Terminator Salvation Advance Screening Report

We watched some exclusive early footage from McG's Terminator sequel, due out in June 2009, and heard what the director had to say about man, machines and making the franchise dark 'n' dirty

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Terminator Salvation

Film4 was among the select few invited on 19 November to the world premiere of footage from director McG's upcoming Terminator Salvation, due for general release next June. The footage we saw took the form of a hectic, seven-minute montage, like a slightly ramshackle, beefed-up trailer with unfinished shots (wires, green screen etc) and very little in the way of spoilers. Yep, the real meat of Terminator Salvation remains a closely guarded secret.

McG is very much the handsome Hollywood showman, a ringmaster who strutted across the front of the auditorium at London's Vue Leicester Square's bigging up the film, yet he told us very little we hadn't heard before. He's an entertaining chap though. "I realised how ridiculous my name sounds when I hear other people say it," he said, before explaining that he's been going by that moniker (his full name is Joseph McGinty Nichol) since he was a child. "It's a terrible cross to bear."

The director, whose previous credits include videos for Cypress Hill, Charlie's Angels and its sequel Full Throttle and the pilot for TV series 'Chuck', very much talks the talk. When he was first offered the Terminator gig, he said, "I thought, why flog a dead horse?" Franchise creator James Cameron did after all say that he told the story with Terminator 2: Judgment Day.

McG's well-honed anecdote about how he was drawn into Terminator Salvation is designed to satisfy fanboys and girls. We've always wanted to see the post-Judgment Day world. So be it. McG says, "Cameron didn't give us his blessing, but he didn't shit all over this movie". He says the cerebral Jonathan Nolan (brother of Christopher) really cracked it when he proposed a "becoming story" for John Connor. He says their early drafts of the screenplay had to be good enough to "read cold on a stage" to win over Christian Bale, who previously encountered the post-apocalypse in Reign Of Fire. McG likened this back-to-basics "becoming story" to what we've seen recently in the Batman and Bond franchises.

Next page • "A dirty, difficult, grimy, Giger world"