5 Changes That Would Have Improved Terminator Salvation

5. Don€™t Rely On The Previous Films

The first Terminator film came out in 1983, so by the time that part four came out in 2009 it€™s understandable that the audience may be feeling nostalgic about what had come before. Familiarity and new events mirroring old are great things when done right. Unfortunately this sense of echoing the past went beyond the subtle of necessary and stepped into Superman Returns level of recycling old ideas. The Terminator was the film that created the catchphrase €˜I€™ll be back€™ and all previous films included the line €˜Come with me if you want to live€™ so it would probably be weird if the fourth film excluded them, but Terminator Salvation went much further with its nostalgic throwbacks. The original version of The Terminator theme appears just once in the movie, and that is when they briefly introduced the T-800 in full Arnie form. Whilst this was certainly fan pleasing, it also highlighted the fact that one of the film€™s big crowd pleasing moments is a brief and ultimately disappointing CGI cameo. Other moments included both Marcus and the CGI Arnie doing the famous emotionless head turn after being hit and a legless terminator crawling towards Jon in much the same way that had happened to Sarah at the end of the first movie. This is fine, but they already redid this in Rise of the Machines. Repeating an famous line is one thing, heck Rise of the Machines even had Jon quoting €˜Hasta la vista baby€™ in a way no one would ever quote what was to him a throw away comment years earlier in his life, but having the same fight sequence repeat itself over and over again in a movie series is just lazy. Haven€™t these people learned that cutting a terminator in half doesn€™t stop them? That wasn€™t the only big moment to rear its head again as Salvation saw the T-800 being frozen much like the T-1000 was frozen in T2 Judgement Day. This one was actually pretty cool, and lead to an explanation of how €˜future Jon€™ gained the scar across his eye. That said, it was one of the final moments of the film and wouldn€™t it have been better to create a new memorable scene rather than one that just reminds the audience that the Ultimate edition Terminator 2 DVD is sat on their shelf at home?

Contributor
Contributor

Hello! My name is David Pustansky. As well as writing for this site, I'm also an actor, presenter, writer, director and artist. So basically I love creative things where there's a story to be told. I run my own theatre company, The ImProDigies. Be sure to check our shows out. As I'm sure you'll see from my articles I often look into things with a unique and quirky perspective and have a strange attention to sometimes strange details. Enjoy!