Terminator Salvation

1. The Real Cyberdyne Systems.

This is not a viral site, nor is this a joke. This is the website for an actual Japanese corporation called Cyberdyne that is currently developing “cyborg-type” technology. I spent a good thirty minutes staring at this site before I was ready to believe it wasn’t an elaborate hoax. Judgment Day is coming!

2. Some more glory shots of the T-600

Check out the National Post’s coverage of the T-600’s stay in Toronto. Their report on the event is less than enthusiastic. Apparently the serious journalist really badly wanted to see a Terminator that could actually kill people. See what he has to say here.

3. Interviews with the stars

Check out ign.com’s coverage of Terminator Salvation, complete with interviews from a “roadshow” event a few months back. See it here.

4. Check out the video game

Head over to the official site for the Terminator Salvation video game. Even if you’re not a big fan of movie tie-in games, you should give this one a chance. It’s a hard premise to get wrong: kill robots. Learn more here.

jakeb get psyched, links

A couple of days ago I get an e-mail asking if I want to come hang out with the T-600 as it spends the day in Toronto.

Obviously, I say yes.

So at 6:30 in the morning two guys dressed in full army camo pull up in a u-haul and park in front of Bloor Station, the busiest subway stop in the city. As the paramilitary-looking troops start unloading unmarked crates from the sketchy-looking van, the studio guy visiting from L.A. remarks that anywhere else in the world, a sight like this would cause mass panic and shut down the subway system. You gotta love Canada.

We then spend the next half hour lugging the behemoth robot down into the station and we get set up just as rush hour kicks in. As we assemble the T-600 and get everything turned on, the sculptor who actually built this thing informs me that this is the model seen in the trailer (the one that John Connor shoots in the head after crushing it with a helicopter) and I get unreasonably excited.

In some stroke of insane marketing luck, the trains get delayed and the subway is packed with people who have nothing better to do than stare in awe at the seven foot cybernetic organism with glowing red eyes. Some stray observations about crowds and robots:

• It’s amazing how many people carry cameras around with them. It’s like everyone needs to be prepared just in case they pass something worth photographing on their way to work. We truly are a city of artists.
• The more barricades you put up, the more people try to touch stuff.
• If you let me past the barricades, I will touch stuff.

Rush hour comes and goes, so we pack up this bad boy and head down to the Edge 102.1 studio on Yonge Street. We set up in the window and then spend the next few hours spreading the Terminator love to passersby and swapping Schwarzenegger impressions. Some observations on downtown Toronto at 2 PM on a Friday:

• Apparently most of my fellow nerds in the city are busy obsessing over some movie called Star Trek. And Hugh Jackman has another flick out?
• If you invite a bunch of guys in their 20s to work at an event like this, they will use the Terminator to pick up women.
• William Shatner’s cover of Common People is incredible.

Eventually the day comes to a close, and the Terminator gets boxed up and shipped out to the next group of people lucky enough to bask in its apocalyptic glow, and I smile in satisfaction, feeling very much like a young John Connor as I watch my robot buddy disappear. Escapism is awesome.

jakeb get psyched

So far I’ve had nothing but love for the people working on Terminator Salvation (and mild tolerance for Anton Yelchin…) but one name has been bugging me since the first day I learned about this movie: our fearless director McG.

The man with the silliest name in Hollywood is probably the last guy I would have ever chosen to direct this film. His style is goofy and wacky (remember, he did Charlie’s Angels 1 and 2) and Terminator Salvation is anything but. Plus, he has terrible taste in music, which should be irrelevant to his directing chops, but still bugs me nonetheless.

That being said, any man who would go to the lengths McG did to ensure the continuation of the Terminator franchise deserves a second chance. So, with that in mind, I’ve compiled a list of five reasons why McG might just change my mind and pull off the best possible Terminator sequel…

1. He wrote and directed Fastlane

I’m guessing very few of you remember this show, as it only ran for half a season on Fox several years ago. It was basically a young, hip attempt at a cop show that involved shiny cars and big gunfights. I’m sure if I went back and watched it now I’d think it was terrible, but for some reason I loved this show in high school. Which was the exact same time I fell in love with Terminator. Something about this show appealed to the same part of me that dug T2, so clearly McG has something going for him. That being said, it’s entirely possible I only watched this show because it starred Kelly Kapowski.

2. He took a chance on Josh Schwartz

Besides being a director extraordinaire, McG is also a television producer. When he wasn’t working overtime to bring us Pussycat Dolls Present: Girlicious, he found time to take a shot on an up and coming writer named Josh Schwartz, and the first series they made together was a little show called The O.C. Now be honest, chances are you’ve seen at least one episode, and your probably liked it more than you’d care to admit. But more importantly than The O.C., McG then went on to produce Schwartz’s next show, Chuck, which is one of the most original and most fun shows on television today. Yes, it’s full of McG’s trademark silliness, but damn if it isn’t awesome anyway. Like The O.C., Chuck is loaded with references to fandom and sci-fi history, so it’s clear to me that McG has a healthy respect for cult franchises.

3. He has excellent taste in remakes

The man is currently in the middle of remaking Revenge of the Nerds, 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, and the British sitcom Spaced. I would argue that all three of those productions are awesome enough on their own, and don’t really need to be remade, but at least I now know that McG likes a lot of the same stuff I like, which gives him another point in his favour.

4. He was inches away from making an awesome Superman movie

Credit for this one technically goes to J.J. Abrams as he was the brains behind the project… but McG was the man who hired Abrams, so he deserves some recognition. If you know the history of Superman Returns, you know that the film went through several different phases before ending up in the hands of Bryan Singer (if you don’t know the history of Superman Returns, head over to YouTube and search “Kevin Smith” and “Superman” to hear one of the greatest stories ever told). Well at one point McG and J.J. were going to make a film called Superman: Flyby, which by all accounts would have been a whole lot better than what we got from Singer. McG loves Superman, and I love Superman, so I guess that means I now love McG.

5. The man knows his Terminator

As hard as I’ve been on the him, I have to admit that every single thing McG has said in interviews on the subject of Terminator Salvation really does demonstrate that he knows his stuff. Honest to God, I’ve been looking for reasons to pounce on this guy, but he’s giving me nothing. He understands the blurred line between man and machine, he gets John’s struggle to fulfill his destiny, and from the trailers it’s obvious that he really, really knows his exploding robots.

So all in all, I’m hopeful. McG is a long way away from being James Cameron, but maybe this will be the movie to turn his career around (after all, Cameron did direct Piranha Part Two: The Spawning before he got around to making Terminator…) But who would you want to see behind the helm? Let us know in the comments who you think should have directed Terminator Salvation.

jakeb get psyched

Here are the rest of the definitions you’ll need to know as I delve further into the minutiae of Terminator awesomeness…

 T-800

The Cadillac of Terminators. This is the model portrayed by Schwarzenegger in the first three movies. They’re as close to indestructible as you can get, highly intelligent, and capable of blending in amongst regular humans. This model comes wrapped in living human tissue, allowing them to perform all sorts of incredibly gross tricks. These guys have been both the bane and the savior of the Connor family.

Cyberdyne Systems

The geniuses behind Skynet. Originally Cyberdyne was a private computer engineering firm that made a gigantic leap forward in the field of robotics and artificial intelligence when their researchers stumbled upon bits and pieces of a future Terminator that Sarah Connor was clumsy enough to leave lying around at the end of T1. After the corporation and all of its data were destroyed by the Connor family at the end of T2, Cyberdyne became a division of the U.S. army, where the top brass was smart enough to put their latest creation – Skynet – in charge of the world’s nuclear stockpile.

HKs (Hunter-Killers)

These creatively named devices are gigantic robot airships and tanks that patrol the future of 2018 and hunt (and kill) humans. According to Kyle Reese in Terminator 1, the HKs make life above ground pretty difficult for the Resistance. If you look closely at the trailers, you’ll see an incredibly cool action sequence involving an HK, a bridge, and one heck of an explosion.

Time Displacement Field

The technology that allows Skynet and the Resistance to send things back through time. There are a few conditions to understand about this technology… One, only organic material can be sent through the portal, but inorganic material can be sent if it’s covered by organic material. So, a metal Terminator can be sent back as long as it’s covered in real human tissue, but it can’t be sent back with clothes or weapons (often resulting in comedic gratuitous nudity). Two, as far as I know, the time displacement field is a one way trip. When you go back, there’s no way to return. That being said, the TV series has found some interesting ways around this problem by suggesting that both Skynet and the Resistance have hidden displacement fields throughout the decades, thereby allowing their agents to access one and return home.

jakeb get psyched, history

Last week I looked at little Johnny Connor’s first appearance in Terminator 2, and why I thought he was the perfect hero for the aimless 90s teenager. He gave all scrawny young nerds reason to hope, and showed us the hero hiding beneath a generation of cynics. And in a perfect move, T2 ended with John Connor riding off into the night, ready to face an uncertain future.

And then John Connor pops up twelve years later in Terminator 3, this time played by Nick Stahl (otherwise known as the yellow guy in Sin City). And things quickly went south…

It’s pretty clear that Nick Stahl was not the first choice to play John. By most accounts, the filmmakers wanted wisecracking Ed Furlong to come back, but a wee problem with drugs and alcohol made him ineligible. Unfortunately for Stahl, stepping in as a replacement for such a beloved franchise was bound to generate unfavorable comparisons, and in my humble opinion he got a raw deal.

See, there are two things to consider when looking at Stahl’s Connor in T3. First off, there’s Stahl’s acting, and then there’s the script that was written for him.

Now if you just look at Stahl’s performance, he does a pretty solid job. Not only does he actually look like an older version of Furlong, but he also tries his best to channel that devil-may-care trickster attitude. Is it perfect? No. But all things considered, Stahl was a pretty decent choice to play a mid-twenties Connor. He looks like he’s grown up a bit, but he’s not so far removed from his predecessor that it’s hard to buy him as Connor (which, coincidentally, is my one and only problem with Christian Bale, but I’ll elaborate on that later).

Unfortunately for Stahl, however, he got stuck with a script that didn’t do the character justice. As I argued last week, what makes John Connor so compelling T2 is that he doesn’t let little things like destiny and the apocalypse get him down. The kid has the weight of the world on his shoulders, and he ends up being a major disappointment, but at no point does he get whiney or angsty or moody. He stays supremely confident and just keeps on doing his own thing.

Stahl in T3, however, is the exact freaking opposite. The film opens with the whiniest, angstiest, moodiest monologue in the history of the franchise, and overnight this unflappable character has lost all of his gravitas. There’s a scene where he sits by himself drinking a beer as he looks out at a ravine. And there’s a scene where he crashes his little moped in a weak “look how suicidal I am” moment. And then, worst of all, there’s a scene where he whines to his ex-girlfriend about how hard it was to live up to his mom’s expectations. All of sudden John Connor is gone and he’s been replaced with the kid from Dawson’s Creek. The guys who wrote T3 got the character completely wrong, and it was downright painful to watch. As someone who had strongly identified with Connor in T2, it made me really uncomfortable to watch that same character suddenly lose all of his appealing attributes.

That being said, T3 does contain what is probably my favourite John Connor moment in the entire series.

Somewhere around the third act, John Connor snaps out of his funk and steps up as the hero we were promised way back in number 1. When the heat is on, his true colours show and he makes the call to stop running and start blowing stuff up (and that right there is the central Terminator ethos). But unfortunately John gets some bad intel, and instead of ending up in the Skynet command center, he finds himself in a fallout shelter equipped with all the fixings needed to start an underground resistance.

And this is where the magic happens.

As the nukes start flying, calls come pouring into John’s fallout shelter from generals around the world seeking instructions. And then John steps up to the mic and does what he has to: he starts saving the world. It’s a surprisingly powerful scene (surprising because the hour and a half that precedes it completely sucks) and manages to save the movie (almost). The mixture of fear and acceptance on Stahl’s face is spot on, and it makes me frustrated that he didn’t get the chance to work with a better script.

What’s more, the final scene sums up the John Connor philosophy of “let it be.” Connor gives us proof that there’s no point in sitting around panicking about your future, you just have to wait and see what happens. In that last scene the film finally delivers on the promise made to the aimless 90s teenagers who followed the young John Connor of T2. Does it make up for the inexplicably wrong handling of the character in the rest of the movie? Not entirely, but it’s a solid note to end on.

So where do we go from here? Check back in the coming weeks for part 3 where I’ll look at the John Connor who is playing in the big leagues in Terminator Salvation.

jakeb characters, history

There’s nothing particularly original about the “technology will doom us all!” narrative. In fact, as I suggested earlier, that old tale has been kicking around since Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. Or, if you want to push it, I guess you could say it’s been around since Prometheus decided to be so generous with his fire. Countless writers have taken it upon themselves to warn us that we’re digging our own grave, what with our cell phones and MySpace and iPods, but that hasn’t seemed to stop us from plugging ahead anyway.

Terminator 1 follows strongly in this cautionary tradition. The message is clear and forceful: computers are bad. Get outside and play with your human friends and try to remember what life was like before toaster ovens.

But what I’ve always loved about the Terminator franchise is that this message gets a whole lot murkier as the series progresses.

See, by the time Terminator 2 rolls around, the robots might be the bad guys, but they’re also the good guys. Sure, the T-1000 wants to kill John Connor, but the T-800 is here to protect him. Machines are killing humans, humans are killing machines, and machines are killing machines. It’s all over the map, and any preachy lesson about the perils of a technology-driven society goes out the window. Sort of…

You could also argue that the message of Terminator gets deeper as the robot allegiances grow more complicated. Instead of a blanket message about technology being bad, Terminator argues that technology is just a tool, and it’s how you use it that’s important. It puts the focus back on us. At the end of the day, it’s the guy who builds and launches the nuclear bomb that’s responsible, not the malfunctioning computer he put in charge. As someone who makes his living on a computer, I like this message. It allows for all the positive aspects of technological developments, and the good liberal artist in me can’t help but smirk at the potshot taken at the military industrial complex (which of course conflicts with the smirk I get when Schwarzenegger blows stuff up with a rocket launcher, but that’s a psychological contradiction to explore at a later date).  

But more importantly than any political or philosophical message, it just makes for better storytelling. The “robots are bad because they’re bad” thing gets tired fast, but conflicted, ambiguous characters are at the heart of good drama. Terminator 2 isn’t the best entry in the series just because it has the biggest explosions and the best fights (don’t get me wrong, that’s a big part of it), but it’s the best because the characters have depth and they have the chance to grow and change.

So what does this have to do with Terminator Salvation?

Well I really, really hope that they continue this tradition. Now that the war is finally in full swing, it might be tempting to revert back to a simple good/bad distinction between humans and machines. But of course this time we have Marcus Wright, who if anything looks more conflicted than any of the terminators that came before him. Also, considering the screenwriters behind this movie, I’d be shocked if we didn’t get some of the most complex characters of the summer (in an action movie about robots…)

Just one more reason why I’m jumping out of my skin in anticipation.

jakeb a little philosophy

In Terminator Salvation, John Connor finally takes his place as the leader of the Resistance. But as Skynet’s army of Terminators takes over the world, can Connor save humanity?

The year is 2018 and Judgment Day has come and gone, leveling modern civilization. An army of Terminators roams the post-apocalyptic landscape, killing or collecting humans where they hide in the desolate cities and deserts. But small groups of survivors have organized into a Resistance, hiding in underground bunkers and striking against the enemy force that outnumbers them.

Controlling the army of Terminators is the artificial intelligence network Skynet, which became self-aware 14 years earlier, turning on its creators, Cyberdyne Systems, so it could unleash nuclear annihilation on an unsuspecting world—with the exception of John Connor (Christian Bale) and his mother, Sarah Connor, and father, Kyle Reese, who fought hard for years to warn humanity about this war. No one believed them.
“We’re telling the story of the world after Judgment Day,” says McG, the film’s director. “This is the story of the becoming of John Connor, the becoming of Kyle Reese, the strengthening of Skynet, and where our humanity ultimately lies. This is the moment when mankind takes a stand against the machines.”

With the future he has been warned about all his life now into being, Connor remains unsure that he can do anything to stop it. “He’s definitely a guy with a lot of issues, somebody who has been told the future all his life and bears the burden of that knowledge,” says Bale. “But his mother also told him there is no fate but what you make, so knowing that, he can’t just go hide and think everything’s going to be fine. He’s got to be out there fighting. And he is a fighter. I saw him [as] very much like an Achilles-type character. He’s somebody who loves the fray. But he’s battling with what soldiers deal with every day—the loss of very good friends—and his fears that he is not the leader that people are probably expecting at that point.”

But while Connor’s belief that the war can be won is shaken, his faith is renewed with the appearance of a mysterious man, Marcus Wright (Sam Worthington), a stranger from the past whose last memory is of being on death row before awakening in this strange new world.

Connor must decide whether Marcus has been sent from the future or rescued from the past, and in this time-warped world, who can be trusted? But as Skynet adapts new strategies to end the Resistance forever, Connor and Marcus must find common ground to take a stand against the onslaught—and what better way to fight an army of machines than to face them head-on?

Toni-Marie Ippolito Uncategorized

The Post-War World

In Terminator Salvation, Judgment Day has come and gone. What civilization is left with is a world that’s dim and grim, with cities left in skeletal-like ruins.

To get the feel of devastation, Terminator Salvation’s director of photography Shane Hurlbut shot the film using an experimental film process. “We took an old film stock from Kodak and we let it sit in the sun too long to degrade some of its qualities,” explained McG. “Then we processed it in a way where we added more silver than you would traditionally add to a color film stock. And we went even further to manipulate that in the digital intermediate to give the film an otherworldly quality that gives you the impression that something’s just off with the way this world looks, which is in keeping with the mood of the entire picture.”

Shot on location in Albuquerque, New Mexico, for its vast desert, the film’s creators also spoke to futurists about what would happen with the flora and fauna if this type of war really occurred. “We wanted to get all of that detailing into our movie,” says costume designer Michael Wilkinson. “We asked, ‘If the bombs went off about 14 years ago and destroyed most of North America, what would be left? What would people scrounge and cobble together to survive, to fight?’
Along with fighting comes extensive gun battles, chase sequences and explosions, which, according to director McG, were done as authentically as possible. “We wanted to do everything in-camera,” he says. “When it was necessary to extend with CG, we did that, but we wanted to build everything, blow things up, and really crash the car. It was extraordinary to have the concussion of the explosion to add to the realism of the sequence. You see exhilaration in everyone’s eyes. You can feel their adrenaline rising. We aimed to keep it as safe as possible, but we definitely wanted to push things every step of the way, to create a movie that, at its core, is a war movie and captures the reality of that intense pressure.”

Adds visual effects supervisor (and second unit director) Charlie Gibson: “McG wanted real pyro events, explosions and actions at a one-to-one scale, not as miniatures or computer-generated. One spectacular explosion involves a helicopter crash into a river.

To make things look realistic, a 200-foot length of river was constructed in the middle of the desert, consisting of an 18-foot-deep tank that housed a scissor lift that moved the helicopter up and down and was rigged so the helicopter could crash in the water and ratchet over. This “riverbank” was also rigged with gas lines to generate a controlled burn, and a protective fire ring.

But as dangerous as these blasts and explosions were, it didn’t deter cast members from getting down and dirty and doing their own stunts. “It just got your adrenaline going,” Moon Bloodgood says. “There were some crazy stunts—we’d start running and then it would be dust and things exploding and I had no idea what was going to hit me. We would be laughing because we were so scared. But I loved it.” Sam Worthington agrees. “My character goes through the wringer,” he says. “He gets strung up, cut up, and blown up, which meant I also spent many a day getting strung up, cut up, and blown up,” he laughed. “So yeah, we got our bumps and bruises, but it’s Terminator, it’s not Pride and Prejudice!”

Toni-Marie Ippolito Uncategorized

Looking Back
Does the part of your brain where you’ve stored all of your Terminator info need a power surge? Here’s a recap of the last three Terminator installments to get you geared up for the upcoming Terminator Salvation.

The Terminator (1984)

Stars: Linda Hamilton, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Michael Biehn

In the first film, we meet Sarah Connor (Linda Hamilton). Unbeknownst to her, a man from the future, Kyle Reese (Michael Biehn), tells her that she will bear a child who in the future, is destined to lead a resistance army against Skynet—a lethal race of artificially intelligent computerized machines owned by Cyberdyne Systems, whose mission is to exterminate the human race.
Reese explains that he was sent to the past to warn Sarah and explain that in his future, the year 2029, a war is taking place between Skynet and humanity. Sarah’s now-grown son, John Connor, is leading the resistance army and seems to be winning. In an effort to win the battle, Skynet sends a cyborg assassin known as the “Terminator” (Arnold Schwarzenegger) to the past, to find Sarah Connor and kill her.
As Kyle and Sarah try to outrun this unstoppable machine, they fall in love and conceive a child: the future John Connor. But in a final showdown with the Terminator, Kyle meets his demise and Sarah defeats the assassin by crushing him in a hydraulic press.



Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991)

Stars: Arnold Schwarzenegger, Linda Hamilton, Edward Furlong, Robert Patrick

Having survived an attack by the first Terminator sent to kill her eleven years earlier, Sarah Connor once again faces the wrath of Skynet when the deadly race sends two cyborg assassins from the year 2029: the Terminator (Arnold Schwarzenegger), who is an exact replica of the first, and a new T-1000 prototype machine, made of a liquid metal that allows it to take the shape and appearance of anything it touches, that disguises itself as a police officer (Robert Patrick). Their mission: to kill Sarah and the adolescent John.
With her son John in foster care, Sarah, in an ongoing effort to continue her mission to warn humanity about the coming apocalypse, is arrested for bombings a computer company and is confined to a hospital for the criminally insane. Meanwhile, the Terminator captures her son John, who has been training to become a future leader. A young John learns that this new Terminator means him no harm and has actually been reprogrammed by his future self to protect his younger self.
John and the Terminator break Sarah out of the hospital and set out to find Miles Bennett Dyson (Joe Morton), a Cyberdyne Systems engineer working on a revolutionary new microprocessor that will form the basis for Skynet, and who unwittingly will be responsible for a nuclear attack on “Judgment Day.” When they find Dyson, Sarah, set on changing the future by killing him, only wounds Dyson. After the Terminator explains to Dyson the consequences of his research, Dyson helps them break into Cyberdyne Systems to destroy both his research and the parts for the first Terminator.
But when a SWAT team arrives, Dyson is killed while pushing a detonator to destroy the materials. Sarah, John and the Terminator escape and after a liquid nitrogen truck crashes, it freezes the T-1000 that’s in pursuit and shatters its structure. While the T-000 melts, John destroys the parts of the first Terminator by throwing them into the hot steels, and both Sarah and John destroy the Terminator who says he must also be destroyed so that Skynet cannot recreate him.



Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines (2003)

Stars: Arnold Schwarzenegger, Nick Stahl, Claire Danes, Kristanna Loken

Although Judgment Day appeared to have been averted in the last Terminator, John Connor (Stahl) does not believe humanity is safe.
Just as suspected, two cyborgs are sent back in time: another Terminator (Schwarzenegger) and the T-X/Terminatrix (Loken), who each have their own mission. The Terminator is sent back in time by Connor’s future wife, Katherine Brewster (Danes), to protect him after it is revealed that it kills Connor in the year 2032. The T-X, equipped with advanced weapons and the ability to control most machines, is sent to fulfill Skynet’s mission once and for all: to kill Connor and his future army lieutenants.
But when the U.S. Air Force, under the command of Katherine’s father, Lieutenant General Robert Brewster, takes over the research facility and activates Skynet in order to stop a computer virus, all hell breaks loose as the original T-1s are revived and become part of T-X’s mission.
As T-X and its army of T-1s hunt John and Katherine, General Brewster sends them to Crystal Peak where they believe Skynet’s system core is located. There, they undergo another attack from T-X, until the Terminator destroys it by detonating a hydrogen fuel cell in its mouth.
Connor soon realizes that he and Kate are not at the system’s core, but at an old government bomb shelter. Connor realizes that Skynet’s operations are worldwide, making it impossible to shut down. As Skynet begins to launch nuclear missiles, Connor starts receiving messages from military forces, ultimately assuming he is in command, foreshadowing his future as leader of the resistance army.

Toni-Marie Ippolito history

The New Machines

From hydrobots to moto-terminators, Skynet has created sophisticated machinery to win the war against humanity in Terminator Salvation. “We are in an interim period,” says Christian Bale. “In the flash forward to 2029 that we’ve seen in previous movies, Skynet has absolute dominance of all the armies. In the present, we’ve got a lot of T-600s, and a phenomenal array of machines.” Seems as though John Connor and crew have a lot to contend with!

T-600

The T-600 is Skynet’s greatest foot soldier, which McG describes as “bigger and nastier” than the T-800. The T-600 is a massive seven-foot-three robot programmed to seek out humans. It carries a mini-gun capable of shooting from 3000 to 6000 rounds per minute, and a backpack full of ammunition.

Aerostats

These are four-foot-long aerial sentries that buzz around hunting for any sign of human life. They are equipped with digital cameras and laser-imaging technology and send wireless reports back to Skynet, which then sends in the big gun: the Harvester.

The Harvester

At about 50 feet tall, the Harvester is the largest Terminator in existence in 2018. It resembles a spider, with multiple steel arms and legs extending from a thorax-like body with jointed claw-like appendages for capturing its victims and putting them in the Transporters to be taken to Skynet.

Moto-Terminators

The Harvester houses a fleet of Moto-Terminators, which are bike-like machines (based on the Ducati motorbike) that race off after the humans to catch them. Although they carry guns, their main objective is to retrieve escapees and return them to the Harvester.

The Hydrobot

Resembling four-foot-long segmented serpents, eyeless but with razor-sharp heads that drill into their victims, Hydrobots respond to sound and vibrations in the waters they prowl.

Toni-Marie Ippolito Machines