The Director of Terminator Salvation Speaks
Wanna know if Terminator Salvation pays any tribute to the Terminator films before it? Check out this interview with Director MCG.
On the payoffs fans can expect from the first film -
McG: Certainly. We pay off a great many things that are established -- particularly with Kyle Reese. We talk about the mythology of his shotgun strap, his proficiency for stealing cars, and we see where he learned a lot of these skills. And it wasn't from Connor, it was from the Marcus character, which is one of the joys of the picture. We cite "Pain can be controlled, you just disconnect it," you know, and we realize where he got that, and there's a great many tidbits for the hard-core fans out there. But it's designed as well for people who don't know that much about the ins and outs of the first films.
On shooting complicated scenes -
McG: Well a lot of the scenes take place in one shot, and figuring out places to hide the cuts... Again, I go to Children of Men -- the car sequence, where the motorbikes come, and Julianne Moore is shot, and the whole thing plays in one shot. Figuring that out is very difficult, and you've got to figure out exactly where you're going to have your blend points; you need to measure everything off, and consult with the visual effects people.
There's a big gas station sequence that had that, and that was very, very tedious, and very, very technical filmmaking. And that's why I love this film -- one day we're shooting a very intimate, character-driven scene, and there's nothing going on but Connor and his wife in a room, and she's the only one he can talk to about what's on his mind. And then the next day we're, you know, blowing up half of New Mexico, and going to a place of extraordinary action. So those are decidedly different hats to wear, day in, day out.
How he has dealt with injecting humor into the film -
McG: I don't. There's not a great deal of humor and warmth in this universe. It's very largely influenced by the Cormac McCarthy novel The Road. It's designed to feel that way -- detached and existential, it's got a great deal of Camus' The Stranger in it. But there's a gallows humor. We could all be in a bunker somewhere, and every now and again, you elbow the guy next to you and you make a wisecrack -- what else are you going to do? It's one of the defining characteristics of being human, even in the face of death. But the movie is designed to be very serious and very credible.
It is very nice to hear that a Director of a major motion movie picture is going to consider and follow up on the work that others have done before MCG got the directors chair. After all it was the work done on the previous films that have put MCG in the position that he is currently in.
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