Monday, January 07, 2008

More Terminator 4 plot details


From worstpreviews, James Middleton, an associate producer on the upcoming fourth "Terminator" film, told Sci Fi Wire that California governor Arnold Schwarzenegger will definitely not be in the movie. In fact, he will not show up in any of the contemplated sequels either.

Middleton also disputed earlier reports about the role of John Connor, saying that the character will definitely be central in the film. Middleton said that the movie will also introduce a key new character.

"It's post-apocalyptic," he said. "It's set after the events of [Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines], where we see the nuclear exchange at the end of the movie, and we show what the world is like after this event, and we show how people try to deal in a post-apocalyptic world. And we introduce a new character, who becomes very important to the resistance and to John Connor, a new hero. It's really about the birth of a new hero."

As for John Connor, who was played in "T3" by Nick Stahl: "I would look at him as a character that is introduced and that will grow in the second and third movies of the trilogy," Middleton said. No actor has officially been chosen yet to play Connor in "Terminator Salvation: The Future Begins," though "Batman Begins" star Christian Bale is rumored to be in line for the role.

With regard to Schwarzenegger, Middleton said the original cyborg was approached about a possible role or cameo before he was elected to office. "He has been approached, and in the early days of our development of 'T4,' one of our producers, Andy Vajna, who's a good friend of his, spoke to him about doing a cameo," Middleton said. "This was even before he was governor. But we know now that he is governor, he's got priorities that are above doing movies."

As far as the current status of the movie: "We're in active preproduction," Middleton said. "We hope that the [writers'] strike ends soon so we can do a rewrite, but we're planning on going into production in April."

4 comments:

Jordan said...

I can't keep all this shit straight.

Octopunk said...

I don't have a good feeling about all this "rise of a new hero" stuff. Why isn't the central story about John Connor? Seriously, where else should this story go? You know I'm right.

Jordan said...

The problem is that they're perpetually trapped in the same time-travel loop James Cameron created in 1984.

The end of this story comes before the beginning, because the "climax" of the future battle against the machines has to take place in the contemporary world (since Cameron didn't have any money and it was ten years too early for the "virtual slavery" Matrix idea of how this "actually is" the future).

So the existing Terminator story, viewed in actual time sequence, goes "Climax." "Bigger Climax," "Even Bigger Climax"; "Beginning." Now that they've finally shot their wad and blowed up the Earth (which they've been teasing at for twenty years) they're all screwed up, because the remaining plot is a just big buildup to a bunch of climaxes that already happened.

Jordan said...

Except, thinking it through some more, I have to change my position. I was making a mistake. Actually there's a big angle to go for a "final" Terminator story climax, AFTER the events of the three moves from a "human time"/"straight linear time" perspective and let later still enough to aditionally AFTER those same events from the turned-around "machines using time travel'/"future-time war strategies involving sequential attempts to physically "retcon" Connor out of their way" perspective. All the events we've seen (and the events in between them) are well in the past from every possible historical and military perspective. The "Machines" have (by definition) FAILED FOUR TIMES at the "time-travel gambit" and also (by Hollywood-imposed definition) are all through sending Schwarzeneggers back (and, possibly, have abandoned the entire project). So, the "final battle" is between present-day Connor etc. vs. ruling "Machines" that have STOPPED the "time travel" foolhardiness and have now resolved to fight and defeat the humans in the present. So now it's just "COMBAT OF THE COMBATANTS" fighting with none of the time-travel hopelessly-mismatched technology coolness.

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