Product Details

• Actors: Moon Bloodgood, Victor Kubicek, Dee Bradley Baker
• Format: Animated, Color, Dolby, DVD, NTSC
• Language: English
• Region: Region 1 (U.S. and Canada only. Read more about DVD formats.)
  
• Aspect Ratio: 1.33:1
• Number of discs: 1
• Rated: Unrated
• Studio: Warner Home Video
• DVD Release Date: November 3, 2009
• Average Customer Review: 3.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (22 customer reviews)
• ASIN: B002QFYJFY
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #32,315 in Movies & TV (See Top 100 in Movies & TV)
• For more information about "Terminator Salvation: The Machinima Series" visit the Internet Movie Database (IMDb)

Editorial Reviews

"My name is Blair Williams. I fight for the Resistance." The resourceful A-10 pilot from Terminator Salvation has her own story in this kick-'bot prequel filmed via the innovative Machinima process that turns video-game elements into a full-blown animated story. Moon Bloodgood reprises her T4 role, providing the voice of Williams as she takes on an explosive mission to track what or who is disrupting comm links during the Resistance’s fierce guerrilla war against Skynet. T-600s emerge, guns blazing. MotoTerminators patrol post-Apocalyptic L.A. Aerostats hover. Hunter Killers rain death. Machinima delivers action and style in a big way. Reboot the future with Terminator Salvation: The Machinima Series.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

21 of 23 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars A Zippy Prequel with Animated Style, December 12, 2009

By 

ONENEO (Buffalo, NY) - See all my reviews
(TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (VINE VOICE)   

This review is from: Terminator Salvation: The Machinima Series (DVD)

Machinima, for those unaware (a group that included myself until a few moments ago) is the process of using a video game engine to produce cinematic visuals. Somehow this apparently red-hot trend has managed to completely elude me until my on-a-whim purchase of Terminator Salvation The Machinima Series on DVD; it was recommended at the time of purchase of the Terminator Salvation DVD so I figured what the hey...

Broken down into six individual episodes, Salvation the Machinima spans a single DVD packaged within a standard clamshell case and comes in at a runtime of 74 minutes. Extras include a Making Of featurette and a profile segment on lead character Blair Williams.

Though unrated, the picture consists of standard-fair science fiction action, violence and occasional blood splatter (all animated of course).

The story goes something like this: Two years before the events of the Terminator Salvation motion picture (2016), Resistance member Blair Williams finds herself a survivor of the events of Judgment Day, basically running ground missions when not piloting a fighter plane. Her most recent assignment has her tracking down a "ghost"; a presumed machine responsible for the Resistance having temporarily lost communications. To her surprise her target is in fact a fellow human survivor who, through hacking, discovered an inherent flaw in the machines' short-range communicators that allows for disturbance when his algorithm is activated.

Though her orders are to eliminate the target, Blair finds herself in a situation of disobeying for the greater good of humanity.

The plot's pretty interesting and does a solid job in painting some colorful back-story to one of the primary characters of Salvation. A nice tough was the inclusion of the vocal talent of Moon Bloodgood, who happens to play Blair in the film as well. She nails the role with the requisite monotone narration required of all of the Terminator's leading ladies. Chalk it up to accurate scripting, but at times the opening narration of each episode could very nearly be coming from Linda Hamilton herself.

The prose is quite action-laden throughout with no shortage of gunfights, hot pursuits, and big explosions. Like in the film, the T-600 is the primary assassin choice of the machines while Aerostats and Hunter Killers (HKs) fill the post-apocalyptic skies.

As solid a story in summation, the pacing is a bit erratic with some episodes chalk full of action while others drag on with seemingly little plot progression. In all the prose manages to succeed but it would have been nice to have the option of playing the episodes in one continuous 74-minute feature as the episode breaks have the annoying habit of popping up just as the going gets good.

Visually the film is a bit of a mixed bag. The background textures are impressively detailed and some of the mood/ lighting looks as though it could have been lifted and transplanted right from the Salvation film. However, the character models are a bit stiff and cobbily animated throughout. Mouth flap detail is at times downright painful and even the enemy robots look a bit too, um, robotic. However, such things are to be expected when using an engine that was designed to produce video game visuals in filmmaking I suppose. The positive spin on this is that visuals rendered in a fully 3-D gaming environment provide directors with the ability to literally decide which "camera angle" works best for each and every single shot. Once all of the virtual pieces are set into place, viewing a given scene from every conceivable angle becomes a reality. As such, the direction is nice and tight, with well-framed shots and some unique perspectives.

In all, Terminator Salvation The Machinima Series is an interesting little prequel that ties pretty neatly into the film much in the way the Animatrix was integral to the Matrix trilogy. Of particular interest was the concept that the machine weakness discovered by the Resistance in the beginning of Salvation's origins can be traced back to Machinima's plot. Additionally the bonus material included acts as a nice perk to DVD holdouts who forgone downloading the episode clips from iTunes, Amazon, X-Box Live or to their Sony Playstation.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars It was decent for what it was, September 10, 2010

By 

MEGATØN "Post-Apocalyptic Genre Enthusiast" - See all my reviews

This review is from: Terminator Salvation: The Machinima Series (DVD)

Terminator Salvation: The Machinima Series is a series of six short episodes, totaling a little more than an hour, set a year or two before Terminator Salvation, and created with the graphics engine used for the Terminator Salvation video game.

The episodes tell the story of Blair Williams, the A10 pilot from Salvation, as she is sent on a ground mission to discover, and terminate, the source of a disruption in Resistance communication.

She finds that the source is Laz Howard, a young computer hacker who is able to disrupt not only Resistance communication, which he did by accident, but also the internal communications between Skynet and its Terminators. Williams realizes his skills might be useful to the Resistance, so disregards orders to kill him, and instead tries to bring him in.

I've never been a gamer, so really had no idea what video game graphics look like. I suppose they're ok when you're controlling the action in a game environment, but when used for a full length movie, they're a bit lacking. The buildings and streets of post-nuke LA were great, but the main characters' faces were like mannequins; they never had any facial expressions and their lips barely moved when they were talking.

But unfortunately, even worse than the graphics was the story. Again, it was very video game like; the T-600s couldn't hit the broad side of a barn, even with their miniguns blazing, and the airborne hunter killers were good for pretty much nothing.

But overall, even with it's faults, I'd say it's a worthwhile watch. The story is nothing to write home about, but the settings and background visuals were not bad at all, and how many full length animated post-apocalyptic movies are out there? And for the price, I guess you shouldn't expect much anyway.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars 2 character, dull story, poor animation and filmed in a video game, July 12, 2010

By 

Jeff Johnson "Jeff Johnson" (Chicago, IL) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Terminator Salvation: The Machinima Series (DVD)

This is a movie filmed in a video game, which is different than an animated movie. You can tell because the animation like walking is clunky and the lips don't sync. Its like puppets. I love Machinema, but this was sub par and pretty dull and poorly animated.

This "Machinima" movie follows Blair Williams from the Terminator: Salvation movie and is a direct prequil to that movie.

Its broken into 6 parts, that are each 10 minutes long. Each episode is pretty boring and ends with a cliff hanger. The final cliffhanger leads up to the Terminator: Salvation movie.

Basically, these six episodes were meant to be shown on the web, which is great, but to compile them on a DVD isn't the best idea.

Everything felt very flat. The characters were flat too. I got tired of hearing the same machine gun sounds over and over by the end of the 1st ep. There was no depth to the sound, like if a gun is being fired far away, it should have less of a sound than if it is right there.

There was no sense of danger either. Evil cyborgs come... just shoot them. If a machine hasn't found the characters... just shoot them first! Walk in the middle of the streets instead of hiding. When an evil cyborg chokes you, you'll survive, it won't snap your neck instantly. No sense of danger.

There are far better Machinema movies like the one for Red Dead Redemption.