THE PLANK MAY 27, 2009
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Why was Terminator: Salvation so dull? And why, in particular, was Christian Bale's John Connor so emphatically uninteresting? Chud.com explains:
Like in the
franchise itself, history has been changed, and the original script for Terminator: Salvation ended up getting gutted.... The biggest
change came when [director] McG flew to the UK to talk to Christian Bale about
starring in the fourth Terminator movie. The director wanted the Batman
star to play Marcus Wright, the cyborg protagonist of the script. But
Bale focused on another part: John Connor. The only problem is that
John Connor had about three minutes of screen time in the entire film;
most of Connor's moments were played offscreen. In the original script
John Connor was the secretive leader of the Resistance. He lived on the
HQ sub, and almost no one saw his face, so as to keep him hidden from
the robots. Connor made radio addresses and existed as a legend for the
fighting men and women of the Resistance, but in the original script
Connor didn't show up onscreen until the last minutes of the movie.... [Bale] had something else
up his sleeve: massive rewrites to beef up the John Connor role....The script that ended up getting shot never
quite finds anything for John Connor to do. If you were to remove
Connor from the film, relegating him once again to radio voice over,
almost none of the film's plot would be changed. It's likely that the
new Connor scenes were the work of Jonathan Nolan, who did do a lot of
writing on the film, but who was denied credit by the WGA. The reason
would be that all of the work Nolan did was cosmetic - adding Connor
scenes that had no bearing on the film's structure or plot.
There's a good deal more for any readers interested, including the considerably bolder (though highly problematic) ending that also wound up getting scrapped.
I found this news interesting in part because I had a short interview a while back with Pete Docter, director of Pixar's Up (my review will be posted Friday; short version: terrific), and one of the topics we discussed was the far greater creative control that writers and directors have in animation generally and at Pixar in particular. Accomodating divas who want the entire film rewritten so that the tiny role they're interested in becomes the lead just isn't a part of their portfolio.
--Christopher Orr
9 comments
I saw the movie last night and I agree that it was a stinker, the mystery that existed from the brief scraps shown of the future in the first movies was done away with completely unsatisfactorily. I always imagined the takeover by the machines was sudden and overwhelming, leaving mankind to the margins, but here they had subs, jets, etc. If they had that then all they needed was a series of emp's to fry the circuitry.
I do agree that this would have been a better movie if it had been more like it was originally intended. Still, I think more of a Road Warrior look to the world would have been better even with this other script. It looks like Bale trashed the script, it is a shame the writer did not have a Baley type fit and scream "do I trash your scenes, then why are you trashing my script. f-ing amatuer"
- blackton
May 27, 2009 at 2:23pm
I don't really know anything about the movie industry, so I'm confused. If Christian Bale refused to star in Salvation unless they rewrote the script, why not just, well, not hire Christian Bale? There are approximately 10^23 other good looking male actors hanging around LA who would do just as good a job. And while some movies use star power to draw in audiences, it's hard to believe that there's a significant number of people who said to themselves "I'm not too interested in a new Terminator movie, but now that Christian Bale is in it, I'll definitely go."
Seriously, this is Christian Bale we're talking about! Does anyone really like him that much? If Christian Bale disappeared off the face of the Earth tomorrow, would anyone grieve?
- ratnerstar
May 27, 2009 at 2:30pm
Can't talk long: Man U v. Barca about to begin. Ratner nails it. I'd only add: for me, Terminator = Arnold. No Arnold, no go see. Re franchise: Party over, out of time.
- cvillekid
May 27, 2009 at 2:43pm
Bale as a robot sounds like a great idea. He is a draw, but I agree -- it's the Terminator franchise, it would have done fine without Bale.
- perkowitz
May 27, 2009 at 3:05pm
To quote a middle aged Star Wars nerd coming out of Revenge of the Sith, "I wish the prequels had never been made!" That kind of sentiment is just lethal for a fantasy franchise: when an installment(s) is not just bad, or forgettable, but actually *diminishes* the franchise as a whole.
On the other hand, if James Bond could survive both Roger Moore and Mike Myers, anything is possible. We're cheap dates.
- gwolfjr
May 27, 2009 at 3:09pm
This makes sense, but I'm going to read the article. Terminator: Salvation is just mediocre. Sorry, but T1 and T2 are two of the best movies of their genre ever made. Virtually anything is going to pale in comparison to them.
Chris, are you going to review The Girlfriend Experience?
- kerouac9
May 27, 2009 at 5:17pm
Am I the only one who isn't trashing this film? Okay, it's not good by any measure of the word. But it's a TERMINATOR MOVIE. It has explosions and menacing cyborgs. Chase scenes. FIGHT SCENES!!!
If you over-think the entire movie, you sort of miss the point as to why it was made: To provide cheap entertainment for a lot of men with popped collars and baseball hats.
Could the movie have been better? Sure. I mean, if Sam Worthington didn't randomly sound Australian (even on voice over lines!) it would have been almost tolerable. But I don't think Bale's demand for a re-write killed this thing, it never was meant for the kind of cinematic glory TNR readers expect.
- bcbaird
May 27, 2009 at 11:53pm
kerouac - I'm a bit behind, for a variety of reasons, and haven't seen The Girlfriend Experience yet. But because a couple of folks have requested it, I'll try to remedy the omission and share any thoughts.
- Chris Orr
May 28, 2009 at 9:55am
bcbaird - Sorry, Terminator was quite good, T2 raised the bar, T3 did terrible, terrible, obscene things with that bar, and perhaps after all that, we hoped that they'd try to get back to the quality fo T2 and we'd get a somewhat thoughtful action movie this time around. To paraphrase a terrible Bond villain, cyborgs and explodey things are not enough.
I actually hate the earlier script that Orr's link refers to there. It leaves me feeling rather like I did after seeing Superman Returns, having read of an earlier version of the script (Krypton doesn't explode, kung-fu Superman, the whole awful deal), that being: Well, I suppose I should be glad it wasn't as awful as it could have been...
The link does answer the question of what went wrong, though: if you're rewriting the script that drastically, by committee, in real time, while you're shooting...you're going to get crap. No question.
- janus
May 28, 2009 at 1:35pm