Stuff: Terminator

I spotted Terminator Salvation out on DVD and decided it was high time I blogged about it, as I planned to do many weeks and indeed months ago. The new movie took us into the exciting time of the war between man and machine and saw John Connor beginning to take action against the machines and become the threat that would make it worth sending Arnie back in time. Indeed thanks to enhanced CGI stuff Arnie did make a welcome return as a prototype T-800.

But as well as bringing backt he classics the series also brought a host of new killing machines, and that's what we're going to look at.

Transport














I didn't really notice the scale and power of this craft until I saw the traditional HK-Aerial (what I assumed this one was) fly into it and then it was like 'woah!' which is always a good moment in a movie. This flying craft seems capable of transporting any number of other killing machines across long distances. This craft is critical in the early stages of the film combating resistance members and capturing humans for SkyNet.

Harvester













This machine was the money shot in the trailer - a towering hulk of a machine armed with a shoulder mounted laser gun - when you sawe this you knew the movie was BIG. This beast didn't dissapoint, like Arnie it just kept on coming and had a counterattack for pretty much everything they threw at it. Despite it's size it's main purpose isn't as an attack machine, rather it 'harvests' humans for SkyNet's experiment, once it has enough humans it called a transport and left, which added variety to the enemies of Salvation.

Moto-Terminator












I was really impressed with these as it really gave that sense of 'there's nowhere we can't get you' if the machines can come up with motorbike robots they can pretty much come up with something for every eventuality. I really liked how they deployed from the legs of a Harvester so that even if you escape the big guy these will come after you. We got nice glimpses of the terminator vision from them to as they assessed threats in the road and nimbly dodged them.

Hydrobot















Continuing the theme of the other robots these machines operate in water makind rivers and possibly even seas dangerous places for the resistance. I did like that Connor and his men were well aquainted with them and easily trapped one to experiment on as if they had done it before. But they didn't stop being a threat, able to lep high out of the water and attack a helicpoter.

Marcus Wright












Obviously a key protagonist to the film. Marcus was an interesting character as he wasn't reporgrammed or mysteriously turned good, he was in fact at least partly human, though largely replaced with cybernetic parts. I don't need to go through his journey through the film, but it was interesting to see Cyberdyne takre a long-term approach, gaining Marcus' body long before the war began and activating him to infilitrate the resistance.

Another cool thing was seeing the innovative resistance HQ and General Ashdown, played by Michael Ironside, known to many as the voice of Sam Fisher.

Well I hope you enjoyed seeing the new robots as much as I did, I'll be look at the new Transformers soon seeing as that's out on DVD too.