If you were at the San Diego Comic-Con this year, then you know the panel and previewed footage for next summer’s Terminator Salvation went over like gangbusters. The film’s director, McG, went out of his way to get approval from not only the hardcore fanbase, but also filmmakers involved with the previous Terminator films
McG name-dropped James Cameron and the late-great Stan Winston quite often during the panel, along with The Dark Knight and its writer Jonathan Nolan, (who incidentally is performing on-set re-writes for Terminator Salvation.)
Now comes word from the Los Angeles Times that McG was also hoping to win the approval of the original Terminator himself–Arnold Schwarzenegger.
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However, it seems the California “Governator” was less-than-impressed with the Salvation footage he saw:
“I still don’t know how it will play out with this one. They showed me some footage, but I don’t have a feel for the movie. I didn’t see enough. I wasn’t sure who the Terminator was. I don’t know if there is one or if he’s the star or the hero. These are the things that determine the success and how the strong the movie will be.”
One has to wonder if this was the same footage shown during Comic-Con, because I’ve heard nothing but glowing things from the people who saw it - among them Screen Rant big-cheese Vic Holtreman.
Besides praising recent summer tentpoles like Wanted and Step Brothers, Schwarzenegger also adds:
“With Batman and Terminator, those big movies, there’s a certain expectation and if you don’t live up to it, if the movie is not a 10, then the business will be soft. If ['Salvation'] is pushing it forward, it will be breaking records all the time. If [director McG] has the T4 and the kind of shots that has the audience thinking, ‘Now how did he do that?’ — then it is ‘Terminator’ and you can blow everyone away and every record at the box office.’
I’ll give Arnold that.
Now keep in mind, “Ahnuld” is just stating what we all already know. But still, it’s nice to see him putting in his 2ยข.
Terminator Salvation will be released in theaters on May 22, 2009.
Source: The Los Angeles Times
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8 Comments
I can see his point, the teaser just shows random action, nothing to pin down. (Strange there’s really no night battle action going on in the teaser)
Nolan’s rewrites are so telling of how this is going. Ask anyone in movies, when there rewriting the script as they go, that basically means the original script is really average or bad and the actors and Director are trying to fix it as they go. They can’t stop and completly redo it so they have to settle for rewrites and make adjustments,,,
usualy resulting in a bad or average movie.
I remember reading how James Cameron shot T2 in something like like 3 months and had the film edited within a year. He had to make a summer deadline, there was no time for major rewrites.
So here we are Mario Kassar/Carolco sells the rights to the Terminator films and we end up with a Director everyone hates, a 3 picture story that looks like its trying to hard and all kinds of radical changes to the future war story. (Marcus a terminator from 2004) oh boy.
We have Harvesters that scoop humans up with a large claw type hand, (is that really practical). The novelised books of T1 and T2, talk about the future war in greater detail, they say that most survivors were rounded up by T-400 model’s. The ppl were too weak to resist and went to the Skynet concentration camps much like the Jews during WW2, there were no 100ft tall Harvesters walking around. (Oh boy)
The T-600 models were not used for shooting anything that moves, (as MCG likes to say) they were the prototype infiltration models that were sent into the resistence strong holds to gather intell and then kill the resistence cell if possible. They were used more for recon as they could get close to the resistance as they had rubber skin and could fool sentrys at night. Most battles took place at night because that was the best cover the resistance had going. (Covered in T1)
I’m certainly not impressed by the Harvester concept and the T-600’s. The T-600’s look like T-800’s. (Oh man) is the rubber skin some kind of big reveal or what. (Again this is dumb).
They should have shown a T-600 with half its rubber skinned face blown off in the poster.
(Gheesh)
All I can do is stand by and watch these hacks butcher a solid future war story that has allready practically been written in T1.
Depressing,
but I’m going to thearpy so hopfully I won’t relapes into my 5 tube a day AMT model glue sniffing habit.
Keep those T4 warnings a comming!
I hope its good but it kind of drifts away from camerons original point which was that we are the ultimate deciders of our own fate .
one of the reasons I think T3 didnt do as well as the previous films was the idea that destiny was inevitable.
If its a great popcorn movie I will embrace it ,
But I still have trouble accepting it as a Terminator film.
Ok Gary, but Kyle Reese was told to tell Sarah that, I think to prompt her to become what she became. Sarah and John did what they could, but I really didn’t want a T3 that was another “lets go stop Skynet chase” it was played out in T2. The future war was allways inevitable.
When Terminator said Judgement day was inevitable in T3 I was impressed that they had the balls to do that.
Let’s face it we ether stop Skynet before it kills everyone the end(boring), or we go into the future war chapter where we see it all go down.
There’s still time to reverse the damage that Skynet has done if they can stop the TX from going to 2004 and shut down the Time Machine. (There’s still time,) that should be the catch phrase of the new film, not the Future begins.
Their screwing it up.
Also having Kyle Reese saying the line “come with me if you want to live” (in my opinion) is a cheap line they keep using, and its really getting old.
I can see the MCG telling Nolan, that’s gotta be in the script and Nolan walking away,,,
rolling eyes “yeah sure MCdonald”
I see what he means, The trailer didn’t feature the ‘terminator’ unit at all…and that’s what these movies are supposed to be about.
I think the footage looks awesome, but I also see how it could easily pass for an entirely-non-terminator franchise sci-fi flick.
790,
To be fair, on-set rewrites are commonly done with these kind of high-profile mega-budget tentpoles.
However, the filmmakers tend to keep a lid on them. But considering the I-N-S-A-N-E success/popularity of THE DARK KNIGHT, McG couldn’t restrain himself from name-dropping Jonathan Nolan’s participation.
Keep in mind, Paul Haggis also did a polish before Nolan got involved.
Jamie.
Well yeah Jamie, I agree on set rewrites are done alot, however like you said the filmakers tend to keep that to theselves….
Rewrites ether way are a sign the script isn’t that good.
The way MCG is bragging about Nolan doing rewrites is comical.
Like saying we got the best guy rewriting the script. Hey that’s great MCG but your supposed to do that before you start shooting.
Not all films have rewrites. Star Trek 11 for example will have to stand on its own without any.
The more I think about this the more I have question the logic of handing MCG the Terminator franchise.
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