Terminator Salvation: The Future Begins

LA Times is reporting that producers put together a private screening of early footage from "Terminator Salvation" for the current California Governor, Arnold Schwarzenegger. Unfortunately, Arnold was not too impressed.

"I still don't know how it will play out with this one," he stated. "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."

"Salvation" producers also arranged for the governor to see an early "sizzle reel," a montage of scenes shown at Comic-Con International last month, where "Salvation" was popular with fans.

Schwarzenegger was polite but cautious when he was asked if he thought the reel actually had the sort of sizzle he expected. "I've seen very little footage so I don't really have a feel for it. I hope they do well, and I hope it is a huge hit. I do hope it creates a spectacle on the screen. That is what James Cameron created."

TotalFilm had a chance to chat with "Terminator Salvation" director McG to clear up some rumors that have been floating around the internet. Below are the rumors and McG's answers.

Rumor: The ending posted on AICN claimed that the climax would see John Connor die, only to be resurrected as a robot.
McG: "That is not the ending. John Connor is not the machine. We did discuss that idea, but that is not the ending, I can say that right now."

Rumor: James Cameron did not give McG his blessing.
McG: "I did go to see James Cameron. He didn't give us his blessing, but he didn't sh*t all over our movie. When Jim was making 'Alien,' he was following the great Ridley Scott, so he knows how we feel."

Rumor: Christian Bale had doubts about signing up
McG: "I met Christian when he was shooting 'The Dark Knight.' He told me to f*ck right off, he didn't want to do it. He said, 'Write it so that it could be read cold on stage and I'll think about doing it.'"

Rumor: Arnold Schwarzenegger will appear in the movie.
McG: "We're trying to synthesise a human character with a CGI character and that may or may not have something to do with the T800."

* Will we see "Salvation" in IMAX theaters? "I wanted to shoot the film with this dead stock [old film that has been distressed to give the movie a desaturated look]. Therefore it wasn't conducive to shooting it in IMAX format. But we're going to bump it up to IMAX. We are going to bump it up, and it holds up very nicely, and it looks and sounds that much more impactful. But one price we had to pay for making those choices was that we didn't shoot in IMAX."

* The three previous "Terminator" films have been R-rated. Is there a rating that you're aiming for? "I'm not hung up about a PG-13. We don't aim for a rating, and we've been given freedom by the head of the studio to just make the best picture possible."

* What will be the runtime of the movie? "It's probably going to be right around two hours, maybe a little more than two hours, but we're not trying to target. I want a movie to have a correct length to have the maximum impact and give you something to think about as you exit the theater."

* Have you spoken to Arnold Schwarzenegger? "I spoke to Schwarzenegger, and I will be showing him the film shortly. I've got a lot to talk to him about in regard to the role he plays in this. He's such a part of it, the degree to which he'll be part of our film, you've got to be respectful of the seat he's in right now. We have to be sensitive, be intelligent, and he's our partner."

* Are you concerned about "Transformers 2"? "Well, I refer to the work of Michael Bay to eliminate what not to do. That's a joke. Truthfully, the Harvester is a little reminiscent of a Transformer, and I don't want that. It's an ancillary character in our film, and our film is so different. I like those [Transformers] movies, but we're not making that movie, and I say that in fun because I truly talked to Michael Bay two hours ago, because he took a jab at us. He emailed me today, and we talked, and it's a healthy competition. So we'll see who the last man standing is."

* Are you already planning more than one "Terminator" movie? "We have already broken stories for the second and third movies. We don't explore time travel in this movie, and it's a huge part of the mythology. We're ready to go if audiences say, 'We want it.'"

But before this ending, there was an original one that McG had to change after it leaked online. Writer Michael Ferris recently described the old ending to io9.

"There was an ending of intermediate darkness, in which ... the mechanical Marcus takes over as Connor and goes on to lead the resistance," he said. "It's essentially a secret to everybody, except the inner circle, that John Connor is now a robot, is now a Terminator. We're going for some irony there."

McG added that there was also a second ending that was even darker. "We had a jet-black ending. Connor dies, we're in a room with all the people we care about," he explained. "You take Connor's likeness, you put it on the living machine of Marcus. He sits up, now looking like Christian Bale, takes a gun, kills Kate, kills Kyle, kills Star, kills everybody, eyes flare red, [snaps] the end."