Sunday December 28, 2008
McG and T
By MICHAEL CHEANG
The Charlie’s Angels movies were, to the director McG, a rite of passage. Now, he’s on the road to salvation, or more specifically, Terminator Salvation – tipped to be the meanest, grittiest of the blockbuster franchise.
COULD this really be the salvation of the Terminator?
That will be the big question on everybody’s mind when the fourth movie in the franchise – Terminator Salvation (formerly titled Terminator Salvation: The Future Begins) – is released mid-2009.
Since the movie was first green-lit in 2007, scepticism has dogged the US$200mil (RM700mil) venture, and it’s not hard to see why. After all, there will be no Arnold Schwarzenegger, no liquid metal T-1000 Terminators, and not even a good old Arnie-style T-800 model to say “I’ll Be Back”. And that’s not all. Fans were even more riled up when the studio hired McG, who made the universally derided 2003 Charlie’s Angels 2: Full Throttle, to helm the movie.
Then earlier this year, things began to look up for the film. First, came the announcement that Christian “Batman” Bale had been cast as the adult John Connor, leader of the human resistance that goes up against the machines of Skynet.
A few months later, a short teaser trailer was released online, featuring not only a first look at Bale as Connor, but also very brief glimpses of Skynet’s machines, including a T-600 Terminator (a pre-Arnie model) and a flying hunter-killer.
Still, fans continued to doubt the ability of McG to handle their beloved franchise, until the San Diego Comic Con in California in July, when the director nervously took to the stage during the movie’s panel and presented footage of the work-in-progress.
To say they got a good reaction would be an understatement. The fans nearly brought the roof down after seeing about five minutes of footage that showed John Connor, a young Kyle Reese (who is John Connor’s father, by the way), GIANT harvester machines, flying hunter-killers, a T-600, and a realistic, gritty look to the movie that has not been seen in the first three movies – The Terminator, Terminator 2: Judgment Day and Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines.
Within that short time, faith in the Terminator franchise – which this year also spawned the TV series Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles – was restored, and the fans were finally buzzing with optimism.
McG is gratified by the applause to his upcoming feature Terminator Salvation. ‘To have so much excitement from just a half-way done clip felt really good.’ Post-Judgment
Thirty minutes later, a visible look of relief was on McG’s face, as he held court before a room full of journalists from all over the world together with his cast (with the exception of Bale), which included Sam Worthington, Bryce Dallas Howard, Anton Yelchin, Common and Moon Bloodgood.
Grinning broadly as he reflected on the response they had got at the panel, he said: “I am so glad that those people liked the footage. There are no visual effects yet, but to have so much excitement from just a practical, halfway-done clip felt really good.”
McG, and fans of the Terminator franchise, have good reason to be optimistic about this movie.
After all, this is the first movie to be set in the future, many years after the drastic events of T3, when the bombs started falling.
Considering the fact that the erstwhile movies, as well as the ongoing TV series, have thrown up some headache-inducing time paradoxes, McG’s approach to his movie is simple.
“The easy thing for us is that our movie happens AFTER the bombs go off, so it’s a totally new beginning. Every other picture has been before Judgment Day,” said McG. “We’re largely treating it as though the bombs have gone off, but I’m not going to share exactly what year they went off. The movie itself is set in 2018, and we try our best to honour the timeline that has already been put in place.
“If we do our job properly, this movie will be regarded as a statement of the time and the place and the where and the when and the why and the how (of the entire franchise). Some things are set in stone though – the T-800 only comes around in 2029, and we’re building towards that place.”
As for the various story threads that are constantly thrown up by the weekly TV show, McG, who is a friend of Josh Friedman, the creator of the TV show, plans to ignore all that altogether.
“I had a meeting with Josh, and I told him I wanted to honour it at all times but this is this and that is that,” he said. “I know about episodic television, and what it takes to generate stories hour in and hour out every week.... We just can’t keeping chasing their story threads.”
McG's team of stars includes (from left) Sam Worthington, Bryce Dallas Howard and Moon Bloodgood. McGinty’s angels
Inevitably though, the topic of Charlie’s Angels (McG also directed the first movie based on the 1970s crime series of the same name) came up, and a slight flicker of a frown crossed McG’s face. “I’m pleased with the Charlie’s Angels pictures – I just wanted to break down the glass ceiling with those movies and show that you can make a successful female action picture,” he explained. “There’s nothing wrong with paying your dues, and I see nothing wrong with paying mine. “You’ve got to be on Happy Days before you can be the great Ron Howard ... and you got to spend some time on 21 Jump Street before you can grow into the boots of Johnny Depp.
“But that (Charlie’s Angels) was a long time ago and I’m a different filmmaker now. Every filmmaker works on a film-to-film basis and does what’s in front of them.”
He also took a pot shot at the criticism levelled at him, especially about his rather unconventional name. “I remember when I was on Superman, and people were kicking me, asking, ‘What kind of guy calls himself McG?’ It’s the privilege of the public to do that, even if they don’t know that McG is short for McGinty and I’ve been called that since the day I was born in Kalamazoo, Michigan,” said the 40-year-old who is otherwise named Joseph McGinty Nichol.
“There’s nothing Hollywood about it; it’s a function of being poor, and having three Joes in the same house. So they (his family) didn’t call me Joe, they called me McG, short for McGinty, my mother’s maiden name.” (The other two Joes in the family are his uncle and his grandfather.)
One man who has absolutely no problem with McG making the movie is James Cameron, the creator of the Terminator franchise. “He is the creator of the Terminator, and I respect that. I would not have wanted to move forward on this picture if James Cameron had said, ‘F*** you! What are you doing with the picture?’” said McG. “He was very encouraging about the story, and we talked about his experience on Aliens (the Cameron-directed sequel to Ridley Scott’s acclaimed Alien) and the idea of not living in fear (of the past movies), and moving forward.”
Ultimately, McG just hopes to do the franchise some justice, and produce the story that fans would find the most compelling. “I say this as a huge fan of the series. This is not my movie, it’s TERMINATOR. I want everyone to collectively get excited about the movie – because THIS.IS.TERMINATOR!” he concluded.
Whether McG and his crew pull it off, we won’t be able to tell for sure until May 2009. But judging from the brand new trailer that made its debut this month, which indicates what is possibly the grittiest, most brutal, Terminator movie yet, the franchise certainly appears to be very much on the verge of salvation.
‘Terminator Salvation’ opens in May 2009.
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