Terminator Salvation Movies Should Have Continued

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• In 2018, 14 years since Judgment Day (July 25th, 2004) started the world war between humans and Skynet machines, Resistance leader John Connor (Christian Bale) is searching for his father, Kyle Reese, the man whom John must send back to 1984 to protect his mother, Sarah Connor (Linda Hamilton), from being killed by the Terminator (Arnold Schwarzenegger), a cyborg sent by Skynet to prevent Sarah from ever giving birth to John. Meanwhile, teenage Kyle (Anton Yelchin) has joined forces with the criminal Marcus Wright (Sam Worthington), the only one to have survived a nuclear attack on Skynet's Cyberdyne Systems base. Soon their paths are going to cross. Edit

• Hydrobot, T-1 Unit, Aerostat, Harvester, Mototerminator, Aerial Hunter-Killer, Transport, Ground Hunter-Killer, T-600, T-700, T-800, T-R.I.P. (Resistance Infiltrator Prototype), and Marcus. Dr. Serena Kogen was originally scripted to be a Terminator, but the idea was scrapped in rewrites. Edit

• Marcus was a criminal who was executed in 2003. He donated his body to Project Angel headed by Serena Kogen, which was involved with Skynet. They take his body and make him into a Terminator; Marcus is probably the most human cyborg Skynet created and one of the most advanced, a prototype endoskeleton, the frame is not mentioned (he is not a T-800, the chest plate when shown is completely different as well as his hand seen in the end, also he is smaller in height, likely because of his original height as a human). Marcus still possesses his human heart and brain with a chip at the base of his skull that wirelessly connects him directly to Skynet. Edit

• Marcus believes he is human, and everyone he meets does not even suspect he is a machine. It's possible that Skynet anticipated this while building him and created a special type of metal alloy that is extremely light weight but near indestructible in order for him to appear as human as possible. It's stated that he is the only one of his kind, so it's possible his metal endoskeleton weighs no more than a human skeleton would, or perhaps just slightly heavier. Therefore, he has the ability to float and run much faster. He also feels pain, making him even more unusual and may have been a deliberate design characteristic used by Skynet to make him seem more human to any humans he encounters. According to the book, he walks on the bottom instead of swimming. In the film, he appears to be swimming as he leaves Connor, but only using his right arm. Also, the water didn't seem to be very deep to begin with, just over knee-high. One counterargument about the metal of his skeleton being light weight: when he's being carried into the infirmary of Connor's command center, one of the people carrying him says "this guy weighs a ton" (a line we hear in Terminator 3) so he obviously weighs more than a human of his size and build. Edit

• When Marcus was built, Skynet made use of at least part of his human brain, which is vulnerable to trauma. Though it was well-protected in his cyborg skull, it probably still could be knocked around inside the casing or simply structurally disturbed by inertia/torsion, and Marcus blacked out when Barnes hit him. The brain of a normal human, encased in it's skull, is actually quite well protected and even pressurized slightly to absorb normal shocks associated with sudden head movement however, as we're all aware, a blow to the head can cause unconsciousness or concussion. Marcus' brain probably has similar characteristics. Edit

• In the first film, Kyle Reese, who arrived from 2029, mentioned that "the 600 series had rubber skin, but these [T-800s] are new." However, in the movie, which takes place in 2018, John Connor says, "But this is not the future my mother warned me about," which can be applied to any inconsistency within the franchise. This is not the same future from the one seen in the first two movies. Judgment Day was postponed in T2, and this film follows T3, where Judgment Day took place in 2004 and not 1997. The time-travelers from the first three films have provided John with prior knowledge that he normally would not have known until much later. In this case, John already learned before Judgment Day from his mother and his Terminator protectors that Skynet was going to make T-800s with human skin. Knowing this, he could actively search out where the prototype was, and destroy it, delaying their production until mid-2020. Had no one traveled back through time, he would not have known beforehand and he would have encountered them in 2018. Likewise, since Judgment Day was postponed until 2004, the state of technology had advanced much more before the war as compared to 1997, enabling Skynet to produce T-800s with human skin much earlier, as well as many other types of Terminators (Hydrobots, Harvesters and Mototerminators). The subsequent time-travels have given John (but also Skynet) a closer look at things to come, and in that way altered the time-lines to some extent. Edit

• Some of them did. The one that attacked Marcus and Kyle had a little bit from what had either deteriorated or had been lost in battle; it even had clothes on, as did the sentry at the Skynet processing center. Seeing as how the machines don't groom themselves, their rubber skin either deteriorates with wear or from battle, as does their clothing. Also, the T-600s appeared to be common soldiers and not infiltration units. Edit

• Perhaps, but it was also a different model of terminator, probably a T-600. The T-800 isn't referred to until a few minutes later when the Resistance downloads the information on it from the computer they find. Up until that time, Skynet might have been using different alloy to construct the T-600s, and it may not have been dense enough to be bulletproof or resistant. It's probably safe to say that Connor and other Resistance fighters had been able to get hold of armor-piercing ammunition. Keep in mind, this was in 2018 and the Judgement Day war had been raging for almost 20 years by that point. While the weapons look like regular, current military weapons, they could be modified to fire special ammunition invented specifically to fight machines. Edit

• If you watch closely, Reese never comes into contact with the T-800 Model 101 prototype while it had its skin. John fires his grenade launcher at the T-800 fairly quickly, destroying its flesh. Therefore, even when Reese saw the T-800 with its skin, it was obscured briefly before it was destroyed. Also, the adrenaline and overall stress of the situation probably would be enough for him not to remember the face in the brief shot he would have had to look at it. He got a good look only at its endoskeleton. Another possibility is that Kyle knew what the Terminator looked like, but he didn't know which model was the one that would try to kill Sarah Connor. In The Terminator, Kyle said the Terminator was "Cyberdyne Systems model 101" and the model 101s are the Terminators with Schwarzenegger's face and there are different models with different features (like the one that infiltrates Reese's hideout in Sarah's dream from the first movie), so he knew what the Terminator looked like. He may not have known which one would be sent back to kill Sarah until he saw him in the past. Edit

• The year is 2018; the future scenes in the previous films took place in 2029. Therefore, it's likely the machines hadn't invented the technology yet, which is referred to as "phased plasma", and the resistance hadn't captured the technology. The Harvester, Moto-Terminators, and HKs are the only machines that have the plasma firing weapons, and Skynet probably hadn't figured out a way to scale them down or develop them into hand-held weapons to be used by the infiltrator units like the T-800. The T-600 in Los Angeles was carrying a minigun as were the T-70s that were seen in the prisoner processing center. Edit

• When Marcus is talking with the Skynet simulation of Dr. Kogan, she states that Skynet tricked the Resistance into thinking they would win the war by supplying them with a signal that would deactivate any terminators within its range. The Resistance leadership believed that they should have an all-out assault on Skynet with the use of this signal. Also, the machines captured Kyle Reese in order to lure John Connor into Skynet's headquarters. The whole point of Marcus being created was to get Connor to believe Marcus actually wanted to help him rescue Kyle. The best way for a machine to convince John Connor? Make him seemingly human and truly want to rescue Reese. This was all unknown to Marcus who believed he was actually doing this of his free will, but the scenario was already planned by Skynet and was programmed in Marcus' subroutine to help Connor. So when Resistance Command gave the order to attack, Skynet was able to trace their signal and destroy their headquarters, the submarine. The next phase was to create pressure on Connor with the knowledge that Kyle Reese is in Skynet and the Resistance is planning on bombing it, thus luring Connor into Skynet to rescue him with Marcus' help and have Connor killed by the T-800. (Possibly because of, as stated in Terminator 3, his boyhood connection to that model, it allowed him to get close enough to kill him, but Connor knew better.) That part of the plan backfired when Marcus resisted his programming and rescued Connor and Kyle Reese. Edit

• No. John fires his M4 at the Terminator, hitting him in the chest and stomach, and it clearly causes damage. Then, John fires his grenade launcher at it, firing incendiary grenades which burn and melt off the Terminator's skin. The ensuing hand-to-hand combat between John/Marcus and the T-800 was with no weapons, except a few scraps of metal. Molten metal is poured on the T-800 as well, but because that type "was an earlier steel process [of molten steel] after it had been separated from the coke" and because "it was frozen quickly enough by the [liquid nitrogen]," the T-800 didn't melt (as explained here by the film's director, McG). Another possibility on why the molten steel didn't affect it was because there wasn't enough to melt it before all of the combined steel reached thermal equilibrium, which was cooler in the net effect. In T2, the Terminator sat for a few minutes to melt in a large pool of molten steel that was likely being kept hot by a persistent heating mechanism. (The aforementioned considerations involve the nuances of thermodynamics.) It's also possible the T-800 was an advanced prototype. Perhaps this T-RIP (Resistance Infiltrator Prototype) was built stronger than the others specifically to kill Connor, or, because Connor destroyed the Terminator factory, Skynet's research was set back and their later productions were less advanced, which may explain how it had better scanners. Also, John fires at a steam line, puncturing it and releasing gas (it isn't known if it's supercooled or simply just air or some other gas) that rapidly cools the molten steel. The cooling effect could have been fast enough (in a strictly Hollywood sense) to prevent major damage to the T-800's endoskeleton. Edit

• While Reese and Star (Jadagrace) take the elevator up to the transport, John heads back into the Skynet base to continue the fight. He is joined by Marcus, now under his own control having torn out the hardware at the back of his head that links him to Skynet, and together they take on a new T-800 model 101 Terminator. Marcus is "terminated", but John manages to get his heart started again by fashioning a makeshift defibrillator. However, the T-800 impales John with a shaft of metal, mortally wounding him. After taking out the T-800, Marcus helps John out to the waiting transport, which Kate orders to take them to the nearest safe zone. While in flight, Star hands John the detonator for the Terminator fuel cells that he rigged together earlier, and he blows up the Skynet base. Later, on the ground, Kate determines that John's heart is too badly wounded and that he will surely die. "Take mine," Marcus replies, offering his living heart to John. As they prepare for the transplant, John says (in a voiceover): What is it that makes us human? It's not something you can program. You can't put it into a chip. It's the strength of a human heart...the difference between us and machines. In the final scene, John radios to the Resistance fighters that, though this battle has been won, the war is far from over. Edit

• Arnold Schwarzenegger's face was scanned from a previous movie and placed on a stunt double's body using CGI. The result is the T-800 that appears at the end of the movie. Other than that, Schwarzenegger does not appear in any other way and didn't actually shoot any scenes for this movie. This technique is revisited in the sequel, Terminator Genisys, for one special scene. Edit

• In an interview shortly after the film's release, Arnold Schwarzenegger said, I'm open to all those things, if it's True Lies, Terminator, a well-made Terminator... the last one was awful. It tried hard, not that they didn't try, the acting and everything. It missed the boat. In the mid-2010s, while promoting Terminator: Genisys, he was asked about Terminator Salvation and he simply said, "It sucked." Edit

• McG talked to James Cameron in New Zealand when the latter was filming Avatar. There, Cameron told him about how when he was making Aliens, following Ridley Scott, and how people were skeptical of him, much like McG. They later had several phone calls, talking at great lengths about the story, and Cameron suggested Sam Worthington, the star of Avatar, to be the Marcus character. Edit

• Danny Elfman wrote new themes for this film, but based them on the theme from the previous Terminator movies. He did, however, utilize Brad Fiedel's original, and now famous, pounding 5-note "Terminator" motif during the opening credits, during the appearance of the Arnold Schwarzenegger model Terminator in the climax, and at the close of the movie right before the end credits. Edit

• "The Day the World Went Away" by Nine-Inch Nails. It can be heard on the fourth studio album The Fragile (1999). Edit

The FAQ items below may give away important plot points.

• Skynet was capturing humans to farm their skin for the new T-800 models. Also Kyle Reese says in the original Terminator that people were put in to work camps for orderly disposal. Edit

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Source: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0438488/faq

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