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Why Terminator Salvation might be great

• By Sid Shuman
• January 23, 2009 15:05 PM PST
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GamePro's Sid Shuman critiques impressive new footage from Terminator Salvation, and director McG explains why "this film belongs to the fans."

BREAKING: McG tells GamePro he suspects Terminator Salvation will receive an R rating, that the video game had better not suck, and that he'd like to see Zach Snyder direct a new Aliens movie.

I am completely out of my element. Ten years of writing about video games, and here I am: standing in the lobby of the majestic Directors Guild of America building in sunny Los Angeles, waiting to see 20 minutes of new footage from Terminator Salvation (game trailer), the film that promises to reboot the classic science fiction series with a new star (Christian Bale!), new terminators (the 30-foot tall Harvester!), and an entirely new premise (Judgment Day has already happened!). Like many gamers, I'm an enormous fan of the first two Terminator films. Like many gamers, I'm still pissed about Terminator 3.

Sitting in the plush theater, I feel like I have no idea what I'm doing -- there are no familiar faces among the crowd, which is packed full of Hollywood Reporter-types and studio execs with bleached-blonde, translucent combovers. What the hell am I doing here again? I momentarily debate leaving, or at least going outside to sneak a smoke, when the director of Terminator Salvation abruptly takes the stage. The bright-eyed director, whose name is simply "McG," talks a great deal about "honesty and respect for the audience," how Christian Bale initially declined the role of John Connor (he thought the early script sucked), and how tough it would be to follow in the footsteps of writer/director James Cameron's first two Terminator films. It's typical Hollywood back-patting and does little to quell my long-standing ambivalence about a fourth Terminator film.

Then the new footage begins and I think, Wow, this McG fellow might just pull this thing off after all.

Beyond Judgment

Bathed in an otherworldy silver tint, the first scene opens in 2018. Starving Judgment Day survivors enter a dilapidated 7-11 gas station to rummage for food and supplies. The group is led by Kyle Reese, a teenaged counterpart of the protagonist from the first film, accompanied by some hardscrabble survivors and a darkly mysterious new character named Marcus Wright. The group is ambushed by a group of heavily armed looters, but the love-in is interrupted by the appearance of the Harvester -- a towering, howling sentry robot that comes courtesy of the homicidal supercomputer Skynet. Smashing into the convenience store and scooping up screaming humans, the Harvester quickly gives chase to Kyle and Marcus's group, deploying several new terminator models -- the two-wheeled Moto Terminators -- in a high-speed chase that had me gripping my armrests. Not bad, not bad at all.

First things first, though: why is the Harvester abducting human survivors? McG doesn't answer the question directly, mentioning instead that the film finds Skynet preparing to unveil its latest creation, the iconic T-800 model that was portrayed by Arnold Schwarzenegger in the first three films. The T-800 is smaller and tougher than its T-600 predecessor, and hides its hardened titanium endoskeleton beneath a layer of lab-grown flesh - a much more convincing disguise than the T-600's crude rubber skin. "It's like creating the polio vaccine," McG tells the crowd, because "you've got to go through a lot of lab rats. Unfortunately, in this movie, humans are the lab rats."

A later scene showed Christian Bale as John Connor wrestling with another Skynet creation, the snake-like "Hydrobots," which yank Connor's airborne helicopter into a murky pond. This triggered a tense scene as Connor trudged through the muddy waters, dodging the wriggling Hydrobots and making his way to shore, where he meets the mystery man himself -- Marcus Wright, played by Sam Worthington. The new scene from the film reveals that Marcus is, well, a terminator. But it might not be so simple: judging by his wounds, Marcus at least appears to have a terminator-style metal endoskeleton. McG cautioned the crowd not to jump to conclusions, saying "it's not what you think....don't believe what you're seeing, there's more to it."

Deal With the Devil

Other mysteries remain. Will actor Linda Hamilton reprise her iconic Sarah Connor character from the film? Surprisingly, the answer may be "yes." McG asked the reporters in attendance if they wanted to "hear Linda Hamilton via the tapes that Sarah Connor left to educate her son... to articulate the rules of the movie?" The response from the room was overwhelmingly positive, leading McG to remark, "I like the idea." Much talk was focused on a widely disseminated rumor that John Connor dies in the film and is replaced by a lookalike terminator. "The truth is, there's only four people who know the end of the movie," McG teased. "The ending of this film is elliptical - it's going to make a lot of people mad, or scratch their heads," McG added. "It's not a disposable ending. It's going to make you think." Further Terminator sequels are also a distinct possibility, provided that Salvation proves to be a Schwarzenegger-sized hit at the box office. "We would never be so bold as to presume another [Terminator sequel]," McG told the crowd, "and another one after that, but...in the next picture, time travel." Next picture, indeed: star Christian Bale has already signed on for two Terminator sequels, the first of which has been tentatively scheduled for 2011.

And as of Schwarzenegger's much-rumored involvement with Terminator Salvation, McG stopped short of a confirmation, saying only that he'd be showing a cut of the film to Governor Schwarzenegger shortly. "We're going to see to what degree he wants to be a part of it! That's one of the fun tricks we have up our sleeve," he added, before cutting his statements short on the advice of a Warner Bros exec sitting near the back of the theater. "Cut? Don't talk about it? I'm the broken arrow," McG grins sheepishly, "I've gotta talk about the movie!"

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