Last night at the Directors Guild in Hollywood, Director McG introduced four new clips from his highly anticipated TERMINATOR SALVATION (opening May 22 from Warner Bros.), and encapsulated his filmmaking journey thus far in an informal Q&A with journalists.
Naturally, the emphasis was on action in this origin story about John Connor (Christian Bale) evolving from foot soldier to leader of the resistance against Skynet and its army of Terminators in a post-apocalyptic world in 2018. The best sequence involved Connor fleeing from the huge Harvester robot with a group of refugees. McG apologized for not being able to show off ILM's completed vfx. "I'm tired of seeing previs already!"
In fact, McG lauded ILM's work and the supervision of Ben Snow (IRON MAN) as well as the overall supervision of Charles Gibson (PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN: AT WORLD's END). When asked how ILM is raising the bar beyond what it has achieved on TRANSFORMERS and IRON MAN, the director told VFXWORLD: "They are writing new code. I can't tell where the practical ends and the set extensions begin."
McG added that he desired "real robots" and that there's a great economy of visual effects in the movie. Overall, he requested an "otherworldliness to speak to a post-apocalyptic world." He consulted with Caltech and Kodak, which provided a "dead stock that was baked" and three times the normal silver in the negative. The result was a "patina of realism" to achieve a desolate feeling.
Gibson writes in the film's website blog:"... McG's take is to weave science-fiction elements into a state-of-the-art action film: The camera always moves, the imagery is raw and kinetic, the pace is insane. The creative challenge for me will be to bury the effects into the photography but to still protect our big visual moments... We've been waiting to see this world for years -- it's only been glimpsed and hinted at in the previous TERMINATOR movies. We're able to revisit the elements that have been established, but we're going to be adding a whole lot more."
McG explained that he initially had no interest in making the fourth entry in the popular TERMINATOR franchise, but was intrigued by the potential of the Post Judgment Day origin story. As for attracting Bale, at first the highly-regarded star of the rebooted BATMAN franchise turned him down with one caveat: "If you can read it naked on a stage and it is compelling," then he would consider the part.
Although McG does not have James Cameron's blessing, the TERMINATOR creator told him of the daunting experience he had making ALIENS and hopes he makes a good movie. As for the film's relevant sci-fi theme, McG says it's about "That which makes us great will be our undoing."
-- By VFXWorld and AWM Senior Editor Bill Desowitz
