Just saw it.
Like with Wolverine, one of the surprising shortfalls of this movie was the effects.
I've always been in the story first, effects second camp, but in a movie like this, story is already just a place holder and you accept that. Which means effects become numero uno. Like the trees burning when conner is trying to kill Marcus. Screamed out "SET!". And the scene with Common and Bale waiting on the mountainside screamed out "BLUE SCREEN!" And the Tow truck on the bridge scre-
Well, you get the idea.
And there was a lot of editing wher eyou could sense they cheated on the effects budget. I don't know if I'm too familiar with movie techniques for my own good. It's a possibiity. But, for instance, when they had Bale shooting at 'Arnold' on the metal platform, you had a shot of them squaring off, a shot of Bale firing his gun and then a cut to a shot of Arnold getting hit. So, They saved money because the only effect they had to do was an isolated shot of the T-800 getting hit. But it takes away from the spectacle of the whole thing. And there were a couple other places where this kinda thing happened, though I can't remember specifically.
Mostly this thing held together for me as movie though. I don't feel cheated of my ticket price.
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A word on the acting:
Bale needs to make better choices. He seemed to still be channeling Batman here half the time. I found the scenes with him and the Sarah COnner tapes to be his best scenes because he stopped trying to be Mr. Action Hero. His scenes with Worthington were good too. Also a bit erotic with the chains and stuff, but that says more about me than the movie.
Bryce Dallas Howard. We're meant to believe that this is mankind's last desperate hour and she still has time to put on so much lipstick and face powder that she seems less human than the T-600s? I mean, I let Moon Bloodgod's perfect hair slide when she shook it out of the helmet because, well you don't argue with people named Moon Bloodgod, but Howard lookedout of place and didn't hold her own.
Worthington was pretty good. Seemed to be taking this seriously as an actor. Yelchin was a good Kyle. I'm fed up of the silent child characters in movies who have become such a cliche, so I was kinda put off whenever the Star character was onscreen.
Arnold was his usual self.*
*yes, I know.
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Some spoileriffic comments to end with...
OK, so I think most of you are aware that this movie was not meant to end the way it did. A while back word leaked that the Wright character was supposed to take over as John Conner after the real Conner dies. So basically, that metal through the chest was supposed to kill him. After the leak they re-shot the ending.
I'm sorry they changed it. Having Marcus just lay down and die seemed lacking.
What's more, I'm angry at the studios for changing this, because before they changed it, people were putting spoiler tags on the Wright->Conner thing. After the ending was changed, people decided that it wasn't a spoiler to mention that Wright was supposed to replace Conner and so they just let that particular plot point drop everywhere and that DID spoil the movie for me, because that idea lay at the back of my mind the whole time.
And the movie seems to miss the ending too. Like, the hunt for Kyle Reese was the basic plot of this movie and if you think back to the first movie, Kyle mentions that John found him wandering the wastelands and taught him how to fight.
In this movie we have Marcus and Kyle meet in the ruins of L.A. and Marcus teaches him things from Day One. There's the scene where Skynet explains how Marcus has succeeded in killing John Conner. Those scenes really only make dramatic sense of Marcus will become Conner.
So my question is this: Would you have minded if they kept the ending where Marcus replaces John? That's in either case, whether you know it before you saw the movie or not.