Terminator Salvation

2008 saw the death of an honest-to-God film legend. And I know that term gets thrown around a lot when someone dies in Hollywood, but there’s no other way to describe special effects wizard Stan Winston. In fact, when you look at Winston’s body of work (which includes Terminator, Jurassic Park, Aliens, Predator, Iron Man, Edward Scissorhands, and – regrettably – the Star Wars Christmas Special), it’s awfully tempting to call him the most influential FX man of the past forty years. This is the guy who gave me nightmares as a kid, had me dreaming about dinosaurs and spaceships as a teenager, and now has earned my continued awe and respect as a film student. If that’s laying it on a little thick, well… what can I say? He literally designed the look of my childhood.

And while Winston and his crew certainly knew their way around a computer, I’ve always thought he deserved the most recognition for his non-CGI work. Winston’s puppets, models, and miniatures make up some of the coolest monsters in Hollywood history, beginning with one of his earliest projects (and still one of his best), the metal Terminator exoskeletons.

So perhaps it’s fitting that one of the last movies Winston worked on before his death was Terminator Salvation.

And, yes, I’m very excited.

See, we’ve pretty much reached the point where puppets and models and miniatures are obsolete. Any robot or spaceship or dinosaur can be animated on a computer for around the same price. And, in all fairness, in most cases the CGI will look better. Bottom line: you can always do more with a computer.

But, when done right, nothing tops a real, physical model. Because the better CGI gets, the more you’re drawn out of the movie and end up thinking, “wow, that’s really good CGI!” But a puppet can actually scare the pants off you. Or at least me, anyway. Maybe it’s not the same for everyone. And don’t get me wrong, I’m well aware that the Terminator franchise (specifically number 2) was one of the defining moments in CG effects history (and I’ll be talking about that in more detail next week), but still… at the end of the day, I’ll always take a puppet over a drawing. Maybe it’s a generational thing. I was raised on old-school Lucas and Spielberg and Cameron, so this is what I’ve come to appreciate. Maybe the kids raised on Lord of the Rings and Harry Potter will look back and think puppets are stupid.

All I know is that Terminator Salvation can only benefit from the awesome work of Stan Winston.

McG has said time and again that he’s going for a gritty, realistic, dirty, ugly feel for this movie, and going the extra mile to at least include some puppetry was absolutely the right call.

Oh, and for the record, Winston was one of the leading engineers in animatronics, meaning in other words that he actually built real freaking robots. If he had to go, I’m glad he went doing Terminator.

But what do you think? What works better for you? Would you rather see shiny computer drawings, or gritty, greasy models?

jakeb get psyched, history