Ahoy, squirts! Quint here. As crazy and stressful as it was to get into yesterday’s WATCHMEN panel, that was a walk in the park compared to the clusterfuck of clueless security people who did their damndest to let any of the press into the panel, despite being escorted by… you know… the studios who are actually renting the space to show the panel.

Anyway, McG comes out to a stage already dominated by the above T-600 and paraded out names to appease the audience. He talked about speaking with James Cameron, Arnold Schwarzenegger and the writer is Jonathan Nolan who co-wrote THE DARK KNIGHT. Then he said Stan Winston’s designs are all over the movie. In essence… “Please like it and don’t boo me.”

He addressed the rating, and said there are only two people who would want the film to be PG-13 and they told him to make the picture and if it’s R-rated, it’s R-rated. There might be some wiggle room there.

Then he called Christian Bale’s cell… straight to voicemail and held it up, saying that he made a promise to Bale that if we didn’t cheer loud enough he wasn’t going to show any footage, so everybody screamed for Bale’s voicemail and the footage rolled.

I’m going to run it like I ran my Wolf Man footage coverage… Here’s my typed notes, with the screen completely black as the footage rolled:

Helicopter, bale lying on the ground. How many survivors are there? One. Dead terminator, light landscape, sunset. Stepping over terminator… daylight… come with me if you want to live from kyle reece to worthington… primative t800 machine gun, steps on skull - some road stuff looks like road warrior tow truck chase kyle rreeceterminator close up. If you saved us once in another future, you can save us in this one… conner screaming you son of a bitch as a t-800 hand comes into frame, dragging across his face as he screams.

Here’s a more detailed description:

The footage played very light… in that the aesthetic isn’t dark like in the flashbacks. This takes place a full 10 years before what we glimpse in T1 and T2 and the machines are in their early stages.

The first shot was a high shot, looking down at a crashed chopper, with Bale lying on the ground. He sits up, sees the T-600 crushed under the chopper (we later see him aim his gun down, like the still that was released, and put a single bullet in the head as the lights go out in its eyes) and try to raise someone on a CB. He gets someone and is asked “How many survivors?” “One,” he responds. “Repeat?” Then he says it sharper, louder: “One!”

He steps over a dead endoskeleton and walks into the deserty sunset.

We’re introduced to Worthington, who seems like a good guy, but there’s a later scene with him chained up and Bale looking him in the eye saying “You killed my father, you tried to kill my mother and you’re not going to kill me.” Maybe I’m not up on what’s current with the flick, but is Worthington a terminator?

Worthington sees a human shape in what looks like a broken down garden and calls out. It, of course, is a T-600 and shoots at him with machine guns attached underneath its arms. Worthington is tackled before he’s hit and Anton Yelchin sits up and says, “Come with me if you want to live,” with a smile.

By the way, there was a couple of interesting glimpses: One, a shadowed T-600 overlooking a pen filled with humans, like a concentration camp and the other was a closer look at a T-600 with his face looking skull-like... not metal endo-skeleton skull, but human skull... kinda like the original Giger alien. Maybe that was a trick of the light, but something was different... maybe it was just some of the "fake rubbery skin" that the early Terminators are supposed to have that I'm mistaking for a skull.

Then we got a lot of Road Warrior-ish chase scenes through a desert landscape, broken down cars… being chased by something we don’t see. The truck the humans use is a reinforced tow truck.

There’s a voice-over from, I assume, Bryce Dallas Howard, where she says “If you saved us once in another future you can save us in this one.”

One of the last shots was John Conner pinned to the ground, a close up as he screams out “YOU SON OF A BITCH!” and a Terminator hand comes into frame, looking like it’s going to touch his cheek. They cut to profile as it drags down his face as he screams. Is this the origin of the scar?

That’s pretty much the footage…

For the panel, McG is joined by Common, Bryce Dallas Howard, Moon Bloodgood, Anton Yelchin, Sam Worthington.

Here’s a few tidbits from the panel:

- Takes place 10 years before the t-800 model, seeing the state of the war before what we’ve seen in the T2 future war sequence.

- “We’re making a gritty and real terminator. It’s not for pansies. We’re making the terminator, you know?” Sam Worthington

- Skynet robots we will see are called Harvesters, transporters, hydrobots. Supposedly designed like Scott’s and Cameron’s Aliens universe.

- Bryce Dallas Howard had an analogy to respond to a question about how they’re going to incorporate the ability to change your fate. Bryce held up a plastic cup and said if the cup is you and the table is fate, the assumption is if you drop the cup it will hit the table/fate. She dropped the cup and grabbed it with her other hand, saying that fate can be changed based on action.

- “I’m trying to protect the mythology of the first two movies. I wouldn’t have signed on if they hadn’t. I love Jim’s films and Jim himself.” – Sam Worthington

- Will Schwarzenegger be back? McG dances around it, saying that the T-800 definitely is part of the mythology, but won’t say any more.

- Sci-Fi is over, according to McG because we’re living it. Spell-checking blackberrys, sheep cloning, etc. He’s making this a war movie.

- They’re approaching it like Nolan approached BATMAN BEGINS.

- Claims the ending on AICN was deliberate manipulation by the studio. Get Kyle Reese to the point where Linda Hamilton would sleep with him. Yelchin studied the first movie and dissected the character in order to keep it consistent.

- T-600 is the robot on the stage.

- Do we get to see what Skynet looks like? Yep. Studied Chernobyl for post-apocalyptic world.

- An Asian dude named Tim came up to the mic and asked a question using an Arnold voice. McG: “That was awesome. And if you’re Asian, that was fuckin’ unbelievable. Bring him up!” And the dude took the stage alongside another pair that came to the mic dressed up. One as Sarah Connor from T2 and the other as the T-1000 with bullet hits on him. For that dude’s question he held up a photo of Eddie Furlong and asked the panel: “Have you seen this boy?”

- Film will be dedicated to Stan Winston.

- John Rosengrant was brought up, from Stan Winston Studios to talk about the machinery. McG’s analogy was the first Mac you bought was huge and had 2 megs of memory and today Macbook Air can control the world. The T-600s are bulky, huge, weathered… 7 feet tall. Soviet tank is the inspiration.

- Moon’s a pilot, Sam is Marcus and Moon takes Sam to an outpost led by John Connor. Moon and Sam are romantic interests.

- Bryce is Kate Connor. “What attracted you to this picture other than you get to make out with Bale?”- McG

- Common: “I’m just glad to be here, honestly. Every time I see the trailer and the clips I’m like, ‘I’m in the Terminator! I can’t believe it!’ We rollin’, man. ” – Common

And that was the panel. I had to run off and do an interview at the very end, but there’s some good stuff in there.

All in all… I need to see more. I like that they’re changing the aesthetic and perhaps building towards the future world we see in the original films and Bale was great, but I want to see a little bit more… maybe a full scene… to see how it works dramatically.

Be back soon with more!

-Quint
quint@aintitcool.com