REACTION: McG sizes up 'Terminator Salvation' as an origin movie ... that seems more like a prequel?

Director Joseph McGinty Nichol elaborated on known "Terminator Salvation" plot details on Feb. 8 at the New York City ComicCon, saying that it is essentially an origin movie for most of the lead characters.

Christian Bale's John Connor progresses into the human resistance leader he is destined to become, SkyNet develops the famed Arnold Schwarzenegger T-800 model and Anton Yelchin's Kyle Reese feels as though he has to volunteer, but not yet go back in time to do his part to save humanity after seeing so many of his comrades' sacrifices.

Is this more of a prequel to "The Terminator" than it is an origin movie? Is it both?

Five minutes of footage later showed that John Connor went into hiding after the nuclear holocaust in 2003's "Terminator 3: Rise of The Machines," later trying to contact members of the human resistance via a radio broadcast. He realizes about 15 years have passed when meeting a young Kyle Reese.

The footage also showed that John Connor's claims about the future cause him to come into conflict with the human resistance's official leader, Michael Ironside's skeptical General Ashdown.

Imagine an intense Bale-interpreted John Connor channeling his mother's behavior while in an insane asylum going up against a hardened military officer portrayed by the actor who was once General Sam Lane on "Smallville" and voiced Darkseid in "Superman: The Animated Series."

McG further revealed how close "Terminator Salvation" might be to its 1984 predecessor, saying Linda Hamilton's Sarah Connor and Schwarzenegger could yet be in the movie in some form and that he has been in contact with Robert Patrick, who portrayed a T-1000 model in "Terminator 2: Judgement Day," and Michael Biehn, who portrayed an adult Kyle Reese in "The Terminator."

Biehn would not necessarily fit in any capacity.

A fews shots in the dark are that McG wants the film to begin with a Sarah Connor voice-over, Schwarzenegger's face to be superimposed on Roland Kickinger's body and Patrick to be a random resistance fighter caught by SkyNet harvesters.

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REACTION: McG hints at what will happen in third act of 'Terminator Salvation'

Director Joseph McGinty Nichol posed two questions on Jan. 30 that might be the basis of the third act of "Terminator Salvation," saying that it is likely to make moviegoers both mad and think.

"Is Skynet smart enough to use the best parts of ourselves against ourselves? Can we trust the machine?" McG said.

McG refers to the artificial intelligence that is SkyNet abducting human beings to use as guinea pigs in trying to develop the T-800 Arnold Schwarzenegger model that is sent back in time to kill Michael Biehn's Kyle Reese in 1984's "The Terminator." He portrays its development in "Terminator Salvation" as the beginning of the end for the human race. 

Striking about this part of the director's interview with Wired is the prospect that this berserk defense network so often mentioned as an unstoppable force in past Terminator films has its own limitations that the human resistance might exploit. 

Especially shocking about what McG said is that it might be possible to trust SkyNet or its Terminator assassins.

This bodes well for a film that McG indicates is as much character-driven and philosophical in terms of its overall plot as it is jam-packed with action as it relates to human resistance fighters making machines wish they had never been assembled.

Likening the aim of the script to be something with which Christian Bale would be willing to be involved, McG said "The Dark Knight" star wanted to read a script that two naked actors could portray and that it remain compelling for two hours. He also referenced in talking about the film an affinity for stories guided by the saying, "That which makes us great will be our undoing."

All the aforementioned parts of McG's interview suggest that perhaps SkyNet will be portrayed as using organic body parts in a quest to improve itself as a defensive network the same way that human beings use technology to make fighting wars more efficient. 

Lacking in perspective from the battle-hardened protagonists in the past Terminator films is that SkyNet triggered, but did not cause an arms exchange between the U.S. and Russia because it deemed the latter nation's nuclear stockpile as threatening.

What if SkyNet simply did not understand the human concept of Mutually Assured Destruction? Could an attempt to destroy the defense network lead to this revelation?

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