Terminator Salvation
The end begins.
Terminator Salvation (2009)
Budget
$200 000 000
Revenue
$371 353 001
Director
Scenario
Composer
Producer
Moritz Borman
Actors
Christian Bale
John Connor
Sam Worthington
Marcus Wright
Moon Bloodgood
Blair Williams
Helena Bonham Carter
Serena
Anton Yelchin
Kyle Reese
Common
Barnes
Zach McGowan
Soldier on Osprey
Bryce Dallas Howard
Kate Connor
Short description
Terminator Salvation is set in 2018, years after a nuclear apocalypse has devastated the world. John Connor has become a leader of the human resistance fighting Skynet, the artificial intelligence network that commands an army of machines. Connor learns of a plan that could decide the war, and he also searches for the young Kyle Reese, whose survival matters to humanity's future. Into this struggle comes Marcus Wright, a stranger whose last memories are of death row. His arrival unsettles Connor, who cannot tell whether Marcus was sent from the future or survived from the past, and whether he is an ally or something else. Their paths converge as Skynet prepares a decisive strike.
The film was directed by McG, released in 2009 as the fifth entry in a run that began with Charlie's Angels in 2000 and continued through We Are Marshall and later films such as This Means War and The Babysitter. John Brancato and Michael Ferris wrote the screenplay, and the cast includes Christian Bale as John Connor, Sam Worthington as Marcus Wright, Moon Bloodgood, Helena Bonham Carter, Anton Yelchin and Common, among 61 credited performers. Made for about 200 million dollars, it returned roughly 371 million worldwide. On IMDb it holds 6.5 from 392,000 votes, on TMDB 6.1 from 7,248, while a critics' rating stands at 5.3 from 279 reviews.
What's left behind the scenes
- In May 2007, Mario Kassar and Andrew Vajna sold all franchise rights to the fledgling film business company The Halcyon, owned by private entrepreneurs Victor Kubichek and Derek Anderson.
- In July 2007, producers Kubichek and Derek Anderson filed a lawsuit in the Los Angeles Superior Court against the film company MGM, accusing it of interfering with the planned distribution plans for the film. Studio representatives, in turn, argued that they had the right to 30 days of negotiations regarding theatrical release, acquired after the bankruptcy of Orion Pictures in 1997. The main dispute was that The Halcyon wanted to independently choose a distributor for 'Terminator 4' – one that would offer the best terms.
- The rights to distribute the film were ultimately acquired by Warner Bros. (North America) and Sony Pictures Worldwide Acquisitions Group, through Columbia Pictures (all other countries except Japan (Toho Towa)) – the exact same parity scheme was used in the distribution of 'Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines' (2003).
- According to the vision of Victor Kubichek and Derek Anderson, this would be the first film in a new trilogy, set in a post-apocalyptic future.
- For Christian Bale, this is already his second iconic role in films from Warner Bros., following Batman in Christopher Nolan's blockbusters.
- Josh Brolin was offered the role of Marcus Wright, but he declined.
- This is the first Terminator film that does not feature Earl Boen. In previous films, he played the psychologist.
- Principal photography took 77 days.
- Several shots focus on the characters' legs. This is a signature 'trick' of James Cameron – the director of the first two installments.
- Old recordings of Sarah Connor were made by Linda Hamilton specifically for this film. The recording was done word-for-word from the original film 'The Terminator' (1984).
- The trick of attaching a gun to the arm, which Marcus shows Kyle, is used by the older Kyle in the original film “The Terminator” (1984).
- This film shows the origin of John Connor’s scars, which we see in the opening scene of “Terminator 2” (1991).
- Based on this film, American writer Alan Dean Foster wrote a science fiction novel of the same name.
- During the making of the film, Stan Winston, a guru of “pre-computer” special effects, passed away. The film is dedicated to his memory.
- This is the fourth film in the Terminator saga and the first to take place during the war with the machines.
- In March 2009, shortly before the film's scheduled premiere, Warner Bros. announced its decision to completely change the film's ending. This was done after the final script fragment leaked online, revealing that after John Connor's death, the Resistance leaders decide to create a cyborg resembling him.
- In July 2006, during Tony Blair's visit to California, the state's governor, Arnold Schwarzenegger, offered the British Prime Minister a role in the fourth Terminator film, but he ultimately did not appear in the movie.
- Advertising for the film appeared on the cars of the Brawn GP Formula 1 team.
- A significant portion of the film's special effects were achieved through practical filming. Digital technologies were used only where it was impossible to film something in reality.
- Director McG wanted to depict a world several years after a nuclear disaster, where the almost destroyed atmosphere barely scatters sunlight, and all colors are faded and bleached. To achieve this, the cinematographer used a technique where the negative contained more silver than usual, which provided contrasting shadows and bleached highlights. In addition, the film was deliberately “aged” by leaving it in the sun to affect its color rendition.
- The credits utilize elements of the Lisp programming language interface, which is used to create artificial intelligence systems (various types of brackets: (){}[], prompt for input: >).
- At the beginning of the film, during the capture of Skynet's base, a screen of one of the computers is shown. On it, you can make out the version of the operating system kernel: Linux 4.1.15.
- The scene of Marcus Wright's meeting with Skynet is a reference to the scene of Preston in a white suit meeting Father/Vice-Chancellor DuPont from the film “Equilibrium” (2002), in which Christian Bale played Preston.
- During the scene where John Connor captures the moto-terminator, he uses the song "You Could Be Mine" by Guns N' Roses as bait. In turn, the music video for this song was filmed in 1991 based on "The Terminator," and Arnold Schwarzenegger as the T-800 in the video attended a concert by the band. The same composition also plays during the end credits of the film "Terminator 2: Judgment Day" (1991).
- During their first meeting on the street with Marcus in Los Angeles, Kyle Reese tells him, "Come with me if you want to live" – he says the same phrase to Sarah Connor in the first film when he shot the T-800 at the disco in the "Technoir" bar.
- In the second and third films, the words "Come with me if you want to live" were spoken by the Terminator. In the series "Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles" (2008-2009), these words are spoken by the robot Cameron, sent to protect John.
- Kyle Reese levels a shotgun at Marcus, demanding that he say who he is. In the next moment, Marcus deftly snatches the shotgun from Kyle’s hands, similar to how the T-800 (played by Arnold Schwarzenegger) in "Terminator 2: Judgment Day" (1991) wrests a shotgun from a parking attendant at the beginning of the second film.
- After a large explosion, the harvester robot unexpectedly emerges from the flames virtually unharmed. A similar scene occurred with the T-800 and T-1000 in the first two films.
- During the scene of Kyle and Marcus escaping from the Reaper robot, the motorcycle Terminator jumps at them directly from the bridge, mirroring the T-1000’s maneuver with a truck in the second film and the T-800’s with a motorcycle.
- When parting with Kate before infiltrating San Francisco, John says to her “I’ll be back” – the famous phrase of Arnold Schwarzenegger in the role of the Terminator, and also in some other films.
- The film features three instances of the distinctive head movement of Arnold Schwarzenegger’s Terminator from previous films after being hit in the face: Marcus does it after being struck by a scavenger, the T-800 with Arnold’s face, and later the same T-800 after losing its skin covering.
- During the battle with the T-800, the freezing cyborg scratches John Connor’s face. We see these scars on the adult John’s face in the second part during the decisive battle and in the third during the future episode.
- Claire Danes could have returned to the role of Kate Brewster, but she declined. She was replaced by Charlotte Gainsbourg. However, when Gainsbourg was also forced to leave the project to work on another film, the role of Kate Brewster went to Bryce Dallas Howard.
- 19-year-old American-born Russian actor Anton Yelchin was cast as Kyle Reese – a soldier under John Connor, whom he will send back in time to save his mother before his own conception (in the first "Terminator" film (1984), the role of Reese was played by Michael Biehn).
- The T-800 arrives in 1984 near the Griffith Observatory. In this film, Kyle and Marcus go to this location to acquire a vehicle.
- The following scenes were removed from the film: General Ashdown aims a gun at John Connor’s head at command headquarters in order to rid himself of the machines. A scene depicting pilot Blair undressing before Marcus’s fight with the bandits. A portion of the monologue about Sarah Connor’s madness was removed from the radio message John Connor transmits before the attack on Skynet. A dialogue between Connor and Jericho before Connor secures his rope and jumps into the hole. A brief conversation in the flooded tunnel between soldiers before the T-1 attack. A shot of soldiers in a bunker before Skynet blows up the location. The Osprey picks up Connor in the return zone, and he gives a final salute to the soldiers. Back at headquarters: John and Kate, lying in bed, talk about Kyle and the impending T-800s. A portion of the dialogue between Kyle and Marcus at the Griffith Observatory was cut. A small conversation between Blair and Marcus in the ventilation shaft before he knocks the cover off the hatch. After speaking with Ashdown on the radio at the airbase, Connor gives Barnes C4 explosives to blow up the communication towers. Connor moves to a shortwave transmitter and delivers a speech to the Resistance. The moment Marcus Wright infiltrates the Skynet Center. Marcus bypasses a patrolling T-600 and attempts to take cover in a ruined church, but a large tracked Skynet machine bursts in. While John Connor rides the Mototerminator, it turns out the bridge has been blown up, and with the help of a grappling hook, John climbs to the other side. When the prototype T-800 chases John, Kyle, and Kroc and tears a damaged T-600 in half, it bends down and picks up its machine gun to open fire on targets. Leaving the T-800 factory, Kyle Reese and Kroc, along with other prisoners, break out onto the street through the distribution hall. During the escape, people collectively destroy T-1 and T-600 robots. At the end of the film, Kyle Reese buries Marcus Wright, who sacrificed himself. Finishing digging the grave, he accidentally finds a photograph of Sarah Connor in a jacket given to him by John Connor. He will tell Sarah about it when he arrives in 1984 to save her from the T-800 that arrived alongside him (as in the film "Terminator" (1984)).
- There exists a director’s cut of the film that includes some moments and dialogues not shown in the theatrical version, as well as minor video clips. The total runtime of the fragments included in the director’s cut is 5 minutes. Here are the scenes added to the director’s cut: When John Connor and his squad infiltrate the Skynet underground base at the beginning of the film and walk through the flooded tunnel, a T-1 rises from the water behind them. The soldiers quickly destroy the robot and continue on. At the beginning of the film, in the underground base, John Connor sees the bodies of people on tables, among them Marcus Wright. The moment when General Ashdown reprimands Connor for arriving on the submarine. Ashdown presses a pistol to his temple, saying, “Let’s get one thing straight. I don’t believe in prophecy. No one can change the future in a moment.” The famous scene where Blair Williams stands naked in the rain, washing a wound on her chest. McG explained that he removed this scene because it was insignificant and had no meaning. Marcus plunges a screwdriver into the shoulder of one of the robbers, but the robber manages to pull it out. Marcus uses the robber as a shield when another robber shoots at him. Marcus beats another robber. A T-600 executes a prisoner attempting to escape. When Marcus and Blair sit by a campfire, Blair says, “Thinking about your past? You know, I’ve realized one thing, Marcus. Can you focus on what’s lost… or fight for what remains?” During the address to the Resistance groups to postpone the attack on the Skynet Center, Connor also says in his monologue: “I knew a woman who said people should fear the future. That everything would soon come to an end, that everything would be lost… No one wanted to hear the truth. Society disowned her. That woman was Sarah Connor, my mother. Now we know: what she warned about has come true.”
- The phrase about eliminating John Connor, which Skynet utters in the finale, was translated inaccurately in the Russian release: “You, Marcus, you did what Skynet had failed to do for 44 years.” Perhaps the translator meant that the conflict began in 1984, when the first Terminator attempted to kill Sarah Connor, and made an arithmetic error, as 2018 – 44 = 1974. This same number appears in the Russian edition of the book. The original wording is different: “You did what SkyNet has failed to do for so many years.”
- After a helicopter crash in the desert, John Connor fights a legless T-600 – a reference to Sarah Connor's confrontation with the legless T-800 in the first film.
- After destroying the T-600 in Los Angeles, Marcus asks Kyle, “What day is it? What year is it?” – in the first film, Kyle asks this question during a scuffle with a police officer after arriving in 1984.
- In the film, John Connor gets into a helicopter and kicks out the dead pilot. While taking off, he doesn't buckle up. However, after the helicopter crash, he is already buckled in.
- The film was originally titled "Terminator Salvation: The Future Begins".
- This is the first Terminator film not to feature Arnold Schwarzenegger. Instead, another bodybuilder, Roland Kickinger, was cast, and his body was digitally overlaid with the face of a 37-year-old Schwarzenegger (the age he was during the first "Terminator" film).
- At the 35th minute of the film, when Kyle and Marcus drive an SUV down a hill, the windshield of the car is completely clean. When they drive onto a winding road in one of the following scenes, there is already a thick layer of mud around the edges of the windshield.
- At the 41st minute of the film, when Marcus, driving a tow truck, breaks through the wooden wall of an annex with the tank, it can be noticed that the wall shatters due to a small explosion.
- At the 43rd minute of the film, Kyle drops an oil drum onto the road and shoots it. At the moment the drum is hit, it can be seen that it vanishes without a trace and instantly turns into a cloud of black splashes.
- At the 54th minute of the film, Blair and Marcus are sitting by a campfire on completely dry sand, even though it had been raining heavily just a few minutes earlier.
- At the 67th minute of the film, Marcus, bound in chains, begins to fall, leaning slightly forward. However, in the next shot, he lands flat on his back.
- At the 77th minute of the film, while John is talking to Marcus, it can be noticed that the extent of the damage to Marcus's head changes between shots.
- At the 95th minute of the film, when John, Kyle, and Star jump through a hole in the wall and land on a platform, fully assembled Terminator heads are lying next to them. A robot takes one of the heads for the next production stage, but in the very next shot, an unfinished head—missing its eyes and lower jaw—is attached to a Terminator's torso.
- At the 97th minute, Kyle grabs a grenade launcher from the floor and fires at the T-800, after which the terminator is knocked back several meters by a grenade with an inactive fuse. In one of the previous scenes, a grenade explosion only scorched the T-800 but did not knock it back. Perhaps the filmmakers wanted to demonstrate that the grenade's fuse only activates at a certain distance from the shooter, but in any case, the momentum of the grenade would not have been enough to move the heavy robot.
- At the 105th minute of the film, while John is lying on a cot, the wounds on his face are bleeding. The state of the wounds on his face changes during the following scenes: in some shots, the cuts are covered with clotted blood, while in others, they turn into scars.
- Initially, director McG had a very peculiar musical concept in mind: one composer was to write all the 'human' themes, and another the themes for the insurgent machines. There was then an attempt to bring Hans Zimmer and even Brad Fiedel, the author of the main Terminator theme, onto the project, although McG did not plan to use the classical theme itself. However, when Danny Elfman began working on the soundtrack, the composer used some melodies from the first two 'Terminators' in an unusual ambient sound, while the main themes of the new film were written with symphonic scale.
- Helena Bonham Carter replaced Tilda Swinton shortly after filming began.
- A game of the same name was based on this movie.
Auditions in India
Casting calls in USA
Castingi w Polsce
Кастинги в Україні
