McG and Bryce Dallas Howard, “This is our new baby, we named him T-600 McG-Dallas-Howard.”
The world of Terminator fandom let out a collective groan when the news was announced that McG, director of the Charlie’s Angels films, is at the helm of the upcoming Terminator Salvation. The film, the fourth in the more than twenty year-old franchise, stars Christian Bale as John Conner. Bale unfortunately did not join the rest of the cast in promoting the film at Comic-Con. There was a press conference immediately following the big announcement panel, and the star of the show, surprisingly, was director McG.
When asked about the overall feel of the film, McG said, “I’m tremendously influenced by Children of Men, hat’s off to that picture, I think it’s fantastic… By the same token, this isn’t designed to be an art picture, it’s for audiences the world over, so you’ve got to find a balance between that artistic take and what’s right for a film to be seen by a great many people around the world.”
Many fans are concerned that McG’s take will further derail the franchise, rather than improving upon the rather dismal third film. McG seemed more than prepared to address these fears, making explicit his interactions with James Cameron, the creator and director of the first two films. “I did not want to move forward on this picture if Jim were like, ‘**** you, what are you doing?’ It’s very simple, I would have acquiesced and said, ‘You’re right, you’re the creator of what this is, and I respect that.’ And he was very encouraging, we talked at length about the story, we talked about Sam [Worthington], and most particularly, we talked about his experience on Aliens, and the idea that you can’t live in fear, you’ve got to move forward.”
At this point in the press conference, two things were clear: one, McG can really work a crowd, and two, he’s very tuned in to the concerns of the fans. His biggest obstacle is the public perception that he’s a cocky young Hollywood director-for-hire with a weird nick-name who gets big studio films because the producers are scared of risking money on someone with more “vision.” McG was surprisingly frank about his own track record, and even spoke candidly about earning his stripes on lesser appreciated films. “I’ve talked to Bryce [Dallas Howard] about how you’ve got to be on Happy Days before you can be the great Ron Howard. Maybe you’ve got to be Spicoli before you can be Sean Penn, and maybe you’ve got to do some time on 21 Jump Street before you can grow into the boots of Johnny Depp. There’s nothing wrong with paying your dues, and I’m certainly willing to pay mine.” It’s funny. Even though I really think he practiced that little speech in the bathroom mirror the night before, it still worked on me. I believed him, he’s a Hollywood director who’s working his way toward material that has more substance, and Terminator Salvation is looking like it could be quite substantial.
At this point McG resorted to some minor theatrics. He pulled out a model T-600 head with glowing eyes (pictured above) and said, “This is where it all happens. Inside this, the CPU will represent the rise of the machines to a place of complete dominance. We’re heading towards that place very rapidly, day in, day out. I’m looking at all the open laptops, I’m looking at all the digital cameras. All these things are very new, and just getting faster and more intuitive and more intelligent all the time.” At that point I started to become scared of my MacBook. This guys is really good. He’s like a snake-oil salesman, and I’ll admit it, I was buying hook line and sinker.
Indulging this thread of promotional paranoia, a reporter asked if he thought the rapid pace of technological advancement was a good thing. He said, “Who here would suggest that humanity is in great shape?” An awkward pause fell over the room. Eventually nervous laughter filled the void, at which point something rather surreal happened. Bryce Dallas Howard, cheery and charismatic daughter of Ron Howard, started to laugh really loudly. Like a crazy cackle. She was probably laughing at the silence like the rest of us, but to me it seemed like she was some sort of sick Judgement Day Angel of Doom, chuckling as humanity plummeted into a hopeless apocalypse of which she was immune.
Meanwhile, McG continued evangelizing against the machines, “Where does humanity begin and the machine world end? We can deconstruct the human genome so if your dad had high blood pressure your kid doesn’t have to. That’s kind of scary and amazing … Think about how much more quickly a computer can make a decision than our human mind can. And should that computer become aware, who knows?”
I will go see Terminator Salvation as soon as it comes out, but I will also be terrified that the digital projector will find a way to kill me before the movie is over.
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