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Whether you're a casual viewer or someone so hard-core that you've got an Arnold catchphrase tattooed across your "I'll Be" back, the "Terminator" franchise can get pretty confusing. With millions of soon-to-be-harvested humans having now seen "Salvation," we took some of their burning (and spoiler-heavy!) questions straight to the stars.
Q: In "Salvation," was John Connor aware that time travel would someday exist? Was he just waiting around for it?
Christian Bale: Yes, it hasn't been invented in this movie, so it can't be utilized yet. He knows entirely that there's a bizarre situation where he knows Kyle Reese — who is a teenager but who is his father — and that he'll have to send him back in time. But Kyle Reese is not aware of that.
Q: Skynet made Marcus Wright (Sam Worthington) so he thinks he's human, and there are huge strategic benefits to that. So why didn't they do the same with such future models as the T-800 and the T-1000?
McG: The reason they made Marcus the way they made him is because they wanted to keep enough humanity intact for him to be an infiltration unit. He's not necessarily a "Terminator." It's almost as if Skynet had a big gun theory: Let's throw a T-800 at him; didn't work. T-1000 liquid metal? Came up short. T-X, the girl who can adjust her cup size? Still didn't work. So, they've thought in a revolutionary capacity, which is articulated by the Serena (Helena Bonham Carter) character that will lure him in by using trust — the most human out of all human characteristics. Marcus was never there to overtly kill — he was there to infiltrate.
Q: If Marcus Wright is such a threat to the Resistance, why didn't Kyle Reese warn Sarah to tell John to watch out for him when he went back in time in the first "Terminator"?
Anton Yelchin: When Connor sent Kyle back, that was a world in which Kyle wasn't Connor's father. So when he sent him back, it then started this chain of the Connor that you have in [all the sequels] where Kyle Reese is his father — it'll be interesting how they tackle that [in future sequels] if we ever get to a point we have to send [Kyle] back.
Q: If the purpose of a Moto-Terminator is to bring stray humans back to the Harvester, how does it do that? Does it have arms that we just aren't seeing?
McG: There's a mechanism built into the Moto-Terminator that is something that's almost catapult-like in nature, designed to use the actual weight of the machine itself to haul that which it is pursuing until the Harvester can come and collect it. Then [the humans] will be placed into transport and taken back to a Skynet facility where they'll be doing nasty testing on our stem cells — in the interest of creating tissue that can live in a titanium chassis.
Q: Why can't John tell Kyle Reese that he'll someday become his father? Would that knowledge change their future or something?
Christian Bale: Exactly, exactly. [Reese] shouldn't know that — there's no benefit to him knowing that.
Q: Over the last few months, we've heard a lot of "Salvation" talk from actor Terry Crews, but he's not in the film. Where'd he go?
McG: He's there; he's just got a bullet in his head. He's lying there dead at the top of the [movie]. There was a beat where he interfaced with John Connor, going into the foxhole. It was designed to be a misdirect [with Crews saying] — "Are you Connor? The John Connor? The one who was supposed to do this, that and the other?" And you would realize, "Wow, Connor is now leading this mission." But ultimately I felt that it was slowing down the opening thrust of the film. That Terry scene will be on the DVD.
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Check out everything we've got on "Terminator Salvation."
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