The first teaser for next summer’s Terminator: Salvation has leaked online. The film is directed by McG and stars Christian Bale and relative unknown Sam Worthington (who oddly gets above-the-title credit in the trailer)
Much nicer, larger version HERE
Not sure what to think. What little I can make out seems to look okay, but the whole project just seems odd from conception-up.
Directed by McG is all I need to know to stay far away from this one.
I’m willing to give him the benefit of the doubt until I see more. Given that if I were to edit all the footage in the trailer together it would amount to less than ten seconds, that could take some time.
JS, I was going to say the same thing, but We Are Marshall (while not a great film by any stretch) was a relatively restrained and all-around OK movie.
T3 really gummed up the works in the Terminator franchise. 1 & 2 were basically perfect (for what they were and the story they tried to tell) and ended it well. Then 3 came along and turned it all on its ear.
They tried to band-aid what 3 had done by airing the TV show (Sarah Connor Chronicles). That was basically there to justify 3′s existence. Now it seems 4 will try and change the game by going to the future and basically forget what happened before.
Agree with James that what I can see looks cool enough but it just seems like another unneeded sequel.
Updated post with link to the official release (bigger, clearer). It’s much easier to tell what’s happening in the clips.
I see no reason to acknowledge the existence of this, since I generally refuse to acknowledge the existence of the third one. I don’t care how OK We Are Marshall was, McG != James Cameron. Hell, McG isn’t even Jonathan Mostow.
Look at Brian throwin’ out the computer programming/discrete math symbols…good one!
I wasn’t talking about We Are Marshall in order to say he’ll do good with T4, I was saying it to reference that he is less toxic to me than he was after Charlie’s Angels. I know he can do something serious and restrained. But can he do serious, non-goofy action? Restrained or unrestrained? No idea.
This trailer got the most response from the TDK crowd I watched it with. That’s not saying much because they were completely silent for all other trailers (including Watchmen), but when CB says “this is John Connor” many people went “whoah”
A lot of people are reacting very positively to the trailer. Mention that it’s directed by the auteur of Charlie’s Angels and they just hold their hands to their ears. Total denial. These films (you know there’s going to be more of them) are going to be huge. It’s like Transformers all over again.
I think I may have seen this in front of Dark Knight also, but I was busy not acknowledging its existence so I can’t quite be sure. If it was, though, I don’t recall hearing any kind of audience reaction to it.
Kidding aside, I don’t know what kind of audience is out there for this. T3 only opened to $44 million, and only made $150 overall domestic. It goes without saying that it probably didn’t endear any new fans to the franchise. This new one doesn’t have any of the principles from the first two films and doesn’t have a storyline with much of a hook either.
I’d say the whole “future war against the robots!” plus having Bale (now commonly associated with coolness and quality, to put it crassly) in the presumptive lead as John Connor elevates this above T3 in the eyes of most people, which looked tired with its botox-Arnie and female superkiller-robot getting baked under the California sun.
This will make lots and lots and even if it’s somewhat bad – and I don’t think it will be worse than Transformers – people will still go to the sequels. Remember that despite the disappointment of The Phantom Menace people still marched like sheep to Attack of the Clones and paid their $9.50 at the door.
Changing directors and stars didn’t kill the Batman franchise, so I doubt this will fall by the wayside either.
But it would have if Batman Begins not been, you know, good. As James noted awhile back, the opening for that film wasn’t all that special – it’s easy to forget that interest in that film was not exactly sky high three years ago. I think it’s pretty clear that the subsequent success of the franchise is due to people liking what they saw.
And to that end, this one’s being made by McG.
True enough. But also remember that people also liked Batman Forever (and that it was pretty succesful). Who would confess to such a thing today?
Also true. But I think it’s getting a little tougher to pull the wool over people’s eyes on these franchises than it used to be. To that end, everyone agreed that Batman & Robin was a disaster upon release.
I don’t know. People liked that Transformers movie a whole lot. Even I said it was fun at the time. It was only after a few months I was sitting down, thinking through the film and thought “Man, that was a dumb fucking movie.”
For what it’s worth, Terminator was the only trailer that received positive reaction at both Batman screenings I attended this weekend. Could be the deck was stacked (geeks, Bale fans) but it at least appears that some are willing to give it a shot.
There was groaning at both screenings when Samuel L. Jackson popped up in The Spirit trailer, which was music to my ears.
Speaking of which, how’s that Indy IV re-evaluation going?
But in all seriousness, I don’t see what the initial reaction to Transformers has to do with it. If too many people had the same reaction you did, only to change their minds later, then it’s much less likely that the sequel will be greeted enthusiastically.
But if people genuinely liked it, then they liked it. My point is that it’s getting hard to get people to chase franchises after they’ve already been burned. And I think a lot of people felt burned by T3, and a reboot will be a tough sell because of it.
I’d also analogize it to the recent Hulk reboot.
So was i the only one who got the “watered-down” Spirit teaser instead of the full trailer?
Maybe you got the original teaser? Did it have giant block letters saying “MY CITY SCREAMS”?
Not even that!
It started out with him in a room with cats
Then it’s just a shadow of the Spirit with a red tie jumping across rooftops for 60 seconds or so while he speechifies. Then it pans out to spell The Spirit…end.
You think that’s going to make me want to see it?
Yeah, I’m willing to admit it’s probably the worst of the four, but I still think it was a fun movie overall. That LaBeouf swinging-in-the-jungle-stuff is really wince-inducing, even two months later, but the first half hour, the grave-ninjas, Blanchett was good stuff, and Ford was great as Indy as always. I still maintain I had fun watching it. So there.
I think people will still go see a film, even though they felt burned by the previous one, if they think this one will be better than the last one (Revenge of the Sith made more than Attack of the Clones). A minor lapse in judgement can be forgiven, as long as they believe what they’re going to see is going to be better than what came before. People seem to think this will be better than T3, judging by their reaction to the trailer. So they’ll go see it, remembering how good the first two were, practically forgetting there even was a third one. That’s my theory, anyway (repeated three times in different versions, no less).
In a way, I think the Star Wars prequels need to be set aside. For better or worse, the Star Wars films are a cultural landmark all their own in a way that no other movie franchise except perhaps the Bond films have attained. Certainly the Terminator franchise hasn’t attained that level. Because of this, I think the popular consensus on the prequels – and especially Episodes II and III – is more complicated than what we might naturally presume.
Also, is this movie even going to be pitched to people who remember how good the first two were? Or to the kids who remember Claire Danes and that other guy running around with Arnold? Or to the kids even younger than that, who don’t know much about Terminator but like Christian Bale? If the teaser is any indication, I’d say that last group, with the hope that the Terminator brand brings in a few others.
These films have more in common with eachother than not. They’re both recognisable franchises (though of different magnitudes) and in both we get/got to see the parts of a war only spoken of as in context/setup in the earlier films, pushed into production by fan/market demand, with an almost entirely different/new cast.
Of course it’s being pitched to the people who remember how good the first two were. What, the mention of “John Connor”, the red robot eyes and those recognisable drum notes just happened to be there? You think any Terminator fan went “Hmmm, I believe I have heard those things before, but where? It’s a conundrum.” after seeing it?
Well, then, being worried about a possible backlash regarding T3 is even more pointless, right? If “those kids” only remember the Terminator film with Claire Danes and Nick Stahl, then they’re certainly dumb enough to go see some killer robot movie with Christian Bale in it.
That actually made me laugh out loud. I don’t know why.
Well, those “different magnitudes” were basically my entire point.
Good point. Another example of this is when the trailer for Batman Begins came out. Here’s this guy named Bruce Wayne in a cape and cowl and driving a Batmobile – just like the old Adam West TV series! Obviously the use of those iconic elements meant that the film was aimed at fans of that series.
Things continue to look up for this flick: while the T3 writers tackled multiple drafts, the final shooting script is by Jonathan Nolan (Memento, The Dark Knight, The Prestige).