McG Tackles T4

The fast food menu item turned director, McG—Charlie’s Angels fame—is slated to direct T4, aka Terminator Salvation: The Future Begins for a 2009 release.

According to IMDB the plot goes a little something like this (harmonica please!):

After Skynet has destroyed much of humanity in a nuclear holocaust, a group of survivors led by John Connor (Bale) struggles to keep the machines from finishing the job.

Bale is none other than Christian Bale. You may remember his work in Empire of the Sun directed by Steven Spielberg. No? How about Newsies? Swing Kids? Then you surely caught him in Reign of Fire? Ok, 3:10 To Yuma, or The Prestige? Not familiar, huh?

Anyway, the writers of T3, Rise of the Machines say that they put in little plot details as a set up for this next film. Apparently the idea is to reboot the series in a new direction with T4 setting off a brand new trilogy.

Personally, I liked T3 so I am looking forward to this new series with great anticipation, though it’s tempered by the fact that the series was purchased by a new production company called The Halcyon Company headed up by a former Marketing guy and a former Finance guy. Not that Marketing and Finance guys can’t be uber-fans of science fiction movies. Heck, I am both a former finance guy and a Marketing guy so that makes me just as guilty as these two yokels. In fact, I believe every movie studio and production company should contain at least one of each of these types of guys, if not more. But quotes by one if the partners saying that this new movie will build on the already huge fan base of the franchise makes me a little frightened.

No mention of staying true to the original vision of creator James Cameron or how the franchise might diverge from the storyline of the first film but it will be true to the overall thematic arc of mankind’s struggle against its own creation while dealing with the complex implications (and paradoxes) of time travel. Nope. It’s all “already huge worldwide Terminator fan base,” which is from the actual quote. For some reason if I put in my Babel Fish, I’m translating “already huge worldwide Terminator fan base” as “ready to spend huge amounts of hard cold cash paying worldwide Terminator geeks-who-will-pay-through-the-nose-to-see-hot-chicks- and-robot-violence-fan base.”

Maybe it’s just me being cynical.

The script has understandably been kept under wraps but with the current speculation on casting, I guess John Connor is about as old as we’ve ever seen him: A man and not a whiny little golden boy with a robotic arm—wait wrong franchise! That doesn’t mean we will not see a self-loathing mope, as that is the persona that Mr. Bale does best.

What we can be joyous about is that the film finally will be set in the post-apocalyptic world that we geeks-who-will-pay-through-the-nose-to-see-hot- chicks-and-robot-violence-fans have been absolutely dying to witness on screen. No more short glimpses of tanks crushing piles of human skulls while the military march plays, we’re talking full on war story in the middle of the shit storm that is the machine uprising as promised to us some two and a half decades ago.

There is this troubling thing about a character named Marcus played by Sam Worthington, whom McG said is going to be the focus of the film. Also McG mentions somewhere that some new Model 101 Terminator will be revealed. McG might have just as named it the Model T.

I’m all for the evolution of the robot models but what’s up with the numbering system. Wasn’t the original Terminator, played by Schwarzenegger a model T-1000 or something? Seems like a step backwards in my eyes. Shouldn’t this be the T-1003? Or the U model (since logically U follows T.) Or even better the TT-1000 or the ST-1000 (for Super Terminator) or maybe the SST-1000, the Super Sonic Terminator. Model 101 Terminator sounds to me like a vacuum cleaner. How about Model McG? Or The BLT? Or the Big MacG T? Mr. T-1000?

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