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The End Begins


Set in post-apocalyptic 2018, Terminator Salvation stars Christian Bale as John Connor, the man fated to lead the human resistance against Skynet and its army of Terminators.  But the future Connor was raised to believe in is altered in part by the appearance of Marcus Wright (Sam Worthington), a stranger whose last memory is of being on death row. Connor must decide whether Marcus has been sent from the future, or rescued from the past. As Skynet prepares its final onslaught, Connor and Marcus both embark on an odyssey that takes them into the heart of Skynet’s operations, where they uncover the terrible secret behind the possible annihilation of mankind.

The latest installment of the Terminator franchise, Terminator Salvation is directed by McG and also stars Anton Yelchin as Kyle Reese, Bryce Dallas Howard as Kate Connor, Moon Bloodgood as Blair Williams, Helena Bonham Carter as Serena Kogen, Common as Barnes, and Jadagrace as Star.

Watch the trailer here.

Terminator Salvation will be released across South Africa on June 5, 2009.

TERMINATOR FACTS YOU NEED TO KNOW:
  • Christian Bale is the seventh actor to portray John Connor. In Terminator 2: Judgment Day, the adult John Connor was played by Michael Edwards, Edward Furlong as a teenager and Dalton Abbot as an infant (who appeared during Sarah Connor's dream sequence of the nuclear attack). Nick Stahl played the fourth John Connor in Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines (2003). Thomas Dekker currently plays John Connor in the TV series, Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles, with John DeVito playing a younger John in a flashback.
  • Director McG asked the cast and crew to read the novel "The Road" by Cormac McCarthy and "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?" by Philip K. Dick - the basis for Blade Runner (1982) - because he wanted them to absorb the bleakness of the world in the novels.
  • There is a room in the future with several T-800 models that look just like Arnold Schwarzenegger. The Arnold model was sent back by Skynet in the first film to kill Sarah Connor. The Arnold model was sent back by the humans in T2 and T3 to protect John Connor. Arnold is a different character in each of the three films.
  • Within the Terminator universe created by Cameron, Terminators of the same model share identical characteristics. This has allowed multiple Terminators to be portrayed by Schwarzenegger. The T-800 Model 101 looks like Schwarzenegger. Model 102 will look like someone else. The model number refers to physical appearance while 800 refers to the endoskeleton type.
  • T2 won four Academy Awards in 1992 for make-up, sounds editing, sound mixing and visual effects. T2 took the art and science of special effects to a whole new level with the technology used to create the T-1000- the first computer generated main character in film and the first that has natural human movement.
  • Terminator Salvation takes places at the beginning of the war between man and machine, so the terminator machines that Skynet creates are T-600 models and are earlier models than Arnold's T-800. The T-600s are bigger, nastier and less sophisticated then Arnold's T-800 model, the T-1000 from T2 and T-X from T3.
  • The T-600 model is the first in the Terminator series designed to infiltrate the human resistance. The endoskeleton more closely resembles that of a human skeleton and it has rubber skin designed to look like a person. However, they are easily spotted because of their rubber skin, their 8-foot height and mechanical voice. Despite being designed as an infiltrator, they also lacked human behaviour programming. Stan Winston/Legacy EFX put a lot of effort into making the T-600 look like an 8-foot tall machine literally wrapped in prosthetics.
  • Some of the Skynet machines we see in the future are the Hunter Killers (HKs) which are terminator-type planes, Moto-Terminators (terminators shaped like motorcycles), Harvesters which collect human beings for R&D for Skynet (giant insect-like terminators), Hydrobots which patrol the water (aquatic terminators), Aerostats which survey all that is going on with the resistance (surveillance drones with an inset camera lens that has a red glow) and Transports that move human prisoners around.
  • McG cast Sam Worthington at the suggestion of James Cameron, who is in Cameron's next film, Avatar.
  • This is the first film in which John Connor and his father Kyle Reese have appeared together.
  • This is the second franchise that both Arnold Schwarzenegger and Christian Bale have both been involved in, without ever appearing together. They have both also appeared in the Batman films.

So, will Terminator Salvation go on to become a huge fan favourite and knock T2 off its pedestal? Or will it forever be remembered for THAT on-set rant from its star, Christian Bale. All will be revealed on 5 June!

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