Terminator 5 Will Involve Time Travel. Again.

We’re now less than a month away from the release of Terminator Salvation, the latest installment in one of the most successful sci-fi franchises of all time. Fans are gearing themselves up for an explosive time at the theater, expecting plenty of bang for their buck, and I’m sure the final product won’t let them down.

The finishing touches are just being put onto Terminator Salvation right about now and yet director McG is already looking ahead to the inevitable sequel. I don’t think it’s too much of a spoiler to say that there most likely will be a sequel – with the amount of money Salvation is sure to make (can you really see it flopping?) I can’t see there not being one. However, with a sequel in mind, what does McG see it involving? Well, he’s let his thoughts on that very subject be known.

[WARNING: the following could be considered SPOILERIFIC since it hints at how Salvation may end]:

“I strongly suspect the next movie is going to take place in a [pre-Judgment Day] 2011… John Connor is going to travel back in time and he’s going to have to galvanize the [sic] militaries of the world for an impending Skynet invasion. They’ve figured out time travel to the degree where they can send more than one naked entity. So you’re going to have hunter killers and transports and harvesters and everything arriving in our time and Connor fighting back with conventional military warfare, which I think is going to be f***ing awesome. I also think he’s going to meet a scientist that’s going to look a lot like present-day Robert Patrick [who famously played the T-1000 in Terminator 2], talking about stem-cell research and how we can all live as idealized, younger versions of ourselves.”

This comes from a conversation between McG and director of the first two Terminator flicks, James Cameron, as they met to discuss the fourth in the franchise.

Wow, what I wouldn’t have given to have gotten in on that dialogue!…

McG is a director who I think gets more of a bad rap than he deserves. Sure, he directed Charlie’s Angels: Full Throttle, but he’s not directed nearly enough films to label him the atrocious director that some have been so quick to call him in the past (for example, the first Charlie’s Angels was a lot of fun… c’mon, just admit it…). However, I may just be willing to lend my ear to those many avid Mcg-naysayers when he says he wants time-travel to be a plot-point of T5.

Why? Haven’t we been there and done that? All three of the first movies involved people (well… robots…) getting sent back in time to complete a mission, so I really don’t see the need for doing pretty much the same thing again. We have been teased with the idea of the actual war between man and machine for decades now, and when we finally get Salvation which (hopefully) showcases that in all it’s glory, they’re just going to revert back to more of what we’ve seen before with the fifth movie?

Seems like a poor idea to me…

When it comes down to it, I trust McG with Terminator. From all of the many, many things we’ve seen so far (such as trailers, posters, images, info  and so forth) it really does look like a heck of a lot of fun at the very least, and perhaps it will even be at the same level as the first or second movie (I don’t know if it will quite make that cut, but you never know…). It looks like he’s giving us the all-out war-centric Terminator movie we’ve been yearning for, and so I’m willing to give him the benefit of the doubt when it comes to his time-traveling plans for the next movie.

I just hope he can completely eradicate that doubt when the time comes…

So what is your opinion about a Terminator movie possibly involving time-travel again? Should they do it because it’s in tune with what we’ve seen with the first three? Or should they now set it exclusively in the future?

For all of what was said by McG, including his thoughts on the franchise up until this point, you can go to FilmJournal.

Terminator Salvation is set to open on May 21st in the US, and June 3rd in the UK this year.