The rapper is here for the 'aww HELL naaaaaw' moment where the robots are driving a car at 150mph after the heroes.

Suit#2: Good thinking, Roger. And we need a rapper. The kids love those rappers.

Suit#3: Yeah, a rapper! That always works! Can we get some male stars from the WB too? The teenage girls love them.

And I presume Christian Bale has already signed a water tight contract to star in the movie (which began shooting yesterday) so he's obligated to suffer through this drek.

On a more serious note, I think we should ease up on the accusations of racism. I'm guessing that the implication of the headline is that after hiring McG and shooting for a PG-13, the casting of a rapper is another indicator that this might not be the type of Terminator film us geeks would like to see. Each day, it sounds more and more like 2 Fast 2 Terminator to me.

P.S. If the intent of this article was, in fact, racist, I withdraw my comments in the previous paragraph and say, Shame on you!

I appreciate your sensitivity to an issue to obviously care about, but you have no evidence to suggest Quint's intentions were racist. In fact, anything but, since he made a point of complimenting Common's work in American Gangster.

Given some of what we know so far of this new Terminator film (long established franchise, McG as director, PG-13 rating) it seems fair to worry that the casting of a rapper (or anyone known for their celebrity in another field) may indicate that the film's producers are shooting for a lowest common denominator affair designed to scoop up as many opening weekend dollars as possible. These, often, are not good films. Mayhap he'll turn out to be wrong, but it's a fair assumption to make at this point, don't you think?

First off, they give it to a director who is mostly about the flash and spectacle. We Are Marshall wasn't terrible, but we all know that T4 is going to lean more into Charlie's Angel's territory than college football drama. Second, they pick second rate screenwriters to pen the script and when that happens, 10 times out of 10 you get AvP and Ghost Rider. Third, they are catering to a crowd of people who wasn't even born when the first two movies came out by watering down the rating and casting people that the teen crowd is familiar with.

Common is not a bad actor. He was probably the best thing about Smoking Aces. Ludacris has acting talent too. But look at Iron Man. Rather than cast a rapper as Rhodes for the kidlets, they went with a guy who is an actor by trade and has an Oscar nomination to boot.

All Quint was saying was that this project is full of the same warning signs that we saw in the development stages of AvP, Transformers and Spider Man 3 and we were all bang on there.

But there's no denying he appeals to a certain crowd. Maybe it's not 13 year old kids, but closer to 21-year old college kids alcohol binging on the weekend off Daddy Warbuck's trust fund. Either way, it's a demographic that didn't grow up with the Terminator series and needs something more than Christian Bale to get them in theater.

That said, Common is an activist, a family man and a helluva guy.

I don't mind the casting of Common as much as I mind the PG-13 rating Warner Bros. deemed necessary for this film. The marketing tie-ins are more important to the studio than the actual film, which signals total shit-splatting disaster for me. I'm a huge "Terminator" fan, always have been, but until Warner Bros. allows McG to work from an R-rated script, I'm hanging my head in disappointment.

Having said that, the problem with this is that casting a rapper (especially before the script is completed) screams MARKETING DECISION, as does everything else in this abortion: PG13, McG, and now common

^^And WTF? Not all rap uses samples that need to be cleared... but some of the best stuff does!

Seriously, I think he was abducted and carried off during that firefight under the atmosphere processor. There were flamethrowers going off left and right, and it was dark, so you don't really "see" him buy it. But he was cool. "Another day in the corps! Hudson, come HERE!! Look in MY EYE. You secure that shit, Hudson!"

Ok, so you don't want a rapper playing a part in a "Terminator" movie. That's fine. I can support such a position. But while making this assertion, don't lump all hip-hop under the same banner when clearly there are marked differences between gangsta and more creative hip hop. And to assert that hip hop isn't art is about as racist ("all that crap is the same to me") and small-minded ("I don't consider any of it art) as you can get. Just saying.

Do you consider anything American black people have brought into our culture art? Or is all the same to you?

Don't sneer at what you don't understand.

And I don't like it especially, but such ignorance should be curtailed.

If it's anything the 2008 elections have taught me it's that racism is alive and well in this country. I'm half-Mexican/half-Dutch and married to a Korean. So believe me, I know what ignorance is all about.

And Hawaiian, of course racism still exists in this country. I've been down South where it's pretty blatant. On the other hand, I live in the Northeast, and it's still very prevalent here, just not as much "out" there.

A child shall lead them.

Then she wakes up. It's all a dream.

Regardless, relax a bit. They haven't even shot the movie yet. Think back to T2... it was actually a pretty light R rated flick. A few edited shots, less f-bombs, and it would have been a hard pg-13.

But as long as I've been reading AICN, which is probably twelve years, I haven't read one black person rip country music by saying "it's all the same." Not once. But over and over, I've read lots of white people rip hip-hop for being "all the same." Writing that hip-hop is "all the same" isn't technically racist, you're right Snake; but I'm tired of the excuses people come up with to defend culturally dismissive comments like the ones Sithdan made. If you don't like hip-hop, that's fine. Just say "I don't like hip-hop." But to say all hip hop is the same, when what you're asserting is clearly coming from a point of extreme black culture ignorance, it's racist. It's painting an entire culture with a broad brush, which is exactly what racism is. Sithdan probably doesn't consider himself racist, which is fine, but any dismissively sweeping comments about a culture or creed are, by definition, racist.

I'm not trying to be provocative here, I'm just saying it's important to consider what you're writing before you write it.

On a personal note, I'm white and a huge fan of creative hip-hop, black or white or Asian, so I'm coming from a place of knowledge. Sithdan's comments are out of line.

A guitar band could also do all their production on a fucking lap top, and it would also sound shit. So do you therefore, think that Guitar music is easy and cheap?

If the headline was "T4 casts country music star!" would you claim he was dissing whites? No, he's simply saying that the movie is being cast by the marketing department, and that's generally a bad thing.

Ummm, no. Robocop 2 broke all the unspoken rules in it's final 10 minutes. People pulling the wounded out of the way were safe? Nope. They got shot too. Love it or hate it, Robocop 2 ignored every boundary of button down Hollywood.

Nah, I'm kidding, go ahead--vitriole is fun to read

And, by the way, Common is a crossover guy with roots in the mainstream and the underground. He swears sometimes, eloquently speaks his mind, and pushes subjects some people consider "ghetto," but he isn't gangsta. Never has been, never will be. Of course, if you're one of those people who sees all hip-hop as being the same, you'll lump him in with the lowest Common denominator out of pure cultural laziness.

Mos Def and Eminem both turned out to be excellet actors. If Common was the black policeman in Gangster who acted like a junkie as a distraction, then I thought he was pretty good