Sunday May 17, 2009
Back to the future
By ELIZABETH TAI
A post-Judgment Day world is the landscape in the fourth and latest Terminator movie.
JUDGMENT Day is here. It is 2018: 14 years since supercomputer Skynet took over the world. Cyborgs and other terrible machines roam the land, determined to rid the world of human beings. Food is a rare commodity, survival is tenuous. Mankind is on the way out; machines are now on top.
Not a happy event for the world, certainly, but it was for fans when plans for Terminator Salvation were announced in 2007. They have waited for this moment since Arnold Schwarzenegger growled “I’ll be back” in The Terminator.
After all, not only is the post-Judgment Day world – seen only in glimpses in past Terminator films – now celluloid reality, the much-prophesied saviour of mankind, John Connor, will finally get to save the world.
But then came the news in October 2007: McG would be directing the film.
The fan response was ... “enthusiastic”.
“Enthusiastic?” McG remarked, laughing out loud as he looked at me in disbelief. “I think you’re being way too kind!”
Yes, I was. Fans actually howled in dismay – at least, online.
A sample of the response: “You’ve got to be kidding me,” wrote “roman” on Slasfilm.com. “This will be nothing short of calamitous ... (James) Cameron’s legacy survived (Terminator 3 director Jonathan) Mostow, it cannot survive this. The man is a complete and total hack of the lowest order.”
Despite the arctic reception, McG (real name: Joseph McGinty Nichol) was the picture of confidence when he spoke excitedly about the film fans thought that he’d ruin. The 40-year-old director was with the cast of Terminator Salvation at the Beverly Hilton, Los Angeles, last Sunday for a round of interviews with the international press.
“It’s the privilege of the fans to draw conclusions on your body of work,” he said sagely, adding that it “made sense” for them to wonder why the “Charlie’s Angels guy is making Terminator”. (McG helmed the Charlie’s Angels movie in 2000 and its sequel Charlie’s Angels: Full Throttle in 2003.)
But he is confident that he would be judged based on the end product.
Fans’ reception warmed when the first trailer was unveiled online on March 2. The response was mostly positive.
“We went to Comic Con (in San Diego, California) and different conventions and said, ‘Here’s the movie and this is what we’re really doing.’ In that kind of honesty, fans can respond favourably or negatively – it’s their privilege. And it has gone down very well,” he said, beaming.
Makeover
Interestingly, McG, a Terminator fan for most of his life, had no interest making the fourth movie in the franchise – which started with Arnie’s The Terminator (1984), then Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991) and Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines (2003) – until The Halcyon Company engaged him in the task.
“I thought the film had completed its story arc after the second film; I didn’t particularly like the third film,” he said.
He wasn’t thrilled with the idea of having yet another Terminator travelling back in time to annihilate Connor.
“I had to do something different – whether it’s successful or a failure. We needed to take a chance and begin again with a different sort of film,” he reasoned.
So, having a movie set in the future in a post-Judgment Day world where Skynet rules and mankind is facing extinction from marauding machines? That clicked.
However, before McG set out on the project, he was determined to get the blessing of the man behind the first two Terminator movies: James Cameron.
But Cameron refused to give it.
“He said, ‘I can’t give you my blessing because I don’t know what kind of movie you’re going to make ... but I hope it’s a good movie,’” revealed McG.
And Cameron went on to tell McG how he got the same reaction when he took over from Ridley Scott to direct Aliens.
“He knew in his heart that he could honour what Ridley did with Alien and continue that story. And we are very happy he made Aliens,” said McG.
Creating the world
“I felt a lot of expectations because there’s a very passionate fanbase out there and I wanted to deliver. But I also wanted to create my own new language and it was playing very clearly in my head,” said McG.
And one of those clear visions was that he wanted Christian Bale as John Connor in the movie.
“That’s in the spirit of re-establishing credibility,” said McG. “The film had lost its way, I believe, after Terminator 3. We need to reinvent it, like how James Bond was reinvented when Daniel Craig came along. People took it more seriously. And we need to do it with the most credible of this generation: Christian Bale,” he said.
So McG sought the famous Brit actor out while the latter was in London filming The Dark Knight. Although reluctant at first, Bale came around and signed on the dotted line. This made many fans pay attention – fandom excitement grew.
After Bale said yes, the director needed to find a star that could match Bale’s strong screen presence to play Marcus Wright, a man whose existence will rock Connor’s already strained confidence.
He found it in 32-year-old Australian actor Sam Worthington.
“Sam has that physicality for the most important moment in the movie where Connor and Wright come face-to-face,” said McG. “In a great many ways, he’s the breakout star of the movie.”
The US$200mil (RM700mil) Terminator Salvation started shooting in Albuquerque, New Mexico, in May 2008. McG wanted a “big, vast world” which enabled them to shoot scenes such as mountaintops, sea, and arid, blasted desert.
He even went to the extent of adding more silver to the colour film stock to produce an otherworldly look of a devastated Earth.
In this bleak world, we see John Connor evolve from being a “garden variety soldier” to a leader of the human resistance, said McG. We are also introduced to a teenage Kyle Reese (played by Anton Yelchin), Connor’s father, and are treated to a plethora of Skynet machines that we had glimpsed in Terminator movies past.
And then there’s Wright, whose last memory was of being put to death in Death Row.
And with the co-operation of the US Air Force, you’d see the ragtag human resistance fight with aircraft such as the A-10 Thunderbolt Two and the CV-22 Osprey.
Since McG isn’t fond of using too many green screens and CGI, the cast often had to fight real folks who stood in for Terminators.
“It was very difficult to be intimidated by a man in a unitard and who had a headband on that made him look like a sushi chef. Eventually they became the intimidating Terminator, but that process involved me stifling my laughter quite a lot,” chipped in Bale, grinning.
Controversy
With big names like Bale involved, and with cyborgs and giant robots in the movie, it seems almost certain that Terminator Salvation will be a blockbuster and that a sequel is a given. (In fact, The Halcyon Company announced plans for the fifth movie, to be done with McG, in December last year after the positive fan reaction to the trailer.)
But McG and the cast – who also includes Bryce Dallas Howard (as Kate Connor, John’s wife), Common, Moon Bloodgood, Helena Bonham Carter, Jane Alexander and Jadagrace Berry – seemed cautious about upcoming sequels. “Let’s hope the movie performs well,” they all kept saying.
Their cautiousness is not unwarranted. Although the initial fan backlash has receded somewhat, many are still wary of giving the franchise another go after being deeply disappointed with Terminator 3. Living up to fan expectations is never an easy task.
Then the movie’s ending was reportedly leaked online; fans were angry about what they read and a different ending was reportedly shot. McG has said that the leaked “ending” was false, and when we questioned him, Bale said that no alternate ending was shot, and if there was, he wasn’t involved.
But the biggest worry is the PR disaster caused by the leaked audio of Bale’s July 2008 meltdown on set. With their main star’s heroic sheen tarnished, will the moviegoers give it a miss?
To date, the powers that be have done admirably well to fix the mess, with Bale coming out and apologising numerous times in the media. Even McG is saying sorry; he claimed that he was the one responsible as he wanted Bale wound up for a scene.
“I riled him up! I deserve all the blame, in fact, throw me right under the bus,” he told Msnbc.com.
He also added that Bale and cinematographer Shane Hurlbut – the target of Bale’s tirade – are “actually friends and later that day we just kept on truckin’”.
Bale, on the other hand, told the media that he hopes his blow-up will not overshadow the film and the crew’s hard work.
At the May 10 press interview at Beverly Hilton, Bale played salesman for a bit and spoke about Terminator Salvation’s fine qualities.
“This is the kind of movie made to be watched with a crowd of people, to feed off the enthusiasm that is created,” said Bale.
And let’s hope people will heed that.
Spoiler zone!
If you want to remain spoiler-free, turn away. If you just can’t wait, welcome.
Now, although Marcus Wright’s true nature has been revealed in a recent trailer we’d prefer you not know.
And Bale feels the same way.
“I thought it was something that we could keep quiet before the movie was released, but that shows how naive I am,” he said wryly.
But since a recent trailer had spilled the beans about Wright and you’re reading this, the point is moot: Wright is half-human, half-machine.
“Marcus has metal arms and legs but he still has a human heart and brain, and therein lies the rub. Is that enough to protect his humanity?” Worthington said of the character he plays, in the production notes.
And yes, there’s a special guest star that will have jaws dropping. No, we won’t spoil that one for you. But Bale said that it was a “high to see the scene”.
“It won’t be quite the same movie without it. It gives it a kind of stamp of approval for the movie,” he said.
‘Terminator Salvation’ opens in local cinemas on Thursday, May 28.
Related Stories:
Good Christian
Terminator models
RSS
