Terminator Salvation

I thought I had covered every important cast and crewmember in Terminator Salvation, but it looks like somebody slipped my mind… Ms. Helena Bonham Carter.

Carter (whom you should know from Fight Club, Sweeney Todd, Planet of the Apes, etc.) has a small (but apparently quite significant) role as a Cyberdyne Systems scientist, who will no doubt run afoul of the Connor family.

For whatever reason, I don’t really like the idea of seeing Carter in this movie. This is probably going to sound all kinds of sexist, but whenever I think of Helena Bonham Carter, I think of Tim Burton (they’re dating, you know, and he’s cast her in pretty much every movie he’s made since they first met). And Tim Burton is the last person I want going near Terminator. It’s not that I don’t like his movies,  it’s that Burton’s style is very flashy and silly, and Terminator Salvation should be the exact opposite.

But, of course, we’re not talking about Tim Burton, we’re talking about Helena Bonham Carter and I should know the difference.

Here’s what it boils down to for me: If Fight Club Helena Bonham Carter shows up (i.e. the disturbing, mature, almost-kind-of-gross, pre-Burton Carter) she is more than welcome in this movie. But, if we get Charlie and the Chocolate Factory Carter (i.e. look how wacky I can be! Carter) then I’m going to be a little disappointed.

It also makes me sad to know that Tilda Swinton was originally set to play Carter’s role. She’s quite good at playing the creepy villain (see Chronicles of Narnia) and she’s quite good at bringing legitimacy to genre movies (again, Chronicles of Narnia). We’ll never know for sure, but I think Swinton really would have nailed it.

But I suppose I shouldn’t complain about casting switch-ups in Terminator… Here’s your fascinatingly useless bit of trivia for the day: Originally, Schwarzenegger was set to play Kyle Reese and Michael Biehn was going to appear as the terminator. And look how that worked out! For all I know, Carter will give a scene-stealing, award-winning performance.

So welcome aboard, Ms. Carter! My apologies for leaving you until the very end.

jakeb characters

So I’ve tried to postpone doing the requisite article about Christian Bale’s little temper tantrum on the set of Terminator Salvation, but as we head into opening week, I guarantee that every holier-than-thou film critic in the world will be cracking jokes about the hissy fit, so I figure I should share my thoughts now…

There are few things more painful than being disappointed in your heroes. And let’s be honest, that’s what Christian Bale is. At least to me. I could talk about how he’s singlehandedly reviving the action movie, or how inspiring his dedication to genre fiction is, or how legitimately impressive his acting is, or how everyone I know (male or female, gay or straight) seems to have just the littlest bit of a crush on him. But the simple fact is, he’s Batman. In the incredibly illuminating novel The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay, Michael Chabon argues that Batman, like other sidekick-toting heroes, is an eternal father figure to generations of lost kids. And something about that has always rung true to me.

And so, ever since I first saw Batman Begins, Christian Bale has been one of my favourite actors, ranking up there with other “cool guys” like Harrison Ford, Humphrey Bogart, and everyone from The Wire. Here was a seriously talented guy who actually wanted to do silly sci-fi flicks like Batman and Terminator. He seemed to legitimate my own fascination with silly sci-fi stuff. And for that reason, I always saw him as a pretty down to Earth kind of guy. Someone you might be able to grab a beer with.

But then there was that pesky little tape of him berating a crewmember, and my faith was shaken, and it was a little difficult to continue viewing him as the common man. At one point or another we’ve all worked customer service jobs, or assistant jobs, or any minimum wage job, so I don’t need to explain how frustrating and off-putting this kind of behavior is. Not cool, Batman. Not cool.

And I’ve tried to defend his actions every possible way I can: The crewmember repeatedly broke one of the cardinal rules of working on a set; Bale is a method actor and he was still in character; It was a hot day and everyone was tired and he had a momentary lapse of judgment that happened to be caught on camera; He apologized sincerely and apparently everything’s back to normal. But that’s not the way it works. There’s the wildly unrealistic superhero image of Christian Bale that I have in my head, and then there’s the mere mortal Christian Bale, and unfortunately they had to meet (just like that episode of Seinfeld with the two Georges).

But at the end of the day, I still love The Dark Knight. And I still really want to see Terminator Salvation. And chances are I’ll still get excited for every other movie Christian Bale will make over his career. So what does this say about me? Am I throwing away my principles just to see a summer blockbuster? Because if I walked into a store and saw the owner treating one of his employees that way, I’d probably never go back. Am I anti-Semitic because I still think Braveheart is a wicked movie? Because, you know, ditto. Or, as a jaded film student, do I just expect this stuff from celebrities and I’ve stopped caring altogether?

I don’t really have the answer. All I know is that I love movies enough to forgive certain flaws in filmmakers that I might not forgive in someone else. I also know from my study of Hollywood history that Christian Bale is just plain nice in comparison to some of his colleagues. Truth is, if you want to hold every filmmaker (or writer or painter or sculptor etc., etc., etc.) to such high standards, you won’t have very many people left (as a particularly poignant example, look up any one of the millions of biographies on Walt Disney). 

So, I guess what I’m saying is, Batman gets a pass in my books. Am I disappointed? Heck yeah. Would I ever approach Christian Bale in a bar? Depends how many drinks I’ve had. Am I still clawing at the walls in anticipation of a third Batman movie? You better believe it.

So my advice is to just expect this stuff, enjoy it for the entertainment value, and yeah, maybe forgive the guy. You’ll sleep better.

jakeb a little philosophy

The Terminator franchise has been spread out over a fairly long period of time – Salvation will mark four movies over twenty-five years.

And the question that’s been on my mind is, why another entry now? Terminator 1, 2, and 3 all correspond to specific moments in history, and those moments are clearly reflected in the films. So what’s the deal with Salvation?

Allow me to backtrack…

Terminator 1 came out at a pretty perfect time. 1984 was the year of hating technology. On the one hand, you had personal computers and cell phones and all other sorts of futuristic doodads making their ways into homes and offices, and tech-geeks were telling everyone that they had to adapt or else face obsolescence. And then there was the small issue of the Doomsday clock reaching its highest point since the 50s, basically telling people that nuclear destruction was imminent. So a movie about why we should hate advanced machines armed with nuclear weapons was more than welcome. Hence Terminator 1’s unexpected success.

But then 1991 rolled around and undid everything Terminator 1 had built. Microsoft had just released Windows 3.0 and people were learning that they loved their home computers. Cell phones were no longer Zach Morris sized. Oh, and the Soviet Union collapsed and the Doomsday clock hit zero (the lowest point in its history) and most people wanted to laugh off any of those fears about bombs and robots and stuff.

 So 1991 may have seemed like an odd year to release another Terminator movie. But the series showed surprising versatility and easily adapted to the new era. In Terminator 2 the robots were our friends! And nuclear war could easily be averted with enough forethought! And the kids are alright and families are reunited and killing machines learn how to love (sort of). Terminator 2 told us there was compromise, which was precisely what we already knew at that point.

And then we entered the Internet era, and we had all sorts of new reasons to hate the machines. Pedophiles were lurking in chat rooms, the next generation of men and women were disappearing into online video games, and have you seen how expensive those non-Zach-Morris-sized cell phones are? And of course certain events at the turn of the century shook our faith in the idea that global destruction had been averted… I don’t want to play the worn out card that many pop culture historians use, but according to interviews, September 11th had a profound effect on Terminator 3.

And so, with 2003’s T3, we were right back to where we were in 1984: nuclear war is inevitable, the few machines that are friendly are heavily outnumbered by an army of Terminators backed by the military industrial complex, the kids are not alright, and the survival of the family unit rests on some very thin shoulders. Everybody panic.

And now we’re in 2009 and we have number 4 coming out. What does this mean? Why now? Keep checking back for my answers to these questions as I advance my over-analytical, wildly-unfounded film student assertions! And in the mean time, let us know your thoughts in the comments below.

jakeb history

1. Join our Resistance

Click here to join our facebook group, and then click here to follow us on Twitter! The best looking group of Terminator fans on the net!

2. Spoilers?

io9.com talked to McG about the original ending to Terminator Salvation that you won’t see in theatres. Click here to read the interview and see what you think.

3. Comic-Con Footage

A little old, but if you still haven’t seen it, you can head over to Entertainment Weekly’s Terminator portal to watch videos of McG and crew at a Comic-Con roundtable.

4. A Different Look at the Terminator…

Check out cracked.com’s detailed reconsideration of Schwarzenegger’s T-800. Click here to read more.

jakeb links

Over the course of the first three movies, several questions have arisen about the exact nature of life in 2018. Here’s my list of five questions that need to be answered, either in Terminator Salvation or in further entries….

5. What’s going on in the rest of the world?

We’ve heard big talk about John Connor and his band of California-based rebels, and how they’re supposed to save mankind. But what about everyone else? Presumably there are pockets of survivors all over the world. Does Skynet have an international presence? Are there other people fighting the good fight? Who wouldn’t want to see a movie about John Connor’s Moosejaw unit?

4. What’s the deal with the time travel machines?

How, in the middle of a nuclear wasteland, was anybody able to invent such groundbreaking technology? And how did both sides of the war get their hands on it? There’s got to be some kind of explanation as to how this history-altering machine conveniently landed in the middle of the apocalypse.

3. How did John Connor get a hold of a T-800?

In T2 and T3, the future John Connor managed to reprogram a T-800 and use it for his own purposes. Based on everything we know, this seems like an impossible feat. I really want to know how he managed to stop an unstoppable weapon and somehow reprogram the incredibly advanced computer.

2. Is John gonna make it?

In T3, we’re told that as a result of time travelers messing around with history, the future John Connor will die at some point before the humans succeed. Is there any way to stop this? Will John live to see the end of Terminator Salvation? And more importantly, if he now knows that this is going to happen, can he prevent it?

1. Who is Skynet?

Despite being the main antagonist of the franchise, we’ve never really seen Skynet. What’s its deal? At the end of T3, Skynet was a virus running through the Internet, but what does it look like in the future? We know that Skynet has some kind of personality, or at the very least a short temper and shrewd instincts, so it has the potential to be a great character. I think it’s about time we meet the bossman and hear his side of the story.

jakeb the saturday five

Last night, while surfing the net instead of doing the serious-people work that’s been piling up on my desk, I was pleasantly surprised to find a special new Terminator preview that’s a whopping four minutes long. I love a good trailer, so I double love a trailer that’s twice as big. (To see what I’m talking about, head over to www.apple.com/trailers)

Some immediate observations that I feel I need to share:

• John Connor owns a custom tank-motorcycle? Awesome.
• Dogfights between HKs and fighter jets? Even more awesome.
• Christian Bale really does look quite crazy… like, terrifyingly crazy… like, crazier than he does in American Psycho
• I’ll give Anton Yelchin points for his perfect delivery of the “come with me if you want to live” line
• And speaking of custom tank-motorcycles, did anyone catch that wicked Great Escape homage?
• Exploding gas stations are always a good sign

But there were two big things from this trailer that really got me pumped

One: Something has shaken John Connor’s faith. As a kid, he was told that he will lead the humans to victory, but now he’s not so sure. In the trailer, it looks like Connor has reason to believe that he’s somehow altered the future, no longer guaranteeing certain victory, and heading into uncharted waters. Not only does this make for far better storytelling (what with Connor’s identity being called into question) but it also raises all kinds of amazing science fiction questions about alternate history. Good call, McG. Good call.

Two: For the first time I get the feeling of a family dynamic in Connor’s army. This is a must. Terminator 1, 2, 3, and the TV series all have one thing in common: the unbreakable relationships that join the humans in defiance against Skynet. Each film has featured a close team in one way or another, and I’m glad to see that they’re following up on this in Salvation, only this time with John as the father figure.

Oh! Also… three days ago I totally nailed it when I predicted that Michael Ironside’s presence would mean some old-school military shouting matches between John and his boss. I know D-list character actors better than anyone.

And I’ll end on that high note as we head into the weekend. As always, check back tomorrow and Sunday for links and other cool Terminator info.

jakeb get psyched, stuff that goes boom, the story

As I’ve said countless times before, I’ve been dying to see the future war between John Connor and Skynet ever since I first saw Terminator.

At the very beginning of T2, and sporadically throughout T1, we were teased with brief glimpses of life after Armageddon. As far as 1991 visions of the apocalypse go, it was pretty cool. It was always night, there were lasers everywhere, and every flat surface was covered in human skulls. It was like a death metal album cover come to life. How could angst-ridden teenagers not want to live to see this future?

But upon rewatching Terminator 1 and 2, certain aspects of Cameron’s nightmarish future seemed a little outdated to me. For starters, the Resistance wears matching, ironed uniforms (complete with little grey baseball caps). They look like they’re about to paint a house, not wage war against the machines. Secondly, they use these little go-kart things that look oddly childish and out of place in the middle of a battlefield. Finally, it’s always night. When I was fifteen, setting a scene at nighttime was more than enough to convey an apocalyptic tone, but now I need something more…

Which is why I was pleased to see that McG has gone in a fairly different direction as far as drawing the landscape for John Connor’s ruined world. Visually, the world of Terminator Salvation is pretty far removed from what we saw in T1 and T2.

For starters, we can see remnants of society everywhere the characters go. Abandoned gas stations, half-demolished buildings, 20th century trucks and helicopters and planes. All in all, this world looks more like what I’d expect if we were to be nuked today: a patchwork collection of scraps and fragments of what was left behind. As cool as it may be, I just don’t think we’d be able to design and manufacture matching uniforms while on the run from Skynet.

Furthermore, the world of Terminator Salvation seems hot. It looks like Southern California: dry, dusty, and painfully warm. Cameron’s apocalypse, on the other hand, was cold and damp. Now, in all fairness, I don’t know which climate would be more realistic following a nuclear attack, but for some reason this just seems more appropriate to me. Maybe I’ve seen Planet of the Apes one too many times.

But most importantly to me, McG has said in interviews that he modeled his nuclear wasteland on Cormac McCarthy’s The Road. I mentioned this book a few weeks back in my “Required Reading” post, where I argued that The Road is one of the best portrayals of life after global destruction. As far as bleak, gritty, ugly, lifeless environments go, there ain’t none better than The Road. And true to his word, parts of McG’s universe do look surprisingly like the picture McCarthy paints. Most notably, the scenes on the abandoned highway (obviously…) are highly reminiscent of the eponymous Road. McCarthy really tapped into something with his use of road imagery (the hope, the endlessness, the progression, the regression, all that complex end of the world stuff), so I’m glad that McG shamelessly stole paid homage to it.

jakeb get psyched

I love time travel stories.

I don’t really know why, but ever since Marty McFly first jumped that DeLorean back to 1955, I’ve been obsessed with issues of time travel. I’ll even watch movies that I know will be terrible as long as they’ve got some temporal-bending content (A Kid in King Arthur’s Court anyone?)

Time travel is – dare I say it? – my favourite kind of science fiction.

It’s that weird mixture of nostalgia and futurism that seems to appeal to every aspect of childhood dreams. It allows for the possibility of being a cowboy and a spaceship captain and a knight in shining armor and to have a robot/alien sidekick. And seeing as I still have the maturity of an eight-year-old, I crave that pure escapist fun.

And what people often seem to forget is that Terminator is one of the best time travel movies of all time.

Sure, to the average man on the street, Terminator is a series of “robot” movies, and nothing more. But behind the discussions of cybernetic organisms sits one of the coolest time travel paradoxes ever written. After I first saw T2 I spent a good solid week trying to wrap my mind around the complex contradictions presented by Arnie’s jumps through time. Somewhere in my grade ten math notebook is a flowchart that explains everything nicely.

For the uninitiated, allow me to lay out the central premise for you:

• In 2018, man and machines are at war
• In 2029, John Connor is about to lead the humans to certain victory
• Using the “Great Man” theory of history, Skynet sends a terminator back to 1984 to kill Sarah Connor before she can give birth to John, thereby preventing him from winning the war in 2029
• In response, the Resistance sends Kyle Reese from 2029 back to 1984 to defend Sarah
• In 1984, Reese impregnates Sarah who subsequently destroys the terminator
• Cyberdyne Systems then discovers the remnants of the terminator sent to kill Sarah, and they reverse engineer its technology, leading to the invention of Skynet

Okay, so let’s think this one through… By trying to kill John Connor, Skynet inadvertently causes his birth. And by trying to defend himself, John Connor inadvertently creates Skynet. Whoa. But how could any of this be possible if the present events are dependant on future events that haven’t happened yet. Like, if Kyle Reese didn’t go back through time, then John wouldn’t be born, so Skynet wouldn’t have sent a terminator back to 1984, but then Skynet never would have been invented!!

If you’re not a sixteen-year-old boy, I’ve probably lost you by this point, but what I’m trying to get at is that I’m heavily invested in this mythology, which is interesting because there’s no deeper message or hidden symbolism to any of it. As a pretentious film student, I’ve been trained to look for metaphors and allegories and serious people stuff in even the most populist of movies, but the time travel story in Terminator is just plain old science fictiony goodness. Sure, there are issues of paternity and predestination and blind ambition, but all I really care about is how I could use that machine to go visit my past self and warn him about what happens at that frat party I attend on April 4th, 2005. And maybe warn Sam Raimi about Spider-Man 3. And win the lottery. And marry Megan Fox before she gets all famous and too good for me.

The point is, it’s been a good long while since I’ve been this excited by a summer blockbuster time travel movie. A few year’s back we had Timeline, which I was insanely psyched for as it was based on an amazing novel by Michael Crichton and directed by the guy who did Lethal Weapon. But alas, Timeline kinda dropped the ball and left me disappointed.

But now we’ve got another Terminator to look forward to. Could this reignite the hopes of one disillusioned time traveler as he jumps around on his quest for quality science fiction? Here’s hoping.

jakeb a little philosophy

Today I want to look at a few of the supporting players in John Connor’s Resistance. First up…

Common as Barnes

According to the promo materials, Barnes is John’s no-nonsense right hand man. Usually I have a problem with musicians turned actors, but I can make an exception for Common because he already proved himself in Smokin’ Aces (and I’m well aware that I’m the only person who actually enjoyed that movie, but I stand by my opinion that Common gave a solid performance). More importantly, he brings some much-needed old-school tough-guy attitude to John’s team. With Anton Yelchin and Sam Worthington kicking up the angst factor, Common’s ruthless soldier is a welcome addition.

Moon Bloodgold as Blair Williams

Bloodgold might just be the actress with the coolest name in Hollywood (or the name that most resembles a character from Twilight). Truth is, I don’t know much about her, aside from the fact that she was in an episode of Fastlane (which I declared my unreasonable love for last week) and that she’s going to be in the new Street Fighter movie. I guess that pretty much qualifies her to be in a McG Terminator movie. I was very pleased to learn that Bloodgold’s character is a fighter pilot. Jets and robots. It’s like Top Gun meets Terminator. And that mix becomes even cooler when you consider…

Michael Ironside as General Ashdown

Ironside plays the gruff, strict, old guy in every movie you’ve ever seen. Or at least he does in Top Gun, where he plays Jester, the flight training instructor to Maverick and Ice Man. From what we know, it seems that Ironside plays a fairly similar character in Salvation. He’s a general in the Resistance who has a problem with young John Connor’s rebellious, headstrong attitude. Ironside brings some sci-fi credibility to the table, and I look forward to some old-fashioned shouting matches between him and John. Plus, Gerneral Ashdown is an insanely cool name.

jakeb characters

A couple of weeks ago I wrote about Stan Winston and the history of animatronics and puppet work in Terminator. My point was this: analogue special effects are awesome, and it truly is a lost art.

But it would be unjust to ignore the significance of computer generated imagery in the Terminator series. Specifically, T2 is often cited as one of the landmark moments in CGI history. Even if you haven’t seen the movie, I’m sure you’ve seen the clips I’m talking about: the liquid metal guy (the T-1000) morphs and shifts and transforms in incredibly cool and altogether creepy ways.

Truth be told, some of the T-1000 effects are still impressive by today’s standards. I saw T2 after I had seen The Matrix, after I had seen Titanic, after Jurassic Park, and still I was blown away by a couple of key scenes (the one that always sticks out in my mind is the scene where the T-1000 gets shot in the face and his head splits right down the middle – in retrospect, there are so many good reasons why my parents didn’t let me see this movie…)

T2 was one of those perfect cases where the technology had caught up with what the filmmakers wanted to do, and the result was one of the coolest uses of CGI ever. Most importantly, they didn’t try to exceed what the technology was capable of (à la Matrix Reloaded), leading to a pretty seamless flick.

So, that being the case, Terminator Salvation has some pretty big shoes to fill in the special effects department. And those shoes have been made all the bigger by McG’s talk of special effects that have “never been seen in a movie before.” Such boastful words have me a little worried…

I, like many contemporary filmgoers, have become pretty jaded about the use of CGI in blockbusters. Back in the 90s, when the technology was still fresh and exciting, there was nothing I loved more than some animated monsters. But now that CGI is everywhere, it can be a little boring. When done right, it looks awesome, but if done wrong it’s disheartening. With desktop animation programs, any kid in his parents’ basement can do some pretty astounding CGI work, so if I’m shelling out twelve bucks for a movie, I want to see something that will really blow my mind. Instances of such movies in the past few years are few and far between.

So my hope for Terminator Salvation is that they haven’t gone crazy with the computers. I’ve seen some pretty cool stuff in the trailers (Marcus Wright with half a face, the Harvesters), but it’s nothing I haven’t seen before. And that’s okay. I’d rather have some limited CGI that looks good than boatloads that disappoint.

jakeb stuff that goes boom