"1. I actually did not think it was so terrible. I was entertained by the action scenes. I like seeing giant robots and watching people fight terminators. And explosions are cool.

I know the film rubbed a lot of people the wrong way. The story was roundly criticized. The characterizations were shallow.

2. Personally, I had to assume that T4 was set after T1 but before T2. I.e., after T1 happened, there was a future that followed it from which Uncle Bob and the T1000 were sent, and the action in T4 occurred before they were sent. -- That would explain Christian Bale's John Connor's apparent lack of familiarity with skinned terminator infiltrators, since he would never have met Uncle Bob.
Also, T4 explained how he got the face scar we saw in T2. (And it seemed to me that Bale's Connor really did not understand how time travel is supposed to work in his universe.)

3. From the point of view of those who did not like T4, the things that were wrong with it showed such a great lack of understanding that it makes one doubt that McG could even know what he did wrong. The magnitude of the shortfall also raises disbelief that the insertion of any deleted scenes could possibly come close to fixing the movie's faults.

I think it would be best if everyone just walked away from T4 and let it be called history."

"1. Hmm, yeah. You now have me thinking about how much the movie would be improved by taking out many of the Bale scenes.

2. To begin with, I would drop the whole submarine subplot -- lose the entire conflict between Connor and General Ashdown with his command group in the submarine.

3. I would also replace the first conversation between Connor and Marcus where Marcus is chained above a pit. I would want to replace it with any other scene where Marcus could discover that he is a cyborg, if such a scene exists among the deleted scenes -- it could be very short, but it needs to happen.

4. After that, I would do little clean ups, like the "radio scene" you mentioned and the faulty time travel assumptions I referred to above.

5. But still, I think it would be hard to make the movie truly satisfactory. I still think it would be better to leave it alone and start a T5 with a clean sheet of paper."

"until pacificor decide to sell the rights.</div>"

"Err, Pacificor already sold the rights. Where you been, bro?"

"At the end of the movie, John Connor repeats Sarah's "there is no fate but what we make" mantra. And yet he has the following dialog with General Ashdown:

Connor: Skynet has Kyle Reese.
Ashdown: Then that is his fate.
Connor: No, it's our fate. I have to save him. He is the key. The key to the future, to the past. Without him, we lose everything.
Ashdown: No, you stay the course!
1. Connor: If we stay the course, we are dead! WE ARE ALL DEAD!

And of course this conversation is followed by John's expedition to save Kyle, a mission which defines the entire last part of the movie.

It is assumed that John's single-minded focus on saving Kyle is based on his knowledge from Sarah's tapes that Kyle was his father. But if Skynet were to succeed in killing Kyle, John would not die because of it, nor would General Ashdown and his men. They are all currently alive, and Kyle's death would not cause them all to die like John stated -- "WE ARE ALL DEAD."

2. So based on John's statements to General Ashdown and John's apparently intense desire to rescue Kyle, it seems to me that John does not understand how time travel is supposed to work, despite his being aware of the "no fate" mantra. ("No fate" implies you can change your future even though your past is done and gone. That means Kyle can be killed by Skynet in John's future but that would not mean that Kyle did not father John in the past -- John's past is locked in, but his future is not.)

To me, it would have been better if John had just gone to save Skynet's prisoners out of compassion for their suffering."

"My point was also that John did not seem consistent in his view.

1. He expressed the "no fate" view but then he seemed to assume a different view when he spoke with General Ashdown.

While I personally accept the "no fate" view of T-verse time travel, I understand your point that Bale's Connor could have a different view. But it disturbs me that he does not seem internally consistent within his view.

2. (Yet another possibility is that he wanted to save Kyle and he needed General Ashdown to delay the attack, so he deliberately expressed a different view just to try to influence Ashdown. But I consider this unlikely.)

3. Personally, I think John's comment to General Ashdown (which I quoted in my post above) was one of the rewrites added to give Bale another opportunity to make a dramatic speech, and while it sounds full of importance, the content of what he said was not well thought out. Removing this speech is one of the little cleanups that I referred to in post #4.

4. But I still feel that trying to adjust T4 to make it a better movie would be a fruitless effort."

"1. Not necessarily. I will let that be your own assumption. But remember, in T4, Kyle was used by Skynet mainly as bait for John.

1a. Skynet could have killed Kyle any time after he was identified in the Skynet facility.

2. It seems you are not understanding. Note I used the word "different."

3. As I said before, I would rather delete all the sub scenes.

4. Unlikely it will be fixed properly."

"1. Kyle was put on an operating table, and I thought perhaps he would be used for experimentation. Why do you think that Skynet wanted to use Kyle to skin an endo?

1a. How do you know Skynet "didn't know why John knew Kyle"? Skynet knew Kyle was John's father from John's speech to Marcus: "You and me, we've been at war since before either of us even existed. You tried killing my mother, Sarah Connor. You killed my father, Kyle Reese. You will not kill me. "

2. Skynet killing Kyle will not make John die. The "no fate" view means you can change the future but not the past. John's and Ashdown's pasts are history. Kyle's death will not change their pasts. But what John said to Ashdown implies that Kyle's death WILL change the past and make John and Ashdown and everybody else dead. This is inconsistent.

3. Disagree. If he were the unquestioned absolute leader, his value would be greater."

"1. As I said, I don't remember the movie, but that's the version in the book: those table were used to remove skin from people to try to use it on endos.

1a. I don't remember: how and when did Skynet get this? I don't remember that Marcus had a transmitter (I remember they destroyed the transmitter on the water terminator, so I figure they had destroyed his one too), so maybe Skynet got this information only when Marcus returned to its base, so after the scene on the table.

2. I see the inconsistence, but it's only with your view: you can say that John's view is wrong, but that was his view.

2a. You can better read this in another way: John didn't know for sure and he didn't want to risk. Had you risked?"