mhg83

So after seeing Terminator: Salvation, I was highly disappointed in the story. There was so much stuff they could've done to make the movie better. Then after reading the reviews thread on here, I discovered I'm not alone. If you had the power to do a re-write on T4, what would you add, delete, or change to the script?

First I would take out the Opening scene. Start the film a Year after John and Kate are in the Fallout shelter. Spend ten minutes showing the two living their life underground leading up to 2018. The Marcus opening doesn't even need to be in the move since we find that info out at the end anyways.

The whole character of the mute girl should also be taken out. It serves no purpose.

I would also add in a few more vulgarity and lots more blood. It would make it feel like a more realistic Future War movie.

Keep the nude scene

And also cut back on some of the action scenes. They felt way too long. Add more character development between John and Kate.

Those are the main things I would re-write. I'm sure there are a lot more that I cant think of at the moment.

islandclaws

Oh, where to begin...

There's far too much that needs work. All the dialogue, all of the cliched plot conveniences, the mute black kid needs to go, Connor seems a bit dumbed down for someone who knows more than anyone what's in store for humanity, no Sony Vaio phones... and that fucking ending.

PopcornTreeCt

Nothing it was fine.

Deftones

i hate summer movie time, because people seem to feel the need to start fifty threads about a movie instead of keeping it within the thread already there.

riley_dude

The original script, from what I read in Entertainment Weekly, had Marcus as the focus of the movie. Christian Bale signed with the promise that the script would be rewritten to feature him as the main character.
That may be where it went wrong.

fumanstan

My change would be to make John the complete focus. While I thought the movie was good, I didn't like how the movie was about Marcus.

Mopower

Have Skynet be a space station. Two words says it all: Terminator Astronauts

jeffkjoe

I would go back in time and re-write Terminator 3 and NOT kill off Sarah Connor.

Then she could be, sort of The Oracle in T4.

DieselsDen

Would their eight kids also be in the pic? Does John's alleged girlfriend make an appearance?

Sorry.

[Man, I went through a lot of trouble to post those lame jokes.]

PopcornTreeCt

When I was watching the movie I heard a girl say "that's Sarah Connor" when that old lady appeared in the gas station. And I thought to myself that would actually be interesting if they didn't kill her off.

beckham

Start with a full blown twenty minute scene of Judgment Day.

RagingBull80

I think the film would have been much better this way.

arminius

What I would have liked is for a complete departure from the time travel aspect of trying to kill someone to stop something from happening. I would have liked to see Conner and co. just fighting skynet to be able to get to the point where time travel was possible and the events of the first films happen, the future war and all. I'm a little tired of the "what has more humanity, an irate human or a happy toaster" conundrum.

Shannon Nutt

I would have the whole movie from Kyle Reese's perspective (with different events and a different, older actor). The story would cover his background, how he came to meet John Connor and would end with Connor sending him back in time.

inri222

The solution to this is to stop having the studios being greedy dicks.
This "franchise" should have ended with T2.

chris_sc77

I would make it R-rated.

Giles

ah, that's why I didn't care for this film, every scene where Marcus was in it - I was intrigued, when John Connor (Christian) was in, the film came to a screeching halt.

Superboy

Wow... this is why a scripts shouldn't be written by fanboys. Then you end up with utter incomprehensible tripe like the Star Wars prequels.

What would I have done? well, considering the second movie was almost a total redo of the first movie, the third movie was really good but almost incongruous with the first two movies, Salvation should have been a darker, more realistic take on the future war. Which it was.

Oh, and

Solid Snake

....I think most of us would prefer a tighter script over an R rating. Though the R rating would be convenient for it's sake. Story first...

tylergfoster

This article pretty much covers the original script, which sounds way better on all fronts: http://www.chud.com/articles/article...ION/Page1.html

If they could have come up with something better than Project Angel for the third act but left everything else the same (and kept the digital Arnie cameo -- gimmicky or not, I liked it) it might have been a really good Terminator flick. Instead, it was massively underwhelming on all fronts.

There was also the

gmanca

The multiple paths the third act was proposed to take during production shows how little the team really understood the whole mythos of the film series. If the direction was to eventually have him lead mankind to victory, then the bleak endings are just cool things they could do, because they could.

I am fine with the film's current ending, even if open heart surgery outside a dilapidated Air Force Hanger is a bit out there, because of the symbolism of choosing a human over a cyborg. It makes strategic sense to have the guy who can punch through walls, but you lose the human quality of frailty and mortality. I don't think the movie expounds on that enough, even though it's alluded to with Howard and Bloodgood's characters, simply because what was there of Connor was a character formed from re-writes.

modfather

I hate that people can't just skip a thread if it doesn't interest them.

And I have a simple four-step answer to how I'd change T4:

Step 1:
Open script in MS-WORD

Step 2:
Hit CTRL-A

Step 3:
Hit DEL

Step 4:
Start typing

asilverbullet

Salvation should have been focused on Kyle Reece trying to reach John Connor and vise versa. T-800 terminators, T-900 prototypes, hunters, motorcycles. More focused on John trying to find and get Kyle back to save his Mother. Kyle didnt have to know at all, kinda like dramatic irony. John gives Kyle the picture. It would have been way better to see John and Kyle in a skynet lab and discovering time travel research that ended in a showdown with T-900 - Pollyalloy Prototype. John sending Reece back and escaping the facility before destroying it.

Drexl

I thought this was funny. Apparently, J.D. Salinger wouldn't change a thing: http://www.theonion.com/content/news...urce=a-section

Numanoid

When, of course, the correct thing to say would have been, "That's a complete waste of Jane Alexander".