Jan 19, 2009 - If he ever opted out of filmmaking, director McG would make an excellent motivational speaker. The man can talk and when he's done, whatever he's selling you you buy into. But after seeing some new footage from Terminator Salvation, the fourth film of the successful Terminator franchise, it didn't take McG's sales skills to convince most journalists gathered at the Directors Guild of America in LA in mid-January that his vision for the fourth Terminator movie works.

The Terminator Salvation footage screened shows a return to what made the first two films of the franchise so hugely popular.

McG, who admits he's not a big fan of the third film, cast Christian Bale (arguably one of the best actors of his generation) in the lead role, surrounded him with actors who can stand toe-to-toe with Bale without flinching, and then created a world filled with Skynet's horrifying machines for Bale and company to combat. The clips McG unveiled showed this 2018 post-apocalyptic world to be gritty and harsh, with McG selecting a 'dead stock' from Kodak and putting it through a process that damages the film in order to achieve a world devoid of vibrant colors.

McG's devotion to getting it right, to honoring the past films and pleasing the franchise's fans, was apparent in the clips (some with unfinished effects) screened for the press. "The whole platform for making this picture has just been about honesty and respect for the audience. That's really been what we've tried to achieve since the beginning," said McG.

After setting up what we were about to see, McG treated us to footage of a 'harvester', a bulky machine used to pick up and hold human survivors for use in later experiments (flash forward and these human guinea pigs are providing Skynet with the research needed to ultimately create the T-800 unit). We watched as Marcus Wright (Sam Worthington) and a young Kyle Reese (Anton Yelchin) fought off the harvester's attack before fleeing across the desert with a pair of Skynet's deadly motorcycles, moto-terminators, in pursuit.

Hydrobots, ghastly water beasts, were revealed in the next clip screened which showed the mechanical water-based creatures attacking John Connor's helicopter. That clip also featured John Connor and Marcus in a fierce argument over how to free Reese from Skynet. And McG was right about casting actors who can effectively square off against Bale. If this footage is indicative of other scenes, Worthington has the physical presence and skill to stand his ground when facing down Bale as John Connor.

Prior to, in between the clips, and after the footage was screened, McG spoke about different aspects of Terminator Salvation and answered a few questions from the assembled press:

McG on Signing on to Terminator Salvation and Getting the Right John Connor:

"For me, when I heard there was a Terminator out there, I had no interest whatsoever in making the picture. I always subscribed to the Jim Cameron idea of, 'Hey, I've told that story after the first two pictures.' And I say that with respect to the third picture; you know I like Jonathon Mostow and this, that and the other. But Cameron was always very adamant about, 'I did it in two pictures and that's it.' And then I got to hearing about what the take was, and the take was indeed a post Judgment Day story. So right there that peaked my interest. It wasn't just, you know, present day Terminator comes back, first one is Arnold, second one is a T-1000 liquid metal, third one's a girl, and the fourth one is a trannie. It was a new beginning in that respect, so that peaked my interest."
"I went down and I read it and I liked some elements, but I didn't like elements of the script… I went down to [producer Moritz Borman's] office in Santa Monica and we began to engage in talking about what it would take to reinvigorate the franchise and frankly get some credibility back into the Terminator mythology. We want to have a lot of respect for it."

"So I read it, I got some ideas, we start to work a little bit on the story but we think, 'You know, the first thing we've got to do is protect the material and show the fans that we really mean business and we've got to get a great John Connor. …So I took a deep breath and I deferred to all of you. I thought, 'Who would be the most compelling John Connor possible?' To me the choice is very simple. It's Christian Bale. I regard him as the most credible, talented actor of his generation."

"At that time he was shooting The Dark Knight and I was going over to England, so I went over to that Battersea Station Power where that Pink Floyd record cover was shot and they were doing this big sequence from The Dark Knight. And then Bale came to meet me at one of his favorite pubs, and we talked about it. He read the script and in short order told me to f--k right off. He didn't like it. He said, 'I like the idea but I'm not interested in the action. I'm not interested in the pyrotechnics and the explosions. I'm interested in the story.' And it's funny to be standing on a stage like this because he said, 'If you can get it to a place where you could just read it, actors on the stage could just read it naked and it would be compelling to a room like this for two hours because the characters change and evolve and go from this place to that place, then we'd have something to talk about.' I told him, 'Well, that's my intention.' He said, 'Well, that's great but until it's on the page, I'm not doing it.' I said, 'Okay, I'll continue to work on it.'"

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