Terminator Salvation

Terminator Salvation

Director: Joseph “McG” McGinty Nichol
Release Date: May 21, 2009
Starring: Christian Bale, Sam Worthington, Anton Yelchin, Bryce Dallas Howard, Moon Bloodgood, CommonHelena Bonham Carter, Roland Kickinger, Arnold Schwarzenegger
Language: English
Country: United States

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Terminator Salvation is an American science fiction post-apocalyptic war film set for release on May 21, 2009. Directed by McG, it is the fourth Terminator film and stars Christian Bale as John Connor and Sam Worthington as the Terminator Marcus Wright. It also introduces a young version of the first film’s hero, Kyle Reese, played by Anton Yelchin. The film, set in 2018, focuses on the war between humanity and Skynet. It abandons the formula of previous entries in the series, which involved Terminators and various other characters traveling through time to protect or kill John Connor. It is both a sequel and prequel to the previous films.

The fourth installment of the Terminator series follows an adult John Connor (played by Christian Bale) as he attempts to organize a human resistance force which could prove to be humankind’s last true hope for survival in the war against their intelligent robot overlords. Opening in the year 2018, Terminator Salvation finds John Connor’s certainty about the future shaken by the sudden appearance of a mysterious stranger named Marcus Wright (Sam Worthington), whose last memory is of sitting on death row and awaiting execution. Unable to determine whether Marcus was sent from the future or rescued from the past, Connor begins to wonder whether there is still any hope left for the human race as the robots grow more powerful and aggressive than ever before.

It appears that Skynet is preparing a devastating final attack designed to eliminate the human resistance forces once and for all, leaving Connor and Marcus with no choice but to strike back at the cybernetic heart of Skynet’s operations. Once there, the two battle-scarred soldiers discover a devastating secret regarding the potential annihilation of all humankind. Anton Yelchin fills Michael Biehn’s shoes as a young Kyle Reese in what is planned to be a new Terminator trilogy from director McG (Charlie’s Angels).

On May 23, 2008, Warner Bros. released the following plot summary for the film. The synopsis was modified on June 11, 2008:

Set in post-apocalyptic 2018, John Connor (Christian Bale), the man fated to be the leader of the human resistance against Skynet and its army of Terminators, and the future he was raised to believe in is altered in part by the appearance of Marcus Wright (Sam Worthington), a stranger whose last memory is of being on death row. Connor must decide whether Marcus has been sent from the future or rescued from the past. As Skynet prepares its final onslaught, Connor and Marcus both embark on an odyssey that takes them into the heart of Skynet’s operations, where they find out a terrible secret that may lead to the possible annihilation of mankind.

At the beginning, Connor does not start off as leader of the human resistance, but he will work his way up through the ranks in the film. He is also mistrusted by other soldiers due to his extensive knowledge of Skynet. McG said that it will be about the development of the Model 101 Terminator as well: scenes involve humans being captured and studied by Skynet in order to perfect their cybernetic organisms and Connor explaining “if we let these things go online, the war is over.” Skynet captures Kyle Reese because it is aware Reese is Connor’s father, and uses him as a bait in an attempt to kill Connor.

Cast:

  • Christian Bale as John Connor: A young soldier waging war against Skynet after it destroyed much of humanity in a nuclear holocaust, who is destined to become humanity’s leader. Director McG deemed Bale “the most credible action star in the world” during development. Bale was the first person to be cast and signed on for the role in November 2007. McG talked extensively with Bale in the UK about the role while the latter was filming The Dark Knight, and they both agreed to proceed. Although a fan of the Terminator series, he was at first uninterested, until McG convinced him the story would be character-based and not rely on special effects. They kept working on the story every day, along with Worthington. McG said Bale broke his hand punching a Terminator prop during filming. Bale also spent six to eight hours each day with McG in the editing room to advise the finished product.
  • Sam Worthington as Marcus Wright: A resistance soldier who is plagued with vague memories and is discovered to be a decommissioned Terminator. His last memory is of being on death row, and Connor is unsure of whether Wright is from the past or from the future. Terminator creator James Cameron personally recommended Worthington (whom he directed in Avatar) to McG. Russell Crowe also recommended him to McG. McG decided Worthington looked tougher than the “great many of today’s waify young male actors”. Worthington recalled Cameron told him “the Terminator to make is the one with the war”. Worthington tore his intercostal muscles during the first weeks of filming, but he nevertheless insisted on performing his own stunts. McG once expressed interest in casting Daniel Day-Lewis or Josh Brolin in the part. Brolin did talk to Bale and read a draft of the screenplay, which he found “interesting and dark, but ultimately, though, I didn’t think it felt right”.
  • Anton Yelchin as Kyle Reese: A teenage soldier and admirer of John Connor. As portrayed by Michael Biehn in The Terminator, he was sent back in time to 1984 to protect Sarah Connor to ensure the survival of the human race, and he conceived John with her. Yelchin said he wanted to portray Reese just as Biehn did and not make him appear weaker just because it was a younger version of the character. The difference in his portrayal lies in showing Reese as intense, but not concentrated and focused until he joins the resistance proper. Yelchin tried to convey Reese’s intensity by focusing on how fast Biehn appeared when running in the original film.
  • Bryce Dallas Howard as Kate Connor: John’s wife, who is seven months pregnant. Charlotte Gainsbourg was originally set to play the part, but left due to scheduling conflicts with another film. As portrayed by Claire Danes in the third film, Kate was a veterinarian, but in this film, she is now a physician. Howard suggested, as part of the character’s backstory, that Kate studied medical books and interviewed many surviving doctors after the events of Judgement Day. The film’s subject matter reminded her of developing countries, devastated by war and lack basic supplies such as clean water, which “reflects things that are going on currently in this privileged world that we’re living in where there hasn’t been an apocalypse and robots haven’t taken over the world. I think that’s something definitely for us to reinvestigate and that we continue to make choices for our own future to take that into consideration.” Howard also focused on Kate “being accustomed to fear and loss” because the character was a military brat.
  • Moon Bloodgood as Blair Williams: A “no-nonsense and battle-hardened” pilot in the resistance suffering from survivor guilt. She will apparently be a romantic interest for Marcus.
  • Common as Barnes: A resistance soldier and John’s right-hand man.
  • Helena Bonham Carter as Serena Kogen: The lead villain of the film. Tilda Swinton was originally considered for the part, but Carter replaced her just before filming. She accepted the part, as her partner, Tim Burton, is a big Terminator fan. Her role was a “small but pivotal” one and would only require ten days of shooting. On August 22, 2008, Carter delayed filming by a day, and was given an indefinite leave due to the death of four of her family members in a minibus accident in South Africa.
  • Arnold Schwarzenegger and Roland Kickinger as the T-800 Model 101: Schwarzenegger provides his voice, while the Austrian bodybuilder Kickinger was Schwarzenegger’s double on set. Digital makeup was used to make him resemble the previous T-800 actor. Kickinger previously portrayed Schwarzenegger in a 2005 biographical film on the A&E Network. McG explained he wanted the T-800 to look like the younger Schwarzenegger in the 1984 film. Polish strongman athlete Mariusz Pudzianowski was also considered for doubling Schwarzenegger.

Additional cast members include Brian Steele as a T-600, Jadagrace as Star, a girl in Reese’s care, Chris Ashworth as Richter, Chris Browning as Morrison, Michael Ironside as General Ashdown, the resistance leader before John, Jane Alexander as a refugee, and Terry Crews. Linda Hamilton has been confirmed to reprise her role as Sarah Connor in voice-overs that opens and closes the movie; they are from tapes Sarah recorded before her death prior to the film’s events to warn John of the future war.

In 1999, two years after C2 Pictures purchased the rights to the franchise, two Terminator films’ premise were mapped out and were supposed to be developed simultaneously. The idea for two more films originated from the Internet and interactive companies, which both films were planned to deal with. Tedi Sarafian was hired to write Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines (2003), which he eventually received story credits for, while David C. Wilson was to write Terminator 4. Before any revisions were done, T3 initially took place in 2001 and revolved around the first attacks between Skynet and humans. T4 would follow immediately afterwards and centered primarily on the war seen in the first two movies.

Following the release of Terminator 3 in 2003, producers Andrew G. Vajna and Mario Kassar contracted Nick Stahl and Claire Danes to return as John Connor and Kate Brewster in another film. Director Jonathan Mostow supervised the script by John D. Brancato and Michael Ferris, and was set to begin production in 2005 after completing another film. It was known by then Arnold Schwarzenegger’s role would be limited having assumed office as Governor of California. The producers sought to have Warner Bros. finance the picture as they did for Terminator 3. In 2005, Stahl said Connor and Brewster would be recast as the story jumped forward in time. By 2006, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, distributor of the original film The Terminator, was set to distribute the fourth film as part of the new CEO Harry Sloan’s scheme to make the studio a viable Hollywood player again.

On May 9, 2007, it was announced that production rights to the Terminator series had passed from the feuding Vajna and Kassar to the Halcyon Company. The producers hoped to start a new trilogy based on the franchise. By July 19, the project was in legal limbo due to a lawsuit between MGM and Halcyon subsidiary T Asset. MGM had an exclusive window of 30 days to negotiate for distribution of the Terminator films. When negotiating for Terminator 4, Halcyon rejected their initial proposal, and MGM suspended negotiations. After the 30 days were over, MGM claimed that the period during which negotiations were suspended did not count and their exclusive period was still open. Halcyon asked a court for an injunction allowing them to approach other distributors. WB was able to obtain North American distribution rights, while Sony Pictures Entertainment will distribute the film overseas.

McG signed on to direct as the first two films were among his favorites, and he had even cast Robert Patrick (who played the T-1000) in his films. Though he was initially unsure about “flogging a dead horse,” he felt the post-apocalyptic setting allowed the film to be different enough so to not be an inferior sequel. The idea that events in Terminator 2: Judgment Day and Terminator 3 altered the future also allowed them to be flexible with their presentation of the futuristic world. McG met with the series’ co-creator James Cameron, and, although he neither blessed nor cursed the project, Cameron told the new director he had faced a similar challenge when following Ridley Scott’s Alien with Aliens. He maintained two elements of the previous films; that Connor is an outsider to the authorities, and someone of future importance is being protected, and in this film it is Kyle Reese.

Paul Haggis rewrote the script, and Shawn Ryan made another revision three weeks before filming. Jonathan Nolan also wrote on set, which led to McG characterizing his work on the script as the most important; he chose to contribute to the film after Bale signed on and created Connor’s arc of becoming a leader. Anthony E. Zuiker contributed to the script as well. So extensive were the rewrites that Alan Dean Foster decided to rewrite the entire novelization after submitting it to his publisher, because the compiled shooting script was very different from the one he was given beforehand.

In the early script drafts, Connor was a secondary character. Producer James Middleton explained “Ben-Hur was influenced by Jesus Christ, but it was his story. Much in that way, this new main character will be influenced by John Connor.” John was to be killed at the end of the movie, and his image kept alive by the resistance by grafting his skin onto Marcus’ cybernetic body. McG was intrigued by the idea, but dropped it. McG and Nolan did continue the Christ element of Connor’s character though, in which he has some followers who believe what he knows about Skynet, and others who do not.

McG described the film’s theme as “where you draw the line between machines and humans”. The friendship between Marcus — who was treated wrongly when humanity still ruled the world — and Kyle Reese illustrates how war and suffering can bring out the best in people, such as when they worked together to survive during the Blitz. The title was derived from this second chance given to humanity and to Marcus, in addition to Connor’s efforts to save humanity from the machines. The film’s original title was Terminator Salvation: The Future Begins, but this was dropped during filming.

Throughout writing, the cast and crew would watch scenes from the three films to pick moments to reference or tribute, including “I’ll be back,” which is uttered by Connor in this film. McG found himself having to decide which ideas for references would be included and which would not. An opening scene has Connor fighting a Terminator on a crashed helicopter, which was storyboarded as a homage to the climax of the original film, where his mother Sarah, having broken her leg, is chased by a crippled Terminator. McG did this to reflect the skills Connor learned from her.

Shooting of the film started on May 5, 2008 in Albuquerque, New Mexico. The filmmakers had originally intended to begin filming on April 15 in Budapest, but a new twenty-five percent tax rebate and absence of an interest rate cap and floor made the filmmakers seek the cheaper New Mexico, because of their $200 million budget. To avoid delays caused by a possible 2008 Screen Actors Guild strike in July, all exterior scenes were completed by then, so production could restart easily. The shoot ended on August 22, 2008, though some pick-ups took place in January 2009.

In addition to Bale breaking his hand and Worthington hurting his back, special effects technician Mike Menardis almost lost his leg filming an explosion. The sequence required a manhole being blown into the air, which hit Menardis and partially severed his leg. McG noted it was testament to the gritty style of the film. “I say with respect, I didn’t want that Star Wars experience of everything’s a blue screen, tennis balls, and go for it. I had Stan Winston build all the machines. We built all the sets, the explosive power, the explosive power so you feel that wind and that percussion and that heat blowing your eyebrows off. And with that you get a couple bumps and bruises on the way, but you get it in an integrity and a realism that hopefully echoes Apocalypse Now. You couldn’t say, ‘Let’s just shoot Apocalypse Now in Burbank, I think it’s going to feel just as good.’”

The film used Technicolor’s Oz process during post-production. This is a partial silver retention on the interpositive, similar to bleach bypass, which will be used to lend to the sense of detachment from the modern world McG was looking for. The filmmakers consulted with many scientists about the effects of an abandoned world and nuclear winter. McG cited Mad Max 2, the original Star Wars trilogy and Children of Men, as well as the novel The Road, as his visual influences. He instructed his cast to read the latter as well as Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep.

The majority of the machines were designed by Martin Laing, a crew member on Cameron’s Titanic and Ghosts of the Abyss. McG described many of the machines as having a H. R. Giger influence. McG’s intent was to create a gritty, tactile 2018 on screen, and Laing concurred the robots would have to be black and degraded as none of them are new. Laing devised Aerostats, which are smaller versions of the Aerial Hunter Killers from the previous films. These Aerostats send a signal to the 60 feet tall humanoid Harvesters. They are very big and slow, so they utilize Mototerminators to capture humans, and the Harvesters place them in Transporters. Laing was unsure of how to design the Transporters until he saw a cattle transport while driving through Albuquerque. Completing Skynet’s domination of air, land and sea is the Hydrobot, which Laing modelled on eels. The film features the rubber-skinned T-600s and T-700s. McG interpreted Kyle Reese’s description in the original film of the T-600 as being easy to spot by making them tall and bulky.

Salvation was one of the last films Winston, the visual effects supervisor on the first three films, worked on. He died on June 15, 2008 from multiple myeloma, and McG will dedicate the film to him. John Rosengrant and Charlie Gibson replaced Winston, and McG commented that they are “trying to achieve something that’s never been done before” and will “push the envelope”. Motion capture was used to show damage to the Terminator Marcus’ face, while a 20 feet tall model was used for the explosion of a 30-story building.

During filming, Bale became angry at director of photography Shane Hurlbut, swearing at him and threatening to leave the film; audio of the incident was leaked in February 2009. Bale apologized publicly and said he resolved his differences with Hurlbut, and that when the incident took place they continued to film for a few hours.

Danny Elfman began composing the score in January 2009. Beforehand, McG had the idea to hire Gustavo Santaolalla, who he got to speak with, to work on the human themes, while having either Thom Yorke or Jonny Greenwood for Skynet’s themes. He also wanted to discuss scoring the film with Hans Zimmer, but he was unable to arrange a meeting. However, he managed to meet with The Terminator and Terminator 2 composer Brad Fiedel. McG was not interested in repeating the sounds Fiedel achieved in his films but still wanted Elfman to use those themes and ambient sounds, and give them a “Wagnerian quality”. Common has expressed interest in writing a song for the soundtrack.

The film will be released in North America on May 21, 2009 in conventional theaters as well as in IMAX, and it could be rated PG-13 by the Motion Picture Association of America, unlike the previous R-rated films. The producers cited the desire to broaden the series to a new audience and the modern leniency of violence in PG-13 films (such as Live Free or Die Hard), but they stated they would not force the rating.

McG explained, “We want to make the best film possible. We just don’t care about the rating. We don’t aim for the rating and we’ve been given the freedom by the head of the studio to just make the best picture possible. That’s very, very freeing. We’re just going to make the movie.” One issue McG and the studio discussed was the inclusion of a topless shot of Moon Bloodgood, though the former mentioned that he would refuse to cut out that scene should it compromise the film.

In addition to the novelization by Alan Dean Foster, there will also be a prequel novel entitled From the Ashes by Timothy Zahn and two spin-offs. IDW Publishing will release a four-issue prequel comic, as well as an adaptation. Due in January 2009, it follows Connor rallying together the resistance in 2017, as well as examining normal people overcoming their intolerances to defeat Skynet. Playmates Toys, Sideshow Collectibles, Character Options, and DC Unlimited will produce merchandise. A roller coaster will open at Six Flags Magic Mountain. A video game of the same name will coincide with the release of the film. The game will be a third-person shooter.

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