Salvation by cyborg: McG helms next chapter in 'Terminator' saga

By Ethan Alter, filmjournal.com
April 27,2009

It's safe to say that any die-hard Terminator fan would have loved to have been a fly on the wall of the office where Joseph McGinty Nichol met with James Cameron to discuss Terminator Salvation, the fourth installment in one of most successful science-fiction franchises of all time. In one corner you had Cameron, who co-wrote and directed the original Terminator in 1984 and went on to make such revered action films as Aliens, Terminator 2: Judgment Day and True Lies. And in the other corner sat Nichol—or, as he's more commonly credited, McG—a music-video director who broke into feature filmmaking with the Charlie's Angels movies, which were filled with the kind of silly, deliberately over-the-top set-pieces Cameron has always avoided. Now McG was about to continue the Terminator legacy and he felt he couldn't do so without first paying homage to its creator in person.

"I wanted to be respectful and tell Jim that I intended to honor what he put into motion," says the 38-year-old, Michigan-born, California-raised director, on the phone from his L.A. office. "And I believed him when he told me that he finished telling the story at the end of the second film. So I brought it to him that the story was still worth exploring because [Terminator Salvation] was about the future war between the machines and humanity. He nodded his head and said, ‘That's interesting’ and went on to talk about how when he was making Aliens, everyone thought he was full of shit. Like 'Who does this guy think he is, following Ridley Scott?' Remember, he had only made a few films by that time. He wished me well, but added, 'I reserve the right not to like it.' And I said, 'That's fine, I reserve the right not to like [Cameron's new film] Avatar.' And we laughed as two directing colleagues would and that was that. I look forward to having a private screening [of the finished movie] with Jim, most likely at [Hollywood super-agent] Ari Emanuel's screening room. It's neutral turf, so if we get into a fistfight, Ari can break it up!"

Salvation by cyborg: McG helms next chapter in 'Terminator' saga

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