MTV News has been one of longest holdouts around the blogosphere to hop on the Terminator: Salvation bandwagon. But after being treated to a special fifteen-minute screening of the film this past Monday, even the Vee-jays had to confess: Terminator: Salvation is looking pretty badass.
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As per the deal, MTV couldn’t reveal much about what they saw during the screening, boiling the experience down to this superficial account:
The clips the director unveiled made for a fantastically noisy spectacle of carnage and fire, speeding trucks and exploding tankers, cool-looking mechanical creations and old school hand-to-bot combat.
Pretty much what most of us were able to glean from the two-minute trailer that dropped a month ago. Still, kudos to MTV for passing on the insider confirmation!
Some other interesting tidbits MTV learned during a Q&A with Terminator Salvation director McG, after the screening:
- Apparently the film wasn’t planned as a PG-13 movie. According to McG, no rating was factored into the creative process; PG-13 is just what the MPAA slapped on it. Though McG added it’s definitely more of a Dark Knight PG-13, rather than a kid-friendly PG-13.
- Salvation will only follow the continuity established by T1 and T2. Apparently, McG wanted his film to steer clear of the stains left by T3 and The Sarah Conner Chronicles.
- The new look of the film will be more “Blade Runner” than traditional Terminator films, including intricate dusting F/X built off models like the Chernobyl disaster, in order to simulate a future America that has been ravaged by nuclear fallout.
- The story will focus on John Connor’s attempt to discover his revised role in a future that has been radically altered from the one his mother, Sarah Connor, foretold. (That’s what happens when you mess with time-travel…)
And speaking of Sarah Connor, there is some speculation that Linda Hamilton, the actress who portrayed Sarah Connor in all her buffed-up glory in the first two Terminator films, might return for some kind of cameo in the new installment.
Really, that “rumor” is nothing more than some wishful thinking taken from a side comment McG made during the Q&A about how at one point he envisioned having Sarah Connor do a voice-over to open Salvation. But still, considering all the time-travel storylines that eventually HAVE to get factored into this new Terminator trilogy, seeing Hamilton make some kind of appearance would be pretty sweet.
So what do you think? is Terminator Salvation still high in your list of most anticipated movies of 2009?
Sources: MTV News & Coming Soon
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30 Comments
I will go see this as long as I think it is better then the third which wont take much.
heck i’d be happy if you simply had her doing a voiceover. If she makes a cameo even better but either way it’s hardly necessary. I didn’t hate T3 and I don’t think it did anything really damaging to the franchise. It was just unnecessary retread of T2. It’s good news that the salvation is ignoring it. One can consider T3 & Sarah Chronicles as alternate timelines.
Anyway, it’s only 15 minutes…one can hardly make any judgment based on that. I hope this movie is good…I’m itching to watch a good action movie.
“The new look of the film will be more “Blade Runner”
That line made me smile.
Sounds like its coming along nicely .
“MTV News has been one of longest holdouts around the blogosphere to hop on the Terminator: Salvation bandwagon.”
Dude, what are you talking about? We moderated the Salvation panel at San Diego Comic-Con.
-Brian, MTV News
LOL….yeah, a fifteen minute clip of a movie is going to tell someone whether or not it “rocks.” Doesn’t take much for you people to jump onto the nearest bandwagon, does it?
I can name at least twenty movies that were abysmal, yet had a fifteen minute span where they didn’t appear that bad. Oh well, when you produce for the masses, mass/herd mentality is what you get.
Did you just call Sarah Connor Chronicles a stain, wtf!
@Brian
Please note that *I* was not the author of this post.
Vic
@charles darwin
LOL, ah… and you’d been behaving yourself so well lately.
Every movie blogger I’ve talked to about the footage thinks it looks pretty damned good, and while you are right, that much footage looking good certainly improves the odds, just as horrible footage indicates an awful movie (The Spirit).
Vic
A PG-13 Terminator movie!? The “Hannah Montana Movie” will probably be more violent then this. Atlesat T3 was rated R like the first 2. First Star wars, then Die Hard, now terminator. SELL_OUT!!!!!!!!
@ Brian from MTV
The first three paragraphs of Eric Ditzian’s post describe how there have been lingering questions and skepticism since day one about McG’s ability to do T4 correctly.
In fact, paragraph 2 begins with the following sentence:
“Yet when McG played about 15 minutes of footage from “Terminator Salvation” at a special screening on Monday, he went a long way toward assuring skeptics our worries were unfounded.”
Paragraph 3 then immediately follows with: “Still the questions will linger.” (And there should be a comma after still, BTW.)
This clearly demonstrates (or at least suggests) a “still on the fence” opinion being put forth by your reporter, and therefore representing your site. No problem with that stance, either. It’s probably the more prudent one to adopt at this juncture.
However, on Screen Rant we have posts like “First Full Terminator Salvation Trailer (Rocks!)” That date back a month. Other sites had the same immediate reaction to the first trailer. It was that difference, in the fervor and immediacy of positive response to T4, that I was eluding to with the bandwagon comment.
Sorry for the confusion.
http://screenrant.com/full-terminator-salvation-trailer-vic-4526/
If they have ignored T3, then why is Connor married to someone also named Kate? I thought that was just something invented by T3?
I don’t get the deal with the whole rated R thing… Are you guys THAT eager to hear the f bomb over and over? Don’t you get enough of that in the real world? I mean seriously, yah when I was younger I wanted to see boobs and hear curse words, but that novelty should have worn out by now…
I don’t care what anyone says, I watched Live Free or Die Hard in theaters and the unrated version on the DVD, and I have to say, I liked the PG-13 version better. Because Bruce Willis was playing a kind of “older and wiser” John McClane, and I found that toning down the language actually helped to convey that. When I saw the unrated version, all of the cursing sounded very forced like they were trying to sound “cool” or whatever, and was pretty annoying. But it was plenty violent, so saying this movie won’t be violent because it’s PG-13 is a pretty ignorant comment. It appears violence don’t set off higher ratings, just foul language. Because the unrated version didn’t add any more violence, it was all already in the PG13 version…
@Doom
He said in the interview they weren’t aiming for a PG-13, that’s just the rating the MPAA gave them.
Me, I don’t miss f-bombs just for the sake of having them, but what bothers me is violent movies that are “cleaned up” by omitting the bloodshed that should appear. Drives me NUTS to see bloodless movies that have hundreds of shots being fired.
Vic
Rated R doesn’t have to do with the amount of swear words or nudity, its about content and themes of this film.
It’s about the content and accuracy of that content. This is a movie about a post-apocalyptic world where humans are slaughtered, hunted and are in constant combat against machines with the single goal of ending human life.
To do that justice, the themes must be adult and should be rated R like the first two films – afterall, the nature and plot of this film is highly violent and gruesome.
I also don’t buy that not targetting a rating – of course they are, they’re working for a studio who wants to max money through allowing the largest demographics into the theatres. Just like Live free or Die Hard, I’m sure this was planned all along to be pg-13.
@Rob
Actually the rating does (also) have to do with language and nudity. If I recall correctly movie bloggers were pretty annoyed over Slumdog Millionare getting an R despite the fact that (according to them, I haven’t seen it) the content didn’t warrant an R rating.
I don’t know of any film that has been given an R solely on the basis of its content and theme – with no f-bombs or nudity in it.
Vic
Yah, to use the example of Die Hard again, you had people being shot up, burned, crushed, falling to his death, blown up, chopped up into little bits, and all types of crazy violence. But because there wasn’t the f-bomb or nudity, it was PG-13.
“Salvation will only follow the continuity established by T1 and T2. Apparently, McG wanted his film to steer clear of the stains left by T3 and The Sarah Conner Chronicles.”
Now that paragraph put a smile on my face! And, yeah, they try hard with SCC, but plotwise it’s still not much better than average. Better get Straczynski to write your stories and you won’t have that problem!
ZAR.
they are rating it pg-13 for sales. it really is all about selling out. every terminator movie has been rated R… this is rated pg-13 so that it sells more. teenagers can’t see an R rated movie and they are the major fan base of movies in the theaters… The Dark Knight made sense as pg-13 because batman has never been rated R… however Terminator isn’t about being soft… MCG is a terrible director… this is the guy responsible for the terrible charlies angels movies…. this movie is going to suck and suck it hard… this is the biggest cash cow of 2009 mark my words
I don’t know if they planned for it to be PG-13, but I think it’s simply because they don’t use the f-word. Because it seems that the only thing that makes a movie rated R now-a-days is nudity and the f-word. Basically, it seems the more childish a movie is, the higher the rating. Personally, I prefer it this way anyhow, as long as the story is good and the action is good. Cursing just seems childish to me now. I guess the f-bomb lost its “cool” factor after I wasn’t a teenager anymore…
I’m not saying this movie will be good, just saying I’m not bugged by the rating. I liked the PG-13 theatrical version of Live Free or Die Hard better than the “unrated” version with all of the f-bombs thrown back in… It made John McClane seem older and wiser. They intended to have him act a bit older, but the curse words were cut to lower the rating for the exact reason you’ve stated, to get a wider audience, but I think it also helped get that point across.
Damn, just scrolling through this and seeing that image of Linda Hamilton as Sarah Connor all decked out gets my blood pumping, lol. She was such a bad-ass.
Is this comment really correct – “Salvation will only follow the continuity established by T1 and T2. Apparently, McG wanted his film to steer clear of the stains left by T3 and The Sarah Conner Chronicles.” ?
Pretty sure it follows T3 as well, even though McG did not like that movie. The Sarah Connor Cronichles is what he officially said T4 isn’t following.
Might I just add that I was browsing the IMDB board and I saw someone noting that Kate brewster is in T4 as Kate Connor, and she originated from T3. Which means that they are following T3 atleast somewhat.
From what I know, the ONLY part of T3 that was kept in the timeline of T4 was Kate Brewster and John Connor being in the bunker at the start of the nuclear war. Other than that, it was said they will ignore most of the “revelations” brought on by T3 such as Sarah dying of leukemia, Kate’s father starting the whole skynet thing, etc. etc.
Hopefully they keep the original story where Skynet doesn’t take over the world the second it is activated, but was being successfully used by the military to fly their aircraft and to perform other functions and only started to turn on the humans after it became self aware and the humans tried to kill it.
That makes so much more sense than them needing to fight a virus, so they release some crazy AI that has the power to take control of the world’s computers…
Oops, not from what I know, but from what I heard, I don’t actually KNOW anything about the film other than what they have shown us, lol.
Don’t u think it’s kinda weird not to follow off from terminator 3. It’s a classic movie, maybe a bit etchy, but good nevertheless. And plus it would make the series look dull by changing whats already been produced and made. Its only fair that they continue in the style of al three movies, not just one and two.
No, 1 and 2 are classic movies, 3 was downright horrible.
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