Marcus.
How are you?
Ask me in an hour.
I thought I'd try...
...one last time.
You should have stayed in San Francisco, Dr. Kogan.
By signing this consent form...
...you'd be donating your body to a noble cause.
You'd...
...have a second chance, through my research, to live again.
You know what I did.
My brother and two cops are dead because of me.
I'm not looking for a second chance.
But I'm not the only one with a death sentence, am I?
Do you think I'm gonna cure your cancer, Serena?
I'm not worried about myself.
I'm worried about the future of the human race.
I'll sell it to you.
For what?
A kiss.
So that's what death tastes like.
You're doing something very noble.
No, I'm guilty.
Just cut me up until there's nothing left.
Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death...
...I will fear no evil, for thou art with me.
Thy rod and thy staff, they comfort me.
Do you have any last words?
This is basically an early animation movie of this shot.
You can see by looking here basically how rough everything is...
...and you can also see clearly where the different plates come together...
...that make up the shot.
In the earlier Terminator films, I literally used every trick in the book.
And Terminator Salvation 's no different.
In this one, we were able to use some of the techniques...
...that simply weren't possible back when they made the earlier films.
Some of the techniques we like to call digital cinema techniques.
So that we can take giant shots...
...where we have to shoot it in little parts and combine those together...
...to make something that hopefully you don't really think of...
...as being, you know, visual-effects heavy.
Go, go, go!
- And action! - And action!
And out.
--To be of the highest priority.
Connor, there's no sign of the machines. They're gone.
You know, it comes in like this and they come in, all the tension, all the tension.
It's lit almost entirely by the sure fires on top of the guns.
I like it best if they have to, like, come out and around.
Then duck in here and then they have to go under here, you know what I mean?
This is where they're doing the research on us.
I like it best if they have to, like, come out and around.
Then duck in here and then they have to go under here, you know what I mean?
This is where they're doing the research on us.
The humans are the rats in this movie. They're doing research on the humans...
...in the interest of getting to that Arnold Schwarzenegger place...
...the T-800 level of proficiency.
It's the equivalent of, you know...
...not to sound vulgar, but, like, a slaughterhouse.
You don't give a great deal of care...
...to the cow, "You okay? You have a good life?"
As it heads into that last spot...
...where it gets the thing from No Country for Old Men...
...to the back of the head and away it goes.
You know what I mean? Like, there's no regard for comfort or anything...
...and it's like any other prison camp, if you die, then you die.
That just-- That almost separates the wheat from the chaff properly for them.
There's something else you have to see.
- Hard wall. - Get what we came for, Barbarosa.
The clock's ticking.
Spread out, secure the perimeter. I got a big gap over here.
Why didn't we know about this?
Sir, I think this is what Command's looking for. I'm in their source code.
These people are being taken to San Francisco.
Some sort of R and D project for a new Terminator.
Send it to Command.
- It's uploading. I need two minutes. - Wait, wait, wait. Go back. Go back.
Stop.
- T-800. - A new Terminator.
It's like you said it would be.
- It's worse. - Get your nose out of that.
None of your business. You're not leading this mission.
Let's cut these sorry bastards loose. Come on. Let's go.
- Jericho, come in. - Watch that.
Come in, Jericho.
Connor, get your ass topside. Remind those men...
...they need to answer me on the radio, even if they're dead.
Connor!
...it's really good to have a stuntman there doing the role of the Terminator.
It helps the actors on set to complete their performance.
COPY-
The film was always-- The script was always very Marcus-intensive.
And it is to this day...
...but once we got Christian involved as Connor...
...it seemed appropriate to make the story more of a true two-hander.
We worked more on the script...
...during prep and more during principal photography...
...than I traditionally like to do.
You have to keep working to get it to where you like it...
...and Christian is very particular and Sam is very particular...
...and I'm very particular. And we weren't happy enough with the story.
So we continued to work it coming from a place of responsibility.
What has been so fun about this movie and free and crazy...
...is that we just, in many ways...
...sometimes, you know, just are developing...
...a lot of the things as we go too.
Which is really, like...
...a great way to do as an artist.
Return to base, sir?
- RTB? - Negative.
We worked intimately with the Air Force, Kirkland Air Force Base in New Mexico.
And they were cool because they let us use the Pave Hawk H-60 helicopter...
...which is featured in the film.
Request has been denied.
Command doesn't wanna give up their position. Radio comms only.
- Are they down there? - Request has been denied, sir.
Need-to-know only. That's straight from the top.
John Connor.
Prophesized leader of the Resistance.
Soldier, you put every man and woman in this sub in jeopardy...
...with your little frogman stunt.
But imagine you're the Joint Chiefs of Staff and he's a soldier...
...and a soldier should damn well do what he's told to do out in the field.
Now he has pulled a pretty interesting stunt...
...to come in here and wanna talk to you.
There's no animosity here, but it damn well better be good.
Because you got a lot of things on your plate...
...and if every soldier in the field went, "I want my 1O minutes with command"...
...that would get annoying in a hurry and the machine would break down.
This is ultimately a becoming story.
We see the becoming of John Connor, the leader.
And ultimately, there's a fracture...
...between the Resistance Command and Connor himself.
And it's that choice that results in Connor...
...being thrust to the leadership position of the Resistance.
This film is the story of his becoming the leader of the Resistance.
But imagine you're the Joint Chiefs of Staff and he's a soldier...
...and a soldier should damn well do what he's told to do out in the field.
Now he has pulled a pretty interesting stunt...
...to come in here and wanna talk to you.
There's no animosity here, but it damn well better be good.
Because you got a lot of things on your plate...
...and if every soldier in the field went, "I want my 1O minutes with command"...
...that would get annoying in a hurry and the machine would break down.
This is ultimately a becoming story.
We see the becoming of John Connor, the leader.
And ultimately, there's a fracture...
...between the Resistance Command and Connor himself.
And it's that choice that results in Connor...
...being thrust to the leadership position of the Resistance.
This film is the story of his becoming the leader of the Resistance.
John Connor is definitely a guy with a lot of issues.
Somebody who knows their future.
Who's been told their future...
...the burden of knowing...
...you're supposed to be the leader of the Resistance...
...and therefore mankind, and their saviour.
He cannot lock himself away in a basement...
...and everything's gonna be fine.
He's gotta be out fighting. He's a fighter.
I saw him very much as kind of like an Achilles sort of character.
He's somebody who loves the fray.
But he is battling with the loss of people every single day.
You know, he's battling with what, you know, soldiers deal with.
There's the loss of very good friends and--
He is not the leader that the people are probably expecting at that point.
Like watching someone struggle with what they think their destiny is...
...making the right choices heading in that direction.
I mean, that's really life too.
"Am I making the right steps to fulfil my destiny?"
Everything that you see in the outpost...
...is the layers that the Resistance fighters have brought in.
So it was about thinking about how--
What these guys could've dragged in here...
...from their sort of expeditions out into the world.
And what would have been realistic...
...and, you know, what they could've jury-rigged together...
...in order to make this a functioning facility.
The great thing is we are actually living in a contrasting society here...
...where we actually have the Resistance hiding underground...
...and then we then have the Terminators living in their new world.
This is based-- Originally, we were gonna make the movie in Hungary.
We did a tour of Hungary, went to Budapest...
...and then we were actually given tours down...
...underneath the centre of the capital of Budapest...
...to the nuclear fallout shelters they have there.
I took a series of photographs, came back...
...and sort of created this world that you see before us.
I mean, people are gonna be so impressed...
...with just how great everything is...
...and just how detailed and complicated and interesting this world is.
This is tape number 28 of Sarah Connor to my son, John.
What's most difficult is trying to decide...
...what to tell you and what not to.
Should I tell you about your father?
Will it affect your decision to send him back in time to protect me...
...knowing that he is your father?
And he'll be younger than you. Only a teenager when you meet him.
God, a person could go crazy thinking about this.
But if you don't send Kyle, you can never be...
...and Skynet will win the war.
You want to talk about him?
Kyle is out there somewhere alone, and Skynet is hunting him.
What about the signal?
What do you think?
If it works, it's incredible.
- We have to be careful. - I agree.
- But we have to try. - Okay.
All right, start with something small that we're familiar with.
We should capture a Hydrobot, bring it in for testing.
Yeah.
What is it, John?
Kill Kyle Reese, reset the future...
...no John Connor.
...that's real and live as possible.
You know, it helps your actors get more involved.
You're obviously not a Resistance fighter, so take it off.
Take it off!
One of the things that we did on Terminator was use miniatures.
We used those because--
If we wanna blow up a building, it's still one of the best ways.
Plus, it's a lot more fun than sitting, watching a computer screen...
...doing simulation after simulation.
The crumbling building was about 8--
I think it was about 22 feet tall.
There was basically a telescope rig, in the centre of the building...
...with rods that went out to each floor.
And this building was basically hanging on this telescope rig...
...until the moment that it had to drop.
At that moment--
The whole building itself was sitting on tempered glass, okay?
So we blew the tempered glass, causing the building to drop about 6 inches...
...and get a tremendous shock about it, which basically broke it all apart...
...and then the telescoping rig in the centre, holding it at various points...
...going down through the floors yanked it--
Basically yanked it straight down.
That was a Hunter-Killer.
Thanks to you, they know we're here.
What's your name, kid?
Now, the Hydrobots turned out to be pretty fun, interesting character...
...sort of a cross between a psychotic crab...
...and some sort of sea serpent thing.
What's important about the scene is that you get to examine them...
...out of the water...
...so that later on when they do attack both John Connor and Marcus...
...I think the audience will have a good idea of what that creature is.
They're air-actuated.
They have long pincers. They come off of here.
They'll have...
...big pincers built on the front, big drill bit that spins down the centre.
All this will be really weathered down...
...and it's gonna look like an old piece of technology.
If there's any interruption...
0K8)'-
I wanted a very original-looking film and I wanted the film to feel slightly off.
So you look at it and cock your head to one side and go:
"Something happened here."
The something that happened, of course, is the bombs went off.
And to do that, we used different dead, old stocks from Kodak...
...along with some contemporary stocks...
...but we would damage the film by subjecting it to heat...
...to a degree where it loses its quality characteristics.
Then we would develop the film in different ways...
...experimenting with three times as much silver.
And that to me is the most important component in the reality of the film...
...where you say, "That looks cold. That looks hard. That looks difficult."
And I think that's what people respond to.
I just look at the dailies and I gotta tell you, it just looks so good and so real.
If I could say one word, it's just-- There's a realness about it.
This is a very real-world version of what could happen...
...in a post-apocalyptic universe.
We've spoken to scientists.
We've spoken to climatologists.
We've really tried to discover what it is that the world would look like...
...if every nuclear bomb went off.
And it was, you know, 18 years later.
Every time I look at every scene that I'm in the scene...
...I'm feeling, like, I'm in the world of the Terminator.
Like, I'm in a post-apocalyptic world.
- Got it? - Yeah.
Thanks.
Does this radio work?
No.
Being a director means managing a great many personalities.
You have to manage the personalities of the technical crew...
...and most particularly, you have to be there for your actors.
And Sam Worthington and Christian Bale...
...are two very, very different actors, in their approach to the craft.
Christian is very methodical, believes in a great deal of prep...
...has to have an intimate understanding of what's being asked of him.
You can't just say, "Hey, Christian, exit camera left."
You need to know why you've asked the actor to exit camera left.
And that's a wonderful challenge because it keeps you on your toes.
Sam is a little more willing to take chances...
...and do things correctly...
...and do things improperly, in the spirit of finding magic.
So both are interesting ways of approaching a great performance.
But they're very different.
So I'd find myself talking to Sam...
...and needing to communicate in one capacity...
...and I turn and talk to Christian and I'd have to use a different vernacular.
A different sort of interaction style to get exactly what I was looking for.
At the end of the day, Sam is the strong personality...
...Christian is a strong personality and I've got very strong opinions as well.
So there were some fireworks along the way...
...but I think always in the interest of the best result.
People underestimate McG.
He's done, what, three movies and a lot of previous stuff before that.
But, you know, this is totally a different departure from him.
It's gritty, it's more real and raw.
And I think because of that, he's hungry and he's got something to prove.
And I like that kind of hunger.
I like someone who isn't gonna sit back, smoking a cigar...
...resting on his laurels, that he's made...
...a billion-dollar Charlie's Angels franchise.
This guy stepped out of the box and he's true to what Jim set up.
He's true to the world and he's pushing it and he's pushing us in the process.
The one thing with McG that is fantastic...
...is he really makes everybody feel-- You wanna be involved, you know?
And so many people don't manage that on a set.
But he really does get actors...
...and crew truly feeling like they want to be there...
...and that they are appreciated as well.
And it makes such a difference to the working environment...
...and to people's enthusiasm and passion for a movie.
I think McG allows everyone, whether you're a makeup lady...
...the caterer, the driver.
Everyone has an idea.
He's not making a McG movie. He wants to make a Terminator movie.
He's just got this enthusiasm and energy.
And you can't help but be like, "All right, all right." You know?
You know, it just-- It keeps you up and it's great, you know?
And he's a very, very funny, very intelligent person.
If you're listening to this, you are the Resistance.
At first, we were gonna shoot this movie in Budapest, in Hungary.
We went over there and scouted it.
But I found it to be too rolling and green and happy.
And I needed a David Lean future of wasteland and duress.
I wanted it to speak of Lawrence of Arabia...
...or even a Zhivago-esque vastness.
And we ended up in Albuquerque, New Mexico.
Because it just had that tough environment...
...that spoke to a world after people...
...when the bombs had gone off, the environment had changed...
...the ozone had melted to some degree and the sky is a little different colour...
...and the ground is a little bit of a different texture...
...and everything is slightly off.
And we were able to achieve that look we were looking for in Albuquerque.
And it was just critical to create a world of duress, a world of difficulty.
It's hard to find clean water.
It's hard to find food.
Everything is difficult.
And it speaks to the great Clint Eastwood movies of yesteryear...
...where you feel that High Plains Drifter difficulty...
...and that was a critical element of the film.
I like the idea of going, "You're gonna go?
You're just gonna leave? All right-- Whatever. Go ahead. Die.
You know, whatever." I mean, just keep--
But I also like you doing it with, like, a heartbreak.
Like, it's almost like a foster kid...
...whose parents keep kicking him out of the house.
I don't want it done just completely like, "All right, go ahead--" Like, you know.
I don't wanna believe that you really don't care.
He's just trying to say, "I'm leaving, I don't have time to open up...
...you know, emotional baggage regarding my brother.
I don't have time to open up emotional baggage regarding a kid and a little girl.
And I don't know where I am.
You know what? I've been on my own my whole life.
I'm gonna continue to be on my own.
I'm gonna figure out what happened to me. Goodbye."
And you're saying, "Wait, wait, wait. What do you mean, goodbye?
You know I told you the only way I can get out of here is if I have a car too."
Star, get out.
Don't look at me like that, Star.
Out. Get out!
You're leaving? You're gonna leave us?
Oh, I get it.
You wanna know the difference between us and the machines?
Aerostat!
- Ready. - Action.
Go!
So basically what we have here, we have the Jeep, we have it tethered.
And the tether allows us to go down the hill faster...
...than what we could free-drive it.
You know, just to give you the feeling of danger...
...and excitement that you can't get if you prepare a whole hill...
...and just free-drive it.
We release the tether then we do a left turn...
...then we cut in later on when we do the rest of the sequence with the actors.
Okay, are we holding traffic?
You just go one way. Bruce, do we have a lock'?
- We have a lock. - Okay.
- Moving. - Watch yourselves, moving.
There's a bogey up there. Careful-- No.
Stop! Bogies!
That scene is really about Kyle and Marcus...
...starting to come together and work as a team...
...and the intuitive Star, who always seems...
...to have the right tool at the right moment.
At this time, it's a tyre iron that Marcus, because he's a machine--
You look back in retrospect.
He's able to throw it with the accuracy and the velocity...
...to knock down the Aerostat.
Which is puzzling, but makes sense because he is also a machine.
If the idea is to stay alive, I'm driving.
We're seeing a lot of enemy movement in L.A.
Any of our people in the area?
No one on the ground. Two A-10s in the air. Williams and Mihradi.
Send the birds in.
Guide them to a safe area.
Roger, Coyote 67 copies all. Inbound to grid Lima-Alpha...
...125793. Over.
Here we are at the gas station.
Marcus and Kyle have gone in looking for some food.
They're looking for some fuel.
And they meet a gentleman who embodies a lifeboat ethic.
Basically it says, "There's only enough for us here.
And should we share our finite resources with you...
...it would threaten said resources."
It's important that in the language of the Terminator...
...all the Terminators have guns that have a great deal of heft...
...and aren't necessarily practical for human applications...
...but they're very practical for machine applications.
That goes for the humans and their gun selection in fighting the machines.
So, you know, they gotta have stuff that's not .22 calibre, not 9mm...
...but Desert Eagles and .44s and things that carry a lot of punch.
They're not designed to stop humans, they're designed to stop machines...
...and they need as much hit as possible.
The Resistance?
So we had to take a 28-foot tanker...
...and re-create it with lightweight thin materials that we could blow up safely.
So we basically fabricated the thing, loaded it with explosives and gasoline.
Not until this one gets something to eat.
Bring me a basket.
Here you go.
Come on. Help yourself. Eat up.
The fireball's gone. It's a bunch of smoke.
Well, the scene needs to continue, they need to film for two days...
...with that same, you know, 50-foot column of fire.
So we had to create a wall of fire effect...
...which we did by building a steel framework...
...and hooked that up to a fuel tanker.
And sucked gas or diesel fuel out of a tanker.
And burned through thousands of gallons of fuel...
...over the course of two days.
Shoot that son of a bitch!
I fired guns before. But I did a lot of gun training here.
Like, to get the one-handed shotgun, the cocking down...
...and shooting it one hand and just looking-- Making that look oool.
And I did a ton of gun training.
I'd never fired a shotgun.
If you never fired a shotgun, you don't realise just how powerful that thing is.
Like, it's an insane weapon.
On set, they had a couple Ducati, Hypermotos.
So drawing upon the stuff that they shot with the actual motorcycles...
...McG really wanted it to be high tech.
Wanted it to feel alive.
So we have-- Actually, this upper portion...
...of the motorcycle kind of counterbalances...
...to re-create that sensation of weight transfer...
...that a real motorcyclist does while riding a bike.
This is really trying...
...to take these creatures and make them feel realistic.
It's got some sort of conscious behind it...
...that it's trying to use to balance and to judge where he needs to be in.
And be a little bit more humanistic.
Get up here!
I do some of the stuff, you know what I mean?
Like I do-- Like, if you see me on the truck racing, that's me.
You know what I mean? And if you see, like, I fall, I fell.
I got it.
Yeah!
Hang on!
- Drop the ball! - All right.
Harvester can only carry four guys, four human victims.
He needs somewhere to sort of deposit them.
This is the-- Sort of our hero artwork for the Transporter.
The Harvester-- Actually, this is sort of his seating platform up here.
He kind of integrates into the middle of the ship.
And, you know, we've incorporated a lot of different moving parts as well...
...just to give-- We have this term here, we call it hardware worship.
So that, you know-- So as you're seeing something moving...
...you get a lot of little mechanical bits, kind of rotating...
...and you get the fact that this thing is really flying...
...and kind of thinking as it's flying.
The trick for designing this guy was that the cattle car sections...
...in the front and back were already designed as a set.
And, you know, basically, we were designing this as a whole ship...
...when they were shooting these sections.
So that was kind of-- That was a difficult design task...
...but I think we pulled it off.
An A-10 Warthog, obviously too big to blow up.
Too expensive to blow up in real life.
So we build sixth-scale miniatures of A-10s.
Everything on this show, including the A-10s...
...were created with destruction in mind.
So we made them out of very, very thin carbon fibre.
They were then suspended on a cable rig that was hydraulically driven...
...and it was basically motion-control hydraulics.
So we can speed up or slow down the airplane as it's flying through the air.
Three, two, one. Action.
There were cable cutters on the cables that were holding it.
So those basically-- It got up to speed. It began to blow up.
And then we cut the cables and actually cut the airplane free.
So it kind of did a nosedive into the ground.
We had multiple cameras for every event.
Some of them were moving. Some of them were panning.
All of them were going at different frame rates...
...which was really interesting.
So in one shot, we may get, you know, five shots...
...and all different frame rates from different points of view.
--Bearing 289 toward San Francisco.
Let's test the signal...
...and pray it works.
What we have here is we have an old power tower.
During the Skynet attack on the world...
...they've obviously nuked quite a few places.
And this is one of the-- One of the culprits.
This has actually taken a direct hit from one of the Skynet's bombs.
Once we create the drawings, then we create the model...
...then we created a whole CAD file on this.
Then we handed it over to these fantastic guys...
...who are working with the steel.
Who are turning the dream into reality.
All right, there are three cues. The first cue is gonna be camera.
The second cue is gonna be Sam to start walking.
The third cue is gonna be for Moon to struggle and then release herself.
Three, two, one.
Action.
Helmet's on.
The camera, you know, is here. She's going:
Okay, she takes the helmet off, lifts her hair out, shakes it out.
As you land into it, nothing is said. The first thing she does is left foot.
- Is this the first time I see him? - Yeah.
- Okay. - Yeah. Eye bomb.
- Give me my knife. - Can you get my knife?
Go.
I liked it. His instinct again.
Revealing his true character. Somebody fell and he did that.
He didn't have to. He just did it without thinking.
And that also as a woman is registered.
And this is the most important part of the whole scene.
Because this makes it possible to move more quickly, you know?
So we have already banter from the moment we meet...
...which is our sexual attraction.
You know, we don't know each other, two tough people.
In the end, there's a connection...
...because there's a comfortability with each other.
One of the things that we were concerned about...
...with the character of Blair Williams is so many times in movies...
...you see the typical girl in a flight suit.
Where she's either too butch or--
And, you know, and you're not attracted to her.
Or she's too feminine and you couldn't believe...
...she would be strong enough...
...and tough enough to be a pilot in the Air Force or any kind of pilot.
And what Moon has is she's a really great combination of all those things.
Of strength and courage, and femininity, and sensuality.
She's a woman...
...that women wanna be friends with and men wanna sleep with.
I'm very influenced by Steven Spielberg...
...and just a prison camp is such a terrible place.
You look at the prison camps of Schindler's List.
The prison camps of The Deer Hunter.
And it just makes your skin crawl.
Being a prisoner of war is such a horrible thing.
So when these people are collected by Skynet...
...and they're herded through troughs, I wanted them to feel like cattle.
In a Terminator universe, in a Skynet world...
...human beings are cattle.
We don't speak kindly to the cow before the slaughter.
It's done very methodically and very cruelly.
It'll make you think twice about eating a burger.
But that's just the nature of the game.
And we kill with great proficiency in that respect.
And so does Skynet.
Over there.
Find something to burn. We'll be at my base tomorrow.
Are you hurt?
I'm fine.
The thing about Blair is...
...I was really careful not to make her, like, this bad-ass girl, you know?
I didn't wanna be stereotypical, like, I'm the girl with, you know--
I'm like a dude. She's vulnerable, you know?
She's tough, she's sassy, you know?
She could take it.
You know, you throw her anything and she's a smart ass and she's tough.
But she's also I think someone who's lonely.
And sees in Marcus someone who can be not only a companion...
...but also sees the thing in him that--
It's almost as if, like, when everyone's down...
...but you see someone who has hope.
And someone who has goodness.
You're just drawn to it and you wanna-- You want a part of that.
Blair is like, you know? Look at it like Dorothy.
You're coming across the Tin Man, the Straw Man and shit like that.
Yet you're coming across characters that show me what a heart is.
And show me what a brain is. And show me what courage is.
With Blair, it's a cross between he finds the courage...
...and the heart in this woman.
And someone who's willing to sacrifice herself...
...under the most extreme circumstances...
...of the world against her and the world against machines.
I'm a little cold.
Relax.
I just want some body heat.
You have a strong heart.
God, I love that sound.
Thank you for saving me back there.
I don't meet a lot of good guys these days.
I'm not a good guy.
You are.
You just don't know it yet.
Do you think people deserve a second chance?
The hunter-killer is a machine that we know and love...
...from the older Terminator films.
Here, it's reinvented.
It's a bit dirtier. It's a little more sleek and streamlined.
I simplified the top surface of it to look like a beetle shell, now.
I'm a little cold.
Relax.
I just want some body heat.
You have a strong heart.
God, I love that sound.
Thank you for saving me back there.
I don't meet a lot of good guys these days.
I'm not a good guy.
You are.
You just don't know it yet.
Do you think people deserve a second chance?
The hunter-killer is a machine that we know and love...
...from the older Terminator films.
Here, it's reinvented.
It's a bit dirtier. It's a little more sleek and streamlined.
I simplified the top surface of it to look like a beetle shell, now.
Which is kind of cool. It makes it look really nasty.
So it's really sort of simple and heavily armoured on the top.
On the bottom it's got all these...
...crazy little bits that almost looks like when you...
...you know, you turn over a cockroach or something like that.
It just-- It's, you know?
You really get to see that it is a flying robot.
It works, man. The signal works. It's beautiful.
The T-600 is a combination of CG and a suit.
We have Brian Steele who's our T-600 suit performer.
He's inside of a suit that is essentially a blue-screen suit...
...but has maybe three quarters of the parts...
...of the T-600 on his suit.
And then the areas in between will be erased...
...and replaced with just robot and get rid of Brian.
This is Brian Steele who is the actor playing the T-600.
And we're doing a little test fitting right now.
This is an under skull.
This is Brian's actual skull cap in here.
And then the T-600 skull has been fitted over that.
- Give him a hand. - Pops right on.
It pops right on? Yeah. All right.
And we'll start tearing through, revealing the skull that's underneath.
The idea is that the T-600's are all out in the field.
They have been out there for years. Nobody's servicing them.
So they're kind of battered and weathered.
And as Kyle Reese mentions in the first film, his character, he talks about...
...how the first ones were easy to spot.
Well, these are first ones easy to spot.
With kind of a simplistic rubber skin that's been pulled over the face...
...to kind of camouflage it.
And then ragtag clothing to sort of get rid of the endoskeleton.
I gotta get out! I gotta get out of here!
I did a lot of research with people from Caltech and futurists and--
One human cortex, one machine.
Blair, what have they done?
Who built you?
And things would be off and certain things would thrive.
And certain things would perish.
And that's what gave rise to some of the idea of coating the ground...
...with almost a red lichen, you know?
A red strange growth...
...and red being the colour of Skynet and the colour of cancer.
It's interesting how nature survives and continues to grow...
...though mutated, and I wanted that reflected in the landscape.
Ready and action.
What you doing?
Blair!
Okay, on three. One, two, three.
- It's heavy. - Okay, what we got here--
I want him in and out of consciousness...
...and sort of fighting it. A moment of, "Get me out of here"...
...into a moment of, "I'm losing it."
He's on his own flight path.
Even though you're trying to talk-- You're-- Which is informative to you.
Okay, this guy's doing his own thing, that's what it means, and away I go.
I'm not gonna be able to have a, you know, lucid conversation and just say:
"Tell me about your childhood and what's going on."
It's just not that-- You know what I mean? It's just, "Okay, I got that."
His pulse is good, this is what's going on. A prosthetic? Throw that away...
...get back into here and away we go.
And the scene should just be right there and out.
And we don't even know what happened as we calm the whole movie down...
...and we come up to him in the crucifixion, okay?
- What's his name? - Marcus.
- He's got a prosthetic limb? - What?
Okay, pulse is good. Let's see what we've got.
You sent Mihradi and me to provide cover for some civilians.
- He was one of them. - Was there a teenage boy?
I don't know. They were taken into a transport. He was the only one left.
Not "he," Blair. "It."
It was the only one left. Don't be naive.
It saved my life.
Kate, what's gonna happen to him?
Disassembled.
- You mean killed. - It may have information on Skynet.
I know he's not the enemy. I've been shot at by the enemy. That's not him.
That machine saved you only to gain access to kill all of us.
All right guys, we're rolling now. We're rolling.
- Sparks going. - Quiet now.
Stand by.
All right, here we go.
And ready.
- And three, two, one. Action! - Three, two, one. Action!
All right, look up there.
- Cut. - All right. Good job.
The environments that we're in are sort of reclaimed military environments.
Old missile silo, underground facilities and bases.
And in scouting a lot of these places that are still operational...
...you do see a lot of machinery...
...and bits and pieces that are, you know, as old as Vietnam era...
...that are still put to practical use.
So we came up with a lot of, you know...
...'60s-, '70s-, '80s-era electronics and equipment.
And it helped us to differentiate between the sort of high-tech...
...super sophisticated world of Skynet and what they were doing...
...from what our Resistance fighters were able to cull together.
It's sort of like starting over again...
...using obsolete equipment because they have no choice.
Want me to tell Connor you're not coming?
No.
The most important thing in any kind of big action movie...
...is that people are gonna go...to all the explosions.
They're gonna love all the machines.
But unless they're not-- If they're invested in these characters...
...and go on theirjourney with them, then it doesn't really matter.
And that's been the hardest thing is taking this script...
...and making it into something where you take out all the robots.
You take out all the explosions...
...and it still will stand on its own about, you know...
...people trying to find their own destiny in such uncompromising situations.
I think it's important to never be satisfied...
...and always stay hungry and always have an appetite to improve.
And when you do that, you never just go:
"All right, that's it. The script is done. Let's stop looking at it."
You're always looking at it, always working it.
You're always in the trailer with the actors after you call wrap.
Trying to take it higher for the next day.
Bryce Dallas Howard was a very late addition to the movie.
And we're so thankful...
...that she was interested, available and ready to dive in.
I felt like there was a softness...
...that Kate could bring to the film that was important.
And I thought that it was exciting as well because she is the head doctor.
And because she is second in command of the Resistance...
...it would kind of show...
...that a female character can have those two sides.
I appreciate in particular that McG has placed a lot of importance...
...and value on that. And on this character...
...and making sure that she had those...
...two kind of opposing characteristics in--
You know, in one--
I don't know, in one persona.
--And I cannot stop them.
Thank you.
Come in.
I don't know how far--
Action.
Cut. Cut.
Morrison feeds him the line, "She made her choice."
That's it. I got the gun. I got everything. It's all perfect.
All I wanna do is tighten up the gap between the line and the fire.
Yeah, give it a beat of letting Shane's fire gag reflect on your face.
Then choose to bounce. Okay?
Action!
Look into it.
- Bounce. - Let's go.
Action.
- What's that? - Look away.
Go!
- And cut. Not bad. Not bad. Not bad. - Cut.
There were some crazy stunts. I mean, you know, they tell Marcus--
Sam and I that these things are gonna blow up.
I'm like, "Okay, cool," and then we start running.
And then it would just be dust and things exploding.
Go, go.
As you come through here...
...and then Marcus needs to get ever so slightly out in front.
Come down into here and lock it. And then this is a bit of reset, okay?
Moment for you to check in as you find cover...
...and when you look, he's waiting for you.
Every girl says this. I know every actress is like:
"I love all the action stuff."
I really do.
I love shooting my gun. I love, like, rolling onto the ground.
I love things exploding. It's just-- It's fun.
And you feel safe.
I think the action is so great...
...because working with someone like Christian Bale or Sam...
...there's always a reason for the action. It's not action just for action's sake.
They need there to always be a reason...
...so they come from an actor's point of view.
So that makes the action, I think, more interesting...
...if you could make action deep.
- Three, two, one. Action! - Action!
Don't mind running around getting blown up.
My character goes through the ringer.
You know, and he pa-- My character pays his penance through this world...
...and if that means he gets strung up, cut up and blown up...
...then you spend the day getting strung up, cut up and blown up.
And, you know, you get your bumps and bruises.
But We Terminator, We not Pride and Prejudice.
Because in theory a napalm bomb had blown through there.
We needed to show--
You know, early on, Shane Harlbut, the director of photography...
...wanted to see post-napalm event.
Like, he wanted to see trees on fire and what-- And, you know, and whatnot.
Well, you know, you can't just set a real tree on fire.
And hope that it goes up and stays on.
It just-- You have to be-- It has to be in a controlled environment.
So at our tank, amongst our real trees...
...we also made concrete trees that were lined with gas lines.
And Special Effects oversaw that.
And when you look back on the bank and they're having the dialogue...
...you see in the background, these trees on fire.
So you will see the napalm go through there and all the other events...
...the helicopter crash.
Then you'll look back and see the trees on fire. It will be very convincing.
Take my gun!
It's a 300-foot run of gasoline, 1500 gallons of gasoline.
A 300-foot high flame.
We started on one end and detonated the charges.
And the containers of gas chasing up to the point where he is.
Check the river.
You see him?
Hydraulics are out!
Give me your hand! Give me your hand!
- They know you, even if you don't. - Enough!
That gun ain't gonna stop shit!
Nobody's shot you in the heart, and I see that thing beating!
Kyle Reese.
He's in Skynet. You do that, he's dead.
I can get you in.
How?
Look at me.
That's why I don't trust you.
I'm the only hope you have.
I need to find who did this to me.
So do you.
Connor!
Make your choice.
You get me in.
You tell me where I can find Kyle Reese.
Yeah?
I Will.
Contact me on that. Let me know he's still alive.
What are you?
This feels like a workable size.
It's gotta be able to poke through the bubble on the bottom...
...you know, where the foot pedals are that:
I like the scale.
- The scale that suggests, like, clamp. - Yup.
You all right'?
Any sign of him?
He's gone.
Why'd you do it?
We're actually at Kirkland Air Force Base, which is an air force base...
...based in Albuquerque, New Mexico.
The hangar was pristine. It was very clean.
It was actually a used hangar, so obviously, it had to be very clean.
So we came in here. We had to cover up a whole series offices...
...behind these camouflage nets that we put in.
So we had to put all the nets in and just dirty the whole thing down.
We're also wetting down the floor, adding dirt, again to bring that grime...
...bring that grit and the reality of the world that we're in today.
It's post-apocalyptic. Ten years after Judgment Day. Bombs have gone off.
It's not pretty, you can't just go get paint from Home Depot and repaint.
It's all a very, very sort of sad state of affairs.
The Resistance are not only fighting the Terminators...
...but they're also fighting the conditions they're in.
Hopefully, that's reflected...
...within the dressing and the world that we're in today.
We come up with these ideas before we even start.
So I came in here, found a location...
...did paintings of what it would look like.
And this is pretty true to what the paintings were.
Our key to victory. We stay the course and that's an order.
If we stay the course, we are dead! We are all dead!
- Then that is his fate. - It's our fate.
I have to save him. He is the key.
The key to the future, to the past. Without him, we lose everything.
No, you stay the course!
If we stay the course, we are dead! We are all dead!
As of this moment, soldier...
...you are relieved of your command.
You are no longer a part of this Resistance.
I didn't catch that last statement.
Neither did I.
This is John Connor.
If you're listening to this, you are the Resistance.
Listen carefully. If we attack tonight...
...our humanity is lost.
For this film, we wanted everything to feel real.
I don't believe in leaning on CG.
I love computer-generated enhancement...
...but I wanna build everything practically.
The whole point in this film was to feel it...
...to create a tactile experience where you say:
"Wow, I really understand what that would feel like in the near future...
...if the bombs would go off and I survived.
I can imagine being in that world."
I am asking you not to.
If even one bomb drops on Skynet before sunrise...
...our future will be lost.
So please, stand down. Give me the time...
...to protect our future that all of us...
...are fighting for.
This is John Connor.
What should I tell your men when they find out you're gone?
I'll be back.
Our goal was to respect the mythology of the first pictures...
...but truly begin again.
My only other experience with mythology...
...was with the Batman movies.
But with that, we were starting anew.
We were not referencing the others whatsoever.
The difference here is we are referencing T1 and T2.
And, you know, and T3...
...but just not wishing to imitate any of the filmmaking from that.
You know, we kept in, you know, skills, you know.
And you've got-- In T2, he's hacking into the cash machine, et cetera.
You understand that he's good with technology...
...and obviously, we wanted to maintain that.
For this film, we wanted everything to feel real.
I don't believe in leaning on CG.
I love computer-generated enhancement...
...but I wanna build everything practically.
The whole point in this film was to feel it...
...to create a tactile experience where you say:
"Wow, I really understand what that would feel like in the near future...
...if the bombs would go off and I survived.
I can imagine being in that world."
And I think sometimes when you just throw up a green-screen...
...you put a stand with a tennis ball on it...
...and you ask the actor to look at that tennis ball like it's a robot...
...you lose a tactile reality.
And the audience feels it. And that makes for a less enjoyable picture.
Because of the scale and the scope of the movie and it's really large...
...we came to Albuquerque Studios and said we'll take everything.
We took all the stages they have.
They have six wonderful, huge sound stages.
And we knew with the approximate of 50 sets that we were building.
And Albuquerque Studios, because it's new...
...has a huge amount of land around it...
...where we can then put our sets outside.
So we have sets inside these brand-new stages.
But then we want to blow something up or crash a helicopter...
...we can do that because it's all here.
Our biggest set is gonna be Serena's lab.
We've literally built out all four sides of the stage as big as we can.
We've got a 55-foot height to the stage. We're building up as high as we can.
And then next door to that, we have Serena's office.
This is a huge, huge, wonderful set...
...which is this wonderful round sort of building that we have...
...with in the middle of it, this series of robots that rebuild Marcus.
We based it on what a chip manufacturing laboratory would have.
And they are Cleanroom environments.
And we were really extremely fortunate.
There are two companies, ABB Robotics and FANUC Robotics...
...that make robots for all kinds of applications...
...from auto assembly lines to theme park usage.
And they were really excited. As you can imagine, it's not--
It's not a hard sell to say:
"Come and feature your stuff in a Terminator movie.
So we ended up with close to 40 robots...
...functioning robots between the two companies.
And we were able to create both the Skynet labs...
...and then the down and dirty factory...
...where they're pumping out the T-600s.
Kyle.
0K8)'-
We made this film in 2008.
And in 2008, science fiction has become reality.
And, of course, the film is coming out in 2009...
...and it's becoming more and more reality all the time.
We have artificial intelligence on the BlackBerrys in our pocket.
If you have a bad hip, go get a new one. Bad heart, go get a new one.
If you're depressed, no one wants to talk about mommy or daddy issues.
They wanna just give you serotonin reuptake inhibitors...
...you'll feel better in about two weeks.
And Skynet is here in that regard.
Whereas in the glory days of science fiction, in the late '70s, early '80s...
...these things were indeed just imagination.
And they become real today. And that is the thrust of the story.
That which makes humanity great is potentially it's undoing.
Because we're actually in this movie prior to the first three movies...
...we had to almost reverse-engineer.
In the same way that your Mac laptop from 10 years ago...
...was really, really thick and like a brick.
Then over the period of time, it gets thinner, thinner and thinner.
This is the world that we're in. So we basically took the T-800...
...as the thin laptop...
...and we had to reverse-engineer all the other ones back.
Signal broadcasting at full strength, sir.
- Good. Commence bombing of Skynet. - We have a green light for the attack.
This is Bakersfield. That's a no-go on your last. Out.
- Eugene, standing down. - This is Reno. Negative on your last.
Eugene, Reno, Bakersfield. They're all standing down.
Kyle Reese?
Get to the transport! Go! ls Kyle Reese here?
Welcome home, Marcus.
We knew you'd be back.
After all, it was programmed in you.
And you executed that programming beautifully.
What am I?
You are an infiltration prototype. The only one of your kind.
We resurrected you, advanced Cyberdyne's work, amended it.
You're dead.
Calculations confirm Serena Kogan's face is the easiest for you to process.
We can be others if you wish.
Marcus, what else could you be...
...if not machine?
A man.
The human condition no longer applies to you.
Accept what you already know.
That you were made to serve a purpose.
To achieve what no other machine has achieved before.
To infiltrate, find a target, and then bring that target back home to us.
We've been at war since before either of us even existed.
You tried killing my mother, Sarah Connor.
You get me in.
You tell me where I can find Kyle Reese.
- Yeah ? - I will.
Kyle Reese! Kyle Reese! Move! Move!
Kyle Reese!
Get to the transports!
- Kyle Reese? - No.
You! Move!
In times of desperation, people will believe what they want to believe.
And so, we gave them what they wanted to believe.
A trick, in the form of a signal the Resistance thought would win the war.
And they were right, it will end this war.
Except that it is the Resistance that will be terminated.
Not Skynet.
Get the attack on Skynet Central back online.
I want our aircraft in the sky immediately.
Sir. Sir, we've got a bogie with a very large radar signature...
...closing in on our position.
Losenko?
We have destroyed ourselves.
Skynet tracked our signal. We led them straight to us.
Our best machines had failed time and again to complete a mission.
Something was missing. We had to think. Radically.
And so we made you. We created the perfect infiltration machine.
You, Marcus.
You did what Skynet has failed to do for so many years.
You killed John Connor.
Kyle!
Hey!
I'm better this way.
You will not be given a second chance.
- You cannot save John Connor. - Watch me.
Got a message from Connor.
- What's your name? - Kyle Reese.
Stay with me.
So for our digital Arnold...
...we started with a lifecast...
...that Stan Winston and his group did during Terminator 1.
It was a really good foundation to start off on...
...because we didn't have anything physically...
...that was useable to re-create Arnold from that era.
Back!
You're working with somebody that's supposed to be a Terminator...
...obviously, it's not gonna be as fluid as what people are gonna see...
...in an actual wrestling match, anything like that.
So it has to be a little bit blocky and robotic.
T-800s.
There's so many of them.
Careful.
- What are these? - Fuel cells.
Life source for the T-800.
Nuclear.
Enough to level this place.
Cover us.
Get ready.
We actually had a military adviser around.
I think it is more important than a lot of people realise...
...to get that accurate...
...and to have people executing it in exactly the right manner...
...because, yes, there's the limited audience of military people...
...who will be able to identify...
...when it's BS and when they're actually doing the right thing.
But then there's a far wider audience who--
They may not know exactly what's wrong...
...but you can tell something's wrong.
If you get a bunch of actors running in with guns...
...and they're sort of all going in different directions and looking like--
The guy's gonna end up shooting the guy in front of him.
You know, you just know. It's wrong.
And then you lose credibility for the rest of the movie.
Each and every time that you have somebody, you know, questioning...
...then you're starting to chip away at their belief in what you've created.
I mean, truth be told, most of the time--
All right, I'd see a Terminator.
There were a few scenes where they had him kind of, you know, attacking me.
Most of the time, it was a bloke in a unitard, in a grey unitard.
It was a friend of mine, Buster, who has doubled me for the Batman movies.
And he looked kind of like Andy Pandy in his pyjamas...
...with a sort of a headband that looked like he was...
...a wannabe sushi chef or something.
It's actually harder than it looks trying to walk like a Terminator.
The Terminator is very robotic. He moves through hydraulics.
All his joints and everything, his muscles are hydraulic pistons.
So you don't get that fluidity that a human can do.
So it was a real good challenge for me mentally...
...because it was almost like a really crap heavyweight boxer...
...against a really good middleweight.
You know, very stiff, big and like:
You know, to someone almost like a Floyd Mayweather...
...just moving and slipping around.
You lead with the your hips. And it was such a strange feeling...
...and, like, you just wanna walk, but they're like, "No."
Head back, hips forward, chest up. And you're in this weird position...
...that if somebody were to look at you from the side...
...you'd look like an S or a question mark.
Because your whole position is just not right to walk in.
And then you're like a bit slower, a bit stiffer, a bit more menacing.
And you-- Oh, you're pulling all these faces.
Thank God, they're gonna put this skeleton over you...
...but you're really trying to concentrate on how to walk and you end up just...
...thinking this doesn't look right.
But you look back on the monitor, you're like:
"Oh, wow, that's cool."
That's the nature of CGI, you know?
And it was either me fighting him...
...or fighting nothing, you know...
...which people found even funnier to look at.
So that's where the imagination really has to kick in for these kinds of movies.
Once the action was worked out...
...and they got some really good takes with the stunt double in there...
...we often would shoot what we call the pantomime take.
The pantomime take was basically the actor doing the same fight action...
...but without the stunt double standing in for the Terminator.
We did that at the end, after they had run through the action several times.
Then it became like a sense memory for them...
...and they could basically run through the same action again...
...without the stunt double and have it be believable.
If the action was good on the pantomime take...
This body right here is a stunt dummy...
...that's just come fresh out of the mould from-- Of Sam Worthington...
...to get that double out of the scene...
...and we can get the Terminator in there, in its place.
- Action! - Action!
I can't hear you!
- Can you hear me? - Cut!
Cut!
Two of you need to peel back. Just play with me, we'll find it.
Just run up to whoever it is that first person I see and go, "John Connor.
We need to get to John Connor."
I feel uncomfortable doing it with Kate...
...being the wife of John Connor.
"Are you all right? Hey! You're with the Resistance.
You gotta get Connor out there." Exactly what you wanted. "Where is he at?"
- Yeah. - She hears that, comes over.
"You gotta find him." "I will." Bounce.
Hey! Hey, John Connor's in there. He's still in there.
Chris, she's hypovolemic, start a line!
- What? - John Connor's in there.
Well, the lava sequence, it was always talked about as lava.
But really, it was molten metal.
On set, there was a big dump tank filled with 500 gallons of methasil.
And it was internally illuminated and the front of the tank blew out.
And the stuntman, dressed in a black suit with face protection...
...actually stood in front of this tank.
Everyone else stood way back.
The front exploded off with a pyrotechnic...
...and 500 gallons of methasil dumped down on top of him.
It was very brave of him, I thought at that time.
But when we looked at the rushes...
...the look of them, of the methasil just turned out really too liquid.
Fluid can take a long time to render.
I mean, to create the simulation itself.
So the turn-around is very slow.
You know, on set they had a prosthetic scar.
But there were a couple of shots where the scar wasn't there.
It was just shot at a different time.
So in that case, we had to track in the scar.
We had-- Our painting department painted a nice-looking scar on his face.
It was just a small little, you know, a couple of inches down his cheek.
And we'd just have to track that in...
...and make sure that it revealed as the spiky finger drags down his face.
This body right here is a stunt dummy...
...that's just come fresh out of the mould from-- Of Sam Worthington...
...you know, for the Marcus character. And it's all-- It's jointed...
...so it can either be positioned or we could loosen up the joints...
...so that it's more floppy.
And it will be used for serious stunts that no man should ever attempt.
...and literally, just push the hair right into the silicone skin.
Another challenge in the compositing for the Terminator factory sequence...
...was, basically, it was being lit with lots of interactive light.
There are flames, there are sparks. There's--
There are lightning strikes, there are lights being swung around.
It's a very busy environment.
What we found very quickly was that the robot...
...actually looked too busy when we got all those reflections in.
So we went back and spent a lot of time watching the sequences...
...where the Terminator was in the factory at the end of Terminator 1.
You realise that what they did to light it back then...
...was using a fairly simple large bright light.
So instead of taking all this data that we had gathered...
...we actually had to simplify our lighting setups.
Go for a slightly more graphic look...
...more in the visual aesthetic of previous films.
Action!
Three...
...four...
...two.
Action!
- Cut! - Cut, cut, cut.
Look out the door.
Medevac, urgent. Severe chest trauma.
Call the surgical team. Remarks: it's Connor.
The idea was that the mortars would be packed with high explosive.
The mortars would go off in sequence heading up the building.
And there would be nothing holding them back...
...because everything was constructed from glass.
HOW long?
His heart...
...can't take it.
It's gonna be okay. It's gonna be okay, Kate.
Kyle?
Take it.
You earned it.
Kate?
Take mine.
Marcus...
Everybody deserves a second chance.
This is mine.
What is it that makes us human?
It's not something you can program.
You can't put it into a chip.
It's the strength of the human heart.
The difference between us and machines.
There is a storm on the horizon. A time of hardship and pain.
This battle has been won, but the war against the machines rages on.
Skynet's global network remains strong.
But we will not quit...
...until all of it is destroyed.
This is John Connor. There is no fate but what we make.