? How shocking to absolutely nobody since the trailer showed it!
CHRISTIAN BALE
You're a different kind of model, I've never seem a Terminator with human organs before.
SAM WORTHINGTON
Skin is an organ, numbnuts.
CHRISTIAN BALE
...you and me are done professionally, man.
CHRISTIAN sulks around other parts of the base and listens to the tapes his MOTHER made for him, which have been needlessly rerecorded with slightly different lines.
MOON BLOODGOOD
I think you should let Sam go. When he and I were alone, he decided not to rape me, and "doesn't rape people" is pretty much the only moral barometer in action movies.
CHRISTIAN BALE
No. How am I supposed to become the leader of the human resistance if I go around listening to people with more information than me?
MOON decides to free SAM. There is a dark but extremely loud chase sequence and eventually CHRISTIAN confronts SAM.
SAM WORTHINGTON
Listen, I need to go rescue Anton Yelchin, he has to be on the Star Trek set in half an hour.
CHRISTIAN BALE
He eventually grows up to become my father! I will allow you to attempt to rescue him so he can have sexual intercourse with my mother.
SAM goes to the MACHINE CITY where he is captured by machines. CHRISTIAN BALE says goodbye to his wife, BRYCE DALLAS HOWARD.
CHRISTIAN BALE
Alright, let me just stick this flash drive into a killer motorcycle and take it over. It's a good thing the Terminators are backwards compatible with USB 2.0.
BRYCE DALLAS HOWARD
Please tell me that this isn't how the movie has decided to portray all of the "you re-programmed me" stuff from the other movies.
CHRISTIAN BALE
Goodbye, wife who is not Claire Danes. I'm heading into the machine headquarters to rescue the guy who I later send back in time so that he can continue to be my father and I can continue to exist. Yeah, I just said that. Anyway, I'LL BE BACK.
BRYCE DALLAS HOWARD
Ugh, this whole movie isn't just going to be a series of winks and nods to the audience members that saw the other movies, is it? Because that's what Terminator 3 was, and it sucked big metal cyborg balls.
CHRISTIAN BALE
No, that was the last in-joke. The rest of the movie is painfully serious.
BRYCE DALLAS HOWARD
OK, good.
CHRISTIAN BALE
Just as soon as I listen to the same Guns N' Roses album that I listened to in the second movie, a copy of which somehow survived the nuclear holocaust.
BRYCE DALLAS HOWARD
At least it isn't Chinese Democracy.
CHRISTIAN drives to MACHINE CITY. Meanwhile, SAM awakens in a room with a BIG MONITOR (very useful for machines) with HELENA BONHAM CARTER'S FACE on it.
HELENA BONHAM CARTER
Hello Sam. Thank you. You have lured Christian Bale here. Our plan all along was to release you, at which point you could earn his trust and tell him that his teenage father has been captured, causing him to attempt a rescue that we could anticipate and prevent!
SAM WORTHINGTON
Why not just kill his teenage father?
HELENA BONHAM CARTER
...
SAM WORTHINGTON
Did you seriously not think of this?
HELENA BONHAM CARTER
FFFFFFFFFFUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU
CHRISTIAN BALE arrives and is attacked by CGI ARNOLD SCHWARZENEGGER, HOLY SHIT! ARNOLD throws CHRISTIAN around a lot rather than snapping his neck, just to be NICE.
CHRISTIAN BALE
Whoa, I'm getting my ass kicked by the first T-800. It's kind of too bad you had to be CGI, though.
CGI ARNOLD SCHWARZENEGGER
Are you kidding? This is the most realistic performance of my career.
CHRISTIAN BALE
Well it's costing about a million dollars per frame, so let's move this along.
CHRISTIAN BALE dumps a load of MOLTEN STEEL on ARNOLD and it melts his skin off, converting him back into a regular boring robot.
CHRISTIAN BALE
What the fuck? That was molten steel. That's the thing that kills you in Terminator 2.
CHRISTIAN escapes ARNOLD and finds ANTON.
CHRISTIAN BALE
Anton! It's very important you live. It's also very important you switch from briefs to boxers, you gotta keep that sperm count up.
ANTON YELCHIN
We need to destroy this factory, especially considering that it's not supposed to exist for like 10 more years.
CHRISTIAN BALE
We can detonate the power cells. Terminators are powered by explosive nuclear cells.
ANTON YELCHIN
Lemme make sure I have the rules straight. Things that can go back in time: metal endoskeletons, computer chips, liquid metal, robots with rocket launcher arms, small nuclear devices. Things that cannot: a gun, clothing.
CHRISTIAN and ANTON detonate the nuclear cells and survive the ensuing nuclear explosion.
EXT. BACK AT RESISTANCE HEADQUARTERS
CHRISTIAN is severely injured from the encounter. BRYCE DALLAS HOWARD and SAM WORTHINGTON fret over him.
CHRISTIAN BALE
The T-800 ruptured my heart. The fact that I've survived longer than 0.2 seconds is astonishing.
SAM WORTHINGTON
I shall achieve true Terminator salvation. Bryce, give Christian my heart.
BRYCE DALLAS HOWARD
Yeah, I'm a veterinarian. Unless you're both kitty cats, this is a bad plan.
BRYCE somehow saves CHRISTIAN but everyone probably dies a year later from being exposed to nuclear radiation nonstop for 10 years.
Somehow MCG manages to make another sequel anyway.
END
For more of our bitching and moaning about indestructible robots, check out 5 Reasons The Terminator Franchise Makes No Goddamn Sense and our mind-melting attempt to map out a sensible time line of the franchise. Or find more of Rod's scripts for Twilight, Juno and other movies on his author page.
And go to our Top Picks where we'll teach you how to travel back in time to stop McG before it's too late.
Am I the only human alive who likes "Salvation," and thought it was a logical departure from the overused "time-travel with Arnold as a increasingly outdated Terminator model up against bigger, stronger faster Terminators" formula? McG NEEDED to take the franchise in a new direction and I think he succeeded admirably.
Reply Hide All See All 3 RepliesHe succeeded, admirably might be pushing it. But it was sooooo much better than T3 that it really doesn't matter. It could've been the future is saved by a meca-racoon, it still would've been better than the Hell the previous movie put us through.
I really liked it. But I did not care for Chronicles of Sara Connor. That's another thing - is that show blasphemous to talk about?
blasphemy's just a word that has a number of letters I'm unwilling to take the time to count right now.
They totally glossed over that lame sidekick Reese had.
ReplyWho the f**k is Reese? And where's my chicken? I ordered it an hour ago from that robot out in front of the Piggly Wiggly!!!
theres no robot chicken machine in front of piggly-wiggley?!?
Honestly the thing that really bugged me was the heart transplant. They didn't find out if he was a universal doner(O-). But that always bugs me in movies and tv shows. Thanks to my intro to bio class that will forever bother the crap out of me. Other than that I liked the movie. Much better than part 3 but not as good as parts 1 and 2.
Replydoner, hehe
"CRIPPLED TERMINATOR chases him, but it is killed by bullets. Plain old, regular bullets. The kind that couldn't kill terminators in the other movies." - He shot it with a 50 cal mounted machine gun. Those aren't regular bullets, those are blow you up like a sack of ketchup bullets.
Reply Hide All See All 7 RepliesNope, it was an M-60. Regular rounds from an M-60 would do around jack s**t as far as damage to high-quality steel. AP rounds... eh, it's a better explanation than you can get for the rest of the s**t in the movie.
They are just regular 7.62 bullet, but from a heavy machine gun, at point blank range, and he hoses the damn thing for like 5 minutes before it dies, so this scene gets a pass from me.
You guys do know that almost nothing in this movie is realistic anyway, so why should we care what gun or what kind of bullets the terminator was killed by?
It's a sub-T-800 terminator! I'm surprised it wasn't killed by the common cold!
It was a T-600. You could jam stuff into the back of their neck and squirrell-f@#k them.
7.62 cartridges are no joke, I just took it to mean the Terminators were just that sturdy.
But yeah, realism in these films is just a pipedream and shouldn't be expected.
I just assumed that they would have developed rounds with better piercing capability's out of necessity, if normal rounds do s**t all why would they even bother making them anymore?
If they do make another one, it needs to end with Kyle Reese going back in time, that way we know its over. Or is it?
ReplyIf they do a sequel after that, it will end with John Connor sending Ahnold back to the early nineties, probably with Ahnold giving him the thumbs up, and playing the Guns n' Roses song to the credit roll.
terminators can go back because of the living tissue. The T-1000 and the female one can go back because their metamorphing substance mimics the properties of human skin. That last reason is pretty stupid though.
Reply Hide All See All 4 RepliesYou are so right! Good thing the robots couldn't find a way around that, like wrapping a laser weapon in skin...
Witt, I have thought that for years!! They could make skin wrapping paper and send anything they wanted back.
So what you're saying is that it is a viable way to smuggle cocaine into the States?
@ Witt: Actually, there was a comic mini-series made by Dark Horse comics that addresses that issue (very cleverly I might add). The mini-series was published before the 2nd movie but still holds water in regards to timeline etc. In it, the terminators that are going back in time to hunt the human resistance that went back in time earlier, to kill the creator of skynet before he makes it, uses a captured human to "store" the laser gun inside him through messy surgery.
Terminator 1.
ReplyDoc S: If your from the future why didnt u bring a laser.
Reese: Nothing dead can go that means no weapons or clothes.
Doc S: But the killer robot is made out of metal.
Reese: So?
Doc S: Metal isnt alive.
Reese:Oh God dammit.
Salvation wasn't all that bad. Not like T3. The last act is pretty good actually.
ReplyYou glossed over the best part- where the veterinarian performs a f*****g heart transplant in a tent that is open to the air- without even checking if their tissues were compatible.
ReplyNo they didn't. Did you even read this? Or did you wait for it to travel to the past so you could watch it when it might have been edgy?
f**king AWESOME!!!!
ReplyI haven't seen this movie, so if someone who has could help out with this, good on you.
Reply Hide All See All 5 RepliesWhat kind of tactics and stuff was John Connor coming up with that nobody else could have? What made him so very irreplaceable?
He had a large gun, knew how to do action rolls, tried to dissuade Terminators by kicking them in the face (instead of shooting them), and largely ignored the advice of anyone who wasn't himself or his dead mother.
Actually, since all of his previous depictions exhibited far more common sense (such as not kicking Terminators in the face), I think you could say that he was ignoring his own advice too.
He was a prophet because Skynet sent robots back in time to kill him and his mother so he was able to learn all about the future. Also, everyone knew he was really important and would save everyone because Skynet kept sending robots back in time to kill him and his mother.
He also existed because Skynet sent robots back in time to kill his mother so the humans had to send his father back in time to save and impregnate his mother.
There seems to be a fatal flaw in Skynet's plan.
originally he was kind of a Napoleon of robot fighting, mankind was loosing and he leads them to victory. Skynet starts to loose and they invent the time portal thing as a last ditch effort. John sends Kyle and Arnold back to make sure he lives so he could lead mankind.
santodevaca, you make John Connor sound a lot like Harry Potter.
I never understood why Skynet couldn't send a terminator back to knock off one of Sarah's grandparents, somebody responsible for *her* birth.
When I went to see Terminator 3 in the theaters I threw away my brain, nodded to the nods to the other movies and realized I wasted 2 hours of my life on a s**tty movie. At least with Terminator Salvation upon walking into the theater and throwing away my brain I found that I thoroughly enjoyed it, at least as much as I enjoyed the first two. Except Christian Bale... don't like him at all.
ReplyTwo big things here:
Reply Hide All See All 5 RepliesThe bullets. It's very clear that the T-800 isn't intimidated by bullets. It was also pretty clear in previous films that the protagonists were fighting against T-800's with lasers. Clearly this film predated the laser period by some few years. If we'd had lasers to start with, we probably would have survived better.
As far as the time travel thing, they blew that in T-1. It has never been correct and it's not fair to even mention that in the one film where time travel went forward (via cloning)
If you're going to hate on salvation, get it right.
How the f**k did skynet know who kyle reece was, or that john connor would give two s**ts if he died? Why was Sam not controllable via the implanted terminator chip he painlessly rips from his skull (in the wrong place for a terminator CPU)? "The signal" was the worst plot device in movie history, nothing has ever been so obvious or cliche.
Blame the terrible acting, poor actor choices, and terrible plot work for this film being a disappointment.
great job regurgitating what millions have already said about this movie.
What do you mean IF you are going to hate on it?? You make it sound like it's hard.
Blame the acting and plot, not the direction? I'll just name one comically awful sequence. It's a fairly minor point, but just gives you a general idea of the incredibly poor direction: the scene where Bale decides to dive into the water in the midst of a massive storm. Will he even survive the landing? If so, what is he going to do in that water? HOW IS HE GOING TO GET INTO THE SUBMARINE!?!?!? Nevermind all that, in the next frame, he is standing in the sub, like he could just walk in.
duh- he walked in through the screen door.
@tyellington: that same comically awful sequence was ripped off from "The Hunt for Red October". Wait, you thought that was a good movie? Ooooooo.
^It wasn't a bad movie by itself. Oh, but then you're probably comparing it to the novel. Let stuff stand on its own merit, man.
"I'm a cyborg? How shocking to absolutely nobody since the trailer showed it!" Yes, why did they do that?
ReplyThey know that if you're even mildly surprised by anything in the film, you will rate it harshly. Don't just give the audience what they want; give them what they already know, drawn out to great lengths!
In Terminator 3 when Skynet went online, the only robots were the T-1 model. Retarded things with tank treads that were pretty dumb and easily destroyable. So did those robots enslave humans and force them to build all these high tech super robots? Johnny-5 was more intimidating
ReplyThe T-1s didn't, no. But the T-2s had big screens for heads that said "Hello. I work for Skynet, the thing that made Judgement Day happen. Are you going to come quietly or are we going to have problems?" They would roam the ruins, threatening people with Judgement Day 2: Nuclear Boogaloo, which is pretty convincing.
hmm...since skynet fires all of usa's stockpile of nukes and the sjoviets fires theres in retaliation then it is a miracle that any body is alive af that, humans or machines.
ReplyIf Skynet reanimated SAM for the purpose of hatching this elaborate plot to lure John Connor to robot city, by having SAM locate and befriend Kyle Reese, then they...knew...all along...where to find...(and kill) Kyle Reese, right?
ReplyIt was just coincidence he met Kyle Reese though his only basic mission was to go find John Connor and bring him back SOMEHOW
This is pretty accurate. T3 and TSalvation sucked.
Reply@jag345
ReplyAre your parents related?
T3 wasn't half bad. T4 kind of sucked. Sure big booms and fire are cool for a little while, but that is about it.
Reply