The familiar guh-guh-guh guhguh music filled the air at this afternoon’s Terminator Salvationpanel, where a giant T-600 loomed over stage right, its red eyesboring a hole through everyone in Hall H, as McG and most of the principalcast members took time out from shooting the movie in New Mexico tostop by and share. (Christian Bale, pictured, was M.I.A., doing Dark Knight press in Japan, but McG left him a message — that of 6,500 people screaming — on his voice mail.)
And it was McG’s show, to be sure, the Charlie’s Angels director running the panel like a car salesman — or, perhaps, the manic preacher of Terminator gospel.But it was the footage we were there to see, and footage we got: atrailer-esque clip that revealed this re-imagining of the John Connormyth is part silvery washed-out Children of Men cinematography, part Mad Maxroad-warring, and a lot of skull-crushing robot action. AntonYelchin — as a young, Oliver Twist-styled Kyle Reese — gets to deliver theall-important “Come with me if you want to live” to Bale; SamWorthington appears to hold his own as new Terminator Marcus Wright.They’ve not yet finished the visual effects, so what we saw was alltactile — crashing trucks, Soviet-style Terminator tanks, silver fingersreaching out to scratch Bale’s sweaty face…
But hey, what’s up with the Terminatorfranchise, people? We’ve had two James Cameron movies, a third thattwisted the story up in knots, a TV show that’s got John Connordripping around like Morrissey’s younger brother… what more is thereto say? Turns out McG thinks there’s plenty, and he’s promised not tobastardize it. After consulting with the three pillars of Terminatorlore — James Cameron, Arnold Schwarzenegger, and the late StanWinston — he’s giving us a look at the year 2018, in the post-apocalypticfuture after Judgment Day. (Please do not make me tell you the currentdate of Judgment Day. At the moment, I think the TV show has it set in2011, so just mark your calendars there, okay?) In the world of Salvation,Skynet is still rising in power, the T-800 has yet to exist, and theclunky T-600 models are fallible — and therefore fun to fight. They’veinvented exciting new evil machines with names like Harvesters andHydrobots, and they studied Chernobyl to get the nuclear-winterlandscape right. And don’t believe everything you hear about theplot — McG says the studio’s happily releasing misinformation.
Salvation’s multiethnic cast — including Bryce Dallas Howard asJohn’s wife, Kate; Moon Bloodgood as a resistance pilot; and rapperCommon as John’s right hand man — is chock full of acting chops, but theyalso serve the movie’s new message. While "no fate but what we make" isstill in effect, McG is bound and determined to make a point about theway differences don’t matter in the future, just the ability to cometogether to survive. "If the world would get its head out of its ass,"he said, "we wouldn’t have to wait for a nuclear holocaust to get tothat point." Despite that warm and fuzzy ethos, there will be probablyvery little hugging and/or growing in the new film. As Worthington putit, this thing’s "not for pansies."
Oh, one last thing: Asked if Schwarzenegger would be back, McG wascuriously vague. "The T-800 model is indeed a part of the mythology of Terminator," he said, with a glint in his eye. He fielded questions from audience members dressed as T:2-eraLinda Hamilton and Robert Patrick (the latter brilliantly holding up apicture of Edward Furlong and asking, "Excuse me, have any of you seenthis boy?"), and invited a guy named Tim up on stage because he’d askedhis question in a decent Govuhnator accent. Then he hollered at theroom to freak the flip out if they wanted to see the trailer again,which they did. Guh-guh-guh guhguh.
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So… the message of the new Terminator movie is that in the future, human differences won’t matter, but Sam Worthington says it’s “not for pansies”?!! Memo to Worthington and EW: “pansies” means “F*ggots” — so screw you both.
OK, so you deleted my last angry comment — may I rephrase it as, “EW, if a panellist uses a derogatory term like ‘pansies’ in their speech, can you please not repeat that term in a headline? It’s offensive.” Thank you.
Like all things, words and their meanings change with time. So don’t be a pansy; Strep
To Strepsi:
Dandeman is absolutely right. Although you’re technically right about pansy being a denotative synonym for f*ggot, I highly doubt most people correlate the two in that context. In fact, I read it as another term for ’scaredy-cat’, ‘coward’, ‘wimp’ or the more un-PC ‘p*ssy’. To this day, I haven’t heard any gays rant against the word and Worthington most likely didn’t mean that, so cut him some slack. He said it to emphasize the militaristic machismo that’s probably going to influence the film, not to belittle gays.
Speaking of which, in the ’50s, more people used the word gay to mean happy and in 17th century England signified the word f*ggot as a bunch of twigs instead of how Isaiah Washington used it to T.R. Knight back in 2006. In other words, next time you argue about someone’s terminology, don’t take the perp’s words completely out of context.
This is roughly equivalent to a recent story about a Dallas County judge who was offended by the phrase, “black hole” (A celestial phenomenon). He assumed it was a racial comment, but the city commissioner was merely making an analogy. The office was neither a singularity that sucks up all matter, even light (and pansies) nor was it a reference to race. People….lighten up!
http://yourdailychum.wordpress.com/2008/07/10/black-hole-apparently-is-an-offensive-racial-term-or-how-race-baiting-is-a-political-ideology/
I’ve never heard the term “pansy” in reference to gays. I’ve only ever heard it used with the implied meaning of “scaredy-cat”. I’m sure that’s exactly what the director meant by his comments.
I’m excited about this movie!
I wish people would realise that it wasn’t Terminator 3 that “twisted the story up in knots”; it was *T2*. T2 DOES NOT MAKE SENSE AS A SEQUEL, no matter how much people may love it. The whole point of the first movie was that history was a loop, that the act of time travel DID NOT CHANGE and COULD NEVER HAVE CHANGED the future. That’s the take-home message: any attempt to change history unwittingly creates the history that was always there. (That’s the whole point of the inclusion of the photo of Sarah.) It’s a genuinely smart, brilliant movie. T2 is routine popcorn fare that completely retcons the mechanics of time travel in the narrative universe. And it was unnecessary: just a rehash story. I wanted to see the actual future war being fought. Even though it’s McG, I’m oddly excited by the prospect of Salvation.
I can never trust a director that doesn’t have a name. I hated Charlie’s Angels. A terminator movie without James Cameron is bad enough, but one without Schwartzenegger? How about Die Hard without Bruce Willis or Rambo without Stallone. Isn’t the Fox TV Show bad enough? I love Christain Bale (Rescue Dawn, 3:10 to Yuma) but I have a bad feeling about this one…
Or try to imagine if they did a sequel to The Godfather without Marlon Brando! What a joke…that would be terrible. (Ahem.)
It’s actually great that they’re doing a sequel without Schwarzenegger. Having to crowbar creakie old Arnie in would require stupid amounts of hoop-jumping contortion in the script. Forget it; take the great premise of the war between humans and machines, and go tabula rasa with it, constrained only by the few things we already know must be there: a 600 series with rubber skin, HKs appearing long before the inflitrator units etc. The Terminator’s greatest strength is its concept and its narrative universe, not Arnie.
Why is everyone always doggin’ on T3? I’ve loved all the movies. Nick Stahl was an awesome John Connor. Christian Bale is hot, but I’m beginning to think he can only play one type of character. This movie better be awesome! (I haven’t had the guts to watch the TV show. It looks terrible.) And I think the Terminator franchise outgrew Arnold a while back. I seriously don’t want to see him naked EVER again. Ever. He’s like a hundred years old now!
Hey Strepsi, stop being such a pansy.
On topic, I can’t wait for Terminator Salvation. It is easily my number 1 most anticipated movie. I’m also glad that it’s not going to be for pansies.
Oh,, so finally future is turning over.This will b the greatest hits of all time “Hope” so, Terminator salvation will always exist inn?