Terminator Salvation (2009)

In 2018, a mysterious new weapon in the war against the machines, half-human and half-machine, comes to John Connor on the eve of a resistance attack on Skynet. But whose side is he on, and can he be trusted?

Director:

McG

Writers:

John D. Brancato, Michael Ferris

Stars:

Christian Bale, Sam Worthington, Anton Yelchin

2 wins & 7 nominations.

Cast

Cast overview, first billed only:
Christian Bale	...	John Connor
Sam Worthington	...	Marcus Wright
Moon Bloodgood	...	Blair Williams
Helena Bonham Carter	...	Dr. Serena Kogan
Anton Yelchin	...	Kyle Reese
Jadagrace	...	Star (as Jadagrace Berry)
Bryce Dallas Howard	...	Kate Connor
Common	...	Barnes
Jane Alexander	...	Virginia
Michael Ironside	...	General Ashdown
Ivan G'Vera	...	General Losenko (as Ivan Gvera)
Chris Browning	...	Morrison
Dorian Nkono	...	David
Beth Bailey	...	Lisa
Victor J. Ho	...	Mark (as Victor Ho)

Storyline

In 2003, in the Longview State Correctional Facility, the criminal Marcus Wright is on death row, and is convinced by the cancerous Dr. Serena Kogan to donate his body to her research and he accepts. In 2018, after an unsuccessful attack to a Skynet facility, only John Connor survives, but he discovers that Skynet is developing the powerful new model T-800. Out of the blue, Marcus appears naked and with amnesia in the location. Marcus befriends the teenager Kyle Reese and the girl Star who help him to survive the lethal machines and they travel together in a Jeep. Meanwhile the resistance discovers a signal that might turn-off the machines and John offers to test it. When Kyle is captured by a machine and brought to the Skynet headquarters, Marcus decides to help the youngster and heads to Skynet; on the way, he saves Blair Williams who suggests to him that he should meet John Connor first. But Marcus steps on a mine and is submitted to surgery, when a secret about his origins is ...

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Plot Keywords:

skynet | machine | future | death row | army | 

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Taglines:

We Fight Back

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Genres:

Action | Drama | Sci-Fi | Thriller

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Certificate:

14A

Details

Official Sites:

InterCom [Hungary] Official Facebook

Country:

USA Germany UK Italy

Language:

English Italian

Release Date:

21 May 2009 (Canada)

Also Known As:

Terminator rédemption

Filming Locations:

Albuquerque Studios - 5650 University Boulevard SE, Albuquerque, New Mexico, USA

Box Office

Budget:

$200,000,000 (estimated)

Opening Weekend:

£6,936,528 (UK) (5 June 2009)

Gross:

$125,320,003 (USA) (4 September 2009)

Company Credits

Production Co:

Halcyon Company, The, Wonderland Sound and Vision

Technical Specs

Runtime:

115 min 118 min (director's cut)

Sound Mix:

SDDS Dolby Digital DTS

Color:

Color (Technicolor)

Aspect Ratio:

2.35 : 1

Did You Know?

Trivia

The film's look is based on Technicolor's OZ (Olson-Zacharias) process, which adds three times more silver to the negative film stock, making it milkier without affecting the grain structure. Although the process was tested in pre-production, it wasn't actually used. Instead, its look was mimicked in the digital intermediate process.

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Goofs

Connor's transport plane is flying through a storm with winds powerful enough to whip up massive waves on the ocean surface, yet interior shots show perfectly stable flight with no turbulence.

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Quotes

[first lines]
Dr. Serena Kogan: Marcus. How are you?
Marcus Wright: Ask me in an hour.

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Connections

Referenced in Face Off: Triple Threat (2012)

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Soundtracks

Main Title
from Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991)
Written by Brad Fiedel
Used courtesy of StudioCanal

User Reviews

This was actually a decent film!

Enough with the copycat comments! Everybody is so keen to criticize this film, while completely ignoring its good parts. Was there some plot weirdness? Well, yeah, we are talking humans winning versus machines here. But most of it was decent.

In this film you get to see more machine types, more character ambivalence (do you even remember the first Terminator? it was machine fascism!), more hints to the previous movies and, most of all, hints of the direction of the Terminator concept. I don't want to spoil it for you, but you must be blind not to see it is a good thing.

Other good things in this movie: Moon Bloodgood, the Oh-girl; Michael Ironside, just as fun as ever, even if having some scenes. And there is Sam Worthington, who is actually the main character and more like Help from BSG, but twice as cool, NOT Christian Bale aka John Connor.

I am surprised to see that both Terminator the series and the new Terminator are bringing some modernism to the old age concept of machine war. They are obviously not without flaw, but considering the alternatives and, even more, my expectations, I would say that saying this film was bad must be just some fashionable thing to say right now.

Bottom line: I liked it!