6:05: Logging into the Warner Bros. BD-Live account now.

6:08: There's a Harry Potter one on December 12, apparently.

6:12: Trying to figure out how to log into this commentary.

6:12: Sorry, I may have already had a few beers before this thing started.

6:15: I think it's the Director's Cut disc...

6:16: Still loading. It's a good thing I saw this movie already.

6:17: This IS December 5th right?? Why are there no screenings available?

6:25: OK I'm in. Had to join the session by joining the invite from an email. My fault.

6:26: Strange, it seems to be text only. I thought this thing was going to have audio.

6:29: There's even an option to have Event Audio "on", but it's not working.

6:30: Someone just asked him what's up with the name "McG"

6:30: Long silence.

6:31: He explains his mom actually came up with the idea to call him McG.

6:36: There we go! Commenter dishab says I had to change to Linear PCM audio to hear it. How in the hell would anyone know how to do that?

6:37: And now either McG is silent, or the audio stream somehow cut out. But he is talking about how he wanted to be a Laker.

6:39: This is seriously annoying. How would a normal person with a PS3 know to flip back and forth between Bitstream and PCM Audio? How would they even know what the hell either of those meant?

6:40: Don't get me wrong; the idea is pretty great. To have a director give live commentary and answer questions on top of the movie is a good idea. But this BD-Live implementation isn't any better than it was last year with The Dark Knight. In fact, I think it may actually be worse now.

6:42: Here's a FAQ posted by dishab in the comments in case any of you are having trouble.

6:44: I'm restarting the movie to see if that will fix the audio problem. What makes it even more frustrating is that I got it to work for about 30 seconds.

6:46: OK, now it works again. McG is talking about how they wanted to vary up the ethnicities of the survivors.

6:46: McG: "Where are all the people that hate this movie? I want these questions soon."

6:47: They're going to take a break soon. But before that they're talking about Moon Bloodgood's boobies.

6:47: The transcript on screen seems to be way delayed from what he's actually saying. 30-60 seconds.

6:48: Five minute break. And then afterwards some boobies.

6:49: I think somebody forgot to pause the movie like they did in the Dark Knight screening.

6:50: It's just silence and no typing now, but the movie is still playing.

6:53: It's starting up again in 30 seconds.

6:53: They're back. Oh they missed the boob scene. McG says he didn't want to make it the "gratuitous titty shot in a genre film."

6:54: He had to cut out some stuff like a screwdriver attack to make it a PG-13 in the theatrical release.

6:55: McG just compared his movie to The Dark Knight.

6:57: Question: how do you feel about making the horrible Charlie's Angels films?

6:57: McG: "I really like those movies. If you don't like them you can fuck off."

6:59: "I want feedback from the audience if you want another movie or not?"

7:00: From the comments the director's making, it seems like McG isn't really a fan of subtlety. I don't want to get too negative or anything...but yeah.

7:02: In answering a question about if Robert Patrick (T-1000) would be in a future movie. McG said that he might be, if there was a scientist that wanted to model a Terminator after himself. (Yes, he took that base idea from Terminator 3, in case you were wondering.)

7:03: McG just called himself heavyhanded.

7:05: Question: "What do you want for Christmas."

7:05: McG: "Blah blah let go of materialism blah blah spiritual salvation blah blah douche answer." It was pretty horrible.

7:06: I don't know how long I can deal with McG's commentary.

7:07: And now he just compared himself to Alfred Hitchcock.

7:10: You know when you're listening to a stupid person try and use big words he doesn't know the meaning of and end up using similar-sounding words that are totally different? This is like that.

7:10: You know when you're listening to a shallow person try to come up with some profound things to say, but fails miserably and sounds stupid? Yup. This is that.

7:13: The moderators are picking only the positive comments to give to McG to talk about.

7:13: He just announced that he's making another Terminator movie. Seriously.

7:15: Here's a tip that will go down in history from one of the film greats. "There's two elements that go into filmmaking. There's sound, and there's the picture."

7:16: Oh and for those people who are punching themselves in the face that he's making another one? He said he's making one after that.

7:19: McG just confessed to verbal abuse from his father when he was growing up.

7:21: And now McG is being coy about making another one? I don't get it.

7:22: McG says he only saw one episode of the Sarah Connor chronicles. And he didn't "pay attention" to the third movie. No wonder none of this shit lined up with the third movie.

7:23: It's also unfortunate that the main two characters have the names John and Kate.

7:24: And now he's talking about a second or third movie again.

7:24: I'm doing this for you, by the way, readers. Normally I would have turned this off an hour ago.

7:25: Words, words, words. He's using a lot of words to say very little.

7:27: And now the audio is cutting in and out. I actually like it more this way.

7:28: Here's a good comment from djbneozen:

Do you have to be really really full of yourself to be a director for a major Hollywood production nowadays? I'll just say it right now; T4...not that great. The movie lacked substance. No wonder they aren't really talking about it directly. I mean, specificly about what was going on in different scenes, why it was shot from this angle or that angle or what they may have cut from the movie. You know, discussing the "directing" choice in the movie with the DIRECTOR.

Batman, on the other hand, spectacular.

Jason...by the attitude of McG, I bet he had a lot more beer than you tonight.

7:30: They paused the movie to figure out the technical difficulties. Namely, the no audio-ness of what's going on right now.

7:32: You know, I think this movie is the only movie I've ever seen that was actually better when watched on the back of 7-inch airplane seat screen.

7:33: Now I have to restart the movie since the audio's still messed up.

7:34: Apropos of nothing, I just got a spam text talking about debt relief.

7:36: Anyone else like Community with Joel McHale? My favorite new show of the season.

7:37: OK audio is back. I wonder what stupid comments I just missed int he last 5 minutes.

7:37: Aaaaaaand he's talking about Hitler.

7:38: McG says once the T800 goes out, it's "curtains" for the resistance.

7:43: Wow, McG just dissed the third movie. Seriously? "We just tried to introduce credibility." Holy. Fuck. He thinks his movie is better than the third movie.

7:44: McG asked viewers who didn't like the third act, and it was all positive. Hell, I even liked the third act, because it meant the movie was ending soon.

7:46: He says Sarah Connor is going to be in the next film, but he's not sure how he's going to pull that off.

7:47: McG just says he loves what he does. Well, if I were a horrible director (I am) and got handed the reigns of a beloved franchise, I'd love it too.

7:48: McG: "I'm disappointed in myself that I couldn't make the best movie." Holy shit. He just said he thought he could make a better movie than #1 or #2.

7:49: Someone asked if McG could use Christian Bale in another one of his movies, what would it be? McG then talks about how it's good to work with Christian. And then babbles for three minutes before not answering the question.

7:52: McG talks about how he could have made a "dark ending" and ended the franchise by having [spoiler] Connor wake up from the transplant and shoot everyone else. Then it fades to black and the franchise is done.

7:53: THE MOVIE IS OVER! THE MOVIE IS OVER!!!

7:53: Thanks for reading everyone. I hope this was at least somewhat entertaining for you, as painful as it was for me. It's time to go break this Blu-ray disc so I'll never have to hear McG's voice again. Good night.

It's going to be the first audio commentary that's live streamed from off the disc, so that'll be interesting to see, even if the movie (or the commentary) won't live up to expectations.

This mashup by IGN, Transforminators, works on so many levels that it's almost scary. Then again, it probably explains a lot about the stylistic decisions made in Terminator Salvation. If you haven't ditched out for your extended weekend yet, kill some of the company's time...before the summer blockbusters kill you. [IGN]

I'll keep the spoilery bits to the minimum.

The two shots here with Marcus are snagged from the trailer. They're from the most ludicrous scene in the movie—which is ludicrous for many, many reasons—where Marcus strolls into the central Skynet control center. The white, glossy room—the standard motif for the heart of the machine—hosts a computer system with an advanced user interface (a lot like Iron Man's) displayed on massive glass monitors. Which makes no sense whatsoever.

Why the hell would Skynet's control room be designed with an ultra-polished user interface for people to use? Or have a comfy chair for Marcus to hurl at the computer? They're machines! Even though some of them are built to mimic poeple, they don't need multi-touch, superslick graphics, floating heads to explain the entire plot or monitors the size of a wall like meatbag people do. They can just plug in, or as seen in the movie, sync via the optical terminal Marcus and other terminators use, which actually makes sense. Or communicate wirelessly. In binary. Or whatever.

You could argue, I suppose, that the entire setup was constructed just for Marcus—it has to have been built after Judgment Day, since the rest of the city is ruins—but even the prison blocks are designed with interfaces for humans to interact with. Wouldn't Skynet want to make it as hard as possible for people to figure out how talk to machines, so John Connor can't hack them in 30 seconds with his Sony Vaio?

Skynet's not as advanced as The Matrix, sure, but you'd think it'd realize designing and building things around people paradigms is pointless and inefficient, since um, there shouldn't be any people around. That's one thing The Matrix gets more right than Salvation: The machine world, architected and built by machines—who are slavishly devoted to logic and efficiency—would be just for machines. Not people.

I know on one level it's stupid to complain about things that don't make sense in a science fiction movie, but added on top of everything else going on in Terminator: Salvation, it's one of the major points that shit all over my suspension of disbelief. [Giz's Terminator: Salavation Review]

Shout its model name at the top of your lungs "Teee EIGHT HUNDRED!!!" or "MOTO-TERMINATOR!!", then run. That way the kiddies back in 2009 can Google for the proper toy.

The Terminator franchise has always been inherently ridiculous. We're talking about killer robots that travel through time—without guns or clothes, of course—to not only destroy John Connor, leader of the Resistance, but take out his mom. (Destroying his mom's mom, mom's mom's mom or anything along these genealogical lines would have been easier, but a bit too far-fetched.)

And that's exactly my point. Our favorite, ridiculous franchises regularly walk precariously across that deep valley of ludicrousness, but instead of taking its chances on the tight rope like Star Trek did, Terminator Salvation double flips over the chasm on a motorcycle.

We're talking 20-story robots that can creep up behind you without so much as a peep and supporting characters who nonchalantly demonstrate super heroic bodily feats without anyone ever asking "WTF?"

There are two story lines going on here. One, of John Connor, aka Batman. Seriously, he sounds just like Batman. Actually, he sounds like Batman for only the first few scenes of the film. Later, in scenes that, according to storyboards I saw during my set visit, were added after renegotiating with Bale for a bigger part, he sounds, you know, somewhat well-adjusted. It's too bad that much of Bale's own subplot, a yarn in which Connor painstakingly develops a frequency to deactivate Skynet killbots, is ended in unfulfilling resolution.

The other story is of Marcus. NOW THIS PART WILL BE A SPOILER IF YOU HAVEN'T WATCHED THE COMMERCIALS. BUT BECAUSE I ASSUME YOU WATCH COMMERCIALS, I'M NOT GOING TO FEEL TOO BAD FOR SAYING IT.

Marcus is a Terminator. Oh my God!

The problem with the movie is that too much of the story is of Marcus. The other problem of the movie is that too much of the story is of Marcus hopping from unexciting chase scene to unexciting chase scene. It's a two-hour video game linking a series of sequences that have little reason for existence other than McG's action-packed directing style.

And not action-packed like Charlie's Angels. It's a lot more like the so less charming, so less self-aware Charlie's Angels 2: Full Throttle.

Sure, the sacred tome of Terminator 2 could also be regarded as a montage of chase scenes, but each chase scene forced you to hold your breath. In Terminator Salvation, a giant, Transformers-esque robot chases after a tow truck full of people. Then it deploys motorcycle Terminators. There are several cuts. Then the tow truck spins in such a way that its winch strikes one of the Terminators like a wrecking ball. On a bridge. There is also jet involvement.

Remember in T2, when the good old semi chased that kid on a motorbike? Man that was great.

The thing is, only…2/3 of Terminator Salvation is this depressing. When the Marcus and Connor storylines finally converge in a mad dash to blow Skynet away, the film hones in on what made the original movie and T2 great: The good old-fashioned Terminators, not new merchandizing opportunities or high octane thrill rides.

In this last act, we see Connor properly grown up, exploiting his full potential as a soldier/hacker who strikes the ideal equilibrium of previously mentioned ludicrousness. We see Marcus, while not a character we particularly care about, to be of a particularly interesting and justified existence. (Incidentally, Sam Worthington doesn't play the role poorly. It's the script/editing that lets him down.) And there's a cameo that's probably worth the price of the ticket alone. Scratch that, it is worth the price of the ticket alone.

Somewhere, deep inside, Terminator Salvation may be a good film. But it's so unabashedly Hollywood, such a construct of too many artistic styles, storylines, chase scenes, contracts and heavy-handed metaphors—not to mention terrible script writing—that it may have simply forgotten how to be good. Quite simply, it's just too busy being a movie to be entertaining.

T3 was a lousy film, but at least its fatalistic ending stuck with you. At the end of Terminator Salvation, I left the theater gagging on the world's most expensive Hallmark card, questioning why I was supposed to give a damn in the first place.

For more on Terminator Salvation, read about our set visit.

Would he dig through morgues to find the proper arms, legs and noses he needed to create his infamous monster? Or would he give up on biological life and simply build a robot?
The T-600 is the closest thing modern fiction has to Frankenstein's famous beast. He stands 7 feet tall and shares the monster's trademark stiff, slow movements. If pushed to the ground, he might not be able to get up, trapped like an overweight baby on his back. But then again, it would take a lot to knock him down. A truck, at least. Plus, you'd need to get past the minigun that's permanently welded to his arm first.

And then there's his skin. Like Frankenstein, the T-600 is in a constant state of rot. Sent out to patrol without maintenance, the T-600 is Skynet's more sinister rendition of the taxicab, a tool driven day and night until its rubber skin melts to slime and crackles away in patches to dry, desert heat.

In Terminator Salvation, SkyNet has not created the cold, technologically precise world of The Matrix. It's simply not that smart yet. And the thing about machines is that they're not usually as self-conscious about their looks as Hollywood designers would argue.

During my visit to the movie's set during filming last summer, I got a firsthand look at all of this techno-ugly, the world in which, if the machines do take over, we'd see in our lifetime.

Everything in the future is pieced together from scraps and bits. I realize that as my bus pulls up to the nondescript studio in the middle of the New Mexico desert. I glance over at a cacophony of metal in the sand and wonder, is it a junkyard or a battlefield that I'm looking at?

Buses and cars are piled not with armor plating but a few extra layers of rust and grime. Most look like they couldn't run. Some look like they may have never run.

I walk up to a helicopter that's in relatively good condition, yet my untrained eyes can tell it's not one chopper but two or three stitched together with a welding torch and a lot of swearing. It barely looks like it can fly (and ironically, I find out later that it can't—it's suspended from a wire during shooting).

Everything is perforated with bullet holes.

Then I see the source of the carnage, shining with enough sheen to justify that whole overused diamond in the rough metaphor.

With two sets of mini-tank treads, a vague hint of a torso and head and twin miniguns, it looks sort of like Johnny 5...if Johnny 5 ripped out his eyes and flooded his chassis with robotic performance enhancers until his metal skin buckled under the pressure.

Those guns are more than a prop, I hear. And during filming, they've decided to fire live ammunition in lieu of CGI. Each shell costs $3 and the guns fire somewhere around 100 rounds per second. Sure, the effect would be cheaper to create on computers, but there's no way it would be so much fun.

I've pretty much just walked up to the T4 set—one of many, in fact—and I realize that the amount of real, massively-scaled props I've seen is astounding. A week earlier when I booked the ticket to New Mexico to visit the set, I wondered just how much stuff I'd actually see versus how much of the set tour would consist of dry wall and green paint.

There's really not much green paint going on at all.

As I work my way inside and weave through a small army of builders constructing plywood masterpieces that rise stories into the air, I smell wood, not paint. I'm told that green screen is saved for the edges or corners of a set—things like the blown-out roof of a real 3-story air intake silo.
Meanwhile, as we wet our shoes in a darkened sewer complex (filled with about an inch of real water and mud), I'm amazed at how the plywood walls have been transformed from generic yellow wood into metal and rust and brick—set decorators have airbrushed almost every square inch to create the illusion of infinite tetanus.

And the tech. Oh man.

Lining the walls of this resistance bunker, the stomping grounds of John Connor, there must have been at least 50 PCs in various states of disrepair. They were stacked like concrete blocks, a rummage sale obsession gone way, way wrong. And there was other stuff, too. Super geeky stuff. Spectrum analyzers, CB radios and coils of aging solder.
As the bunker continues, the floor dries out as it leads to a small operating room. Here, you could see all types of medical equipment easily dating back to the 60s. Combine every season of MASH with every season of ER, cover it in dirt and add a solitary intimidation light hanging from the ceiling. That's what it looked like.

The Resistance was fighting Frankenstein with Frankenstein—piecing together every type of tech possible to battle SkyNet's evolving monster.

I knew the sets were fake, but when you're surrounded by so much existing technology, so much detail, being pieced together as part of a dark thesis, it unsettles your stomach to say the least.

Hopping back on the bus, I sat for about an hour riding deeper into the desert as the air conditioning submitted to New Mexico's summer heat.

I pass by a gas station. Is this just a gas station in the middle of nowhere? Nope, it's a movie set - the famous Sara Connor station she visits at the end of T1. (It wasn't exploding at the time.)

I pass by a pile of old corroding cars. Is this another futuristic battlefield? Nope, it's just a junk car lot.

The bus jostles me through a seemingly endless, operational train yard before reaching its abandoned station that must be a century old, an eerie conglomeration of beauty and horror. The sun diffuses through skylights in the expansive space and time seems to slow as dandelion pollen floats through the air. Yet, when shot at night, the cattle cars around back—retrofitted by "machines"—had brought people here to be skinned for hair and epidermis (to develop the Arnold Schwarzenegger terminators, the "skin jobs").
Standing inside one of these steaming cars, sharp edges exposed at every corner, I couldn't imagine what the extras had gone through during shooting…let alone those persecuted in the real world events that this scene was meant to so closely (maybe even heavy-handedly) parallel.

And in this sense, the movie was reaching another level of Frankensteinian philosophy—patching the most horrifying moments of our past with the potentially hopeless bleakness of the future. Who knew, if the actors, director, cinematographer, special effects coordinator and editor could pull it off, maybe the movie—a sequel of a sequel of a sequel—might actually be good…poignant, even.

As the sun finally set and I arrived at my final destination, a night shoot right outside of SkyNet itself (depicted as an aging factory expelling absurd but periodic balls of flame) my skepticism had been laid to rest.

Terminator 4 might or might not be a good movie, but I'd gotten the vibe from McG, the director, and a number of the actors that, yes, they knew, Terminator 3 was horrible. And previewing about 6 minutes of footage of the film in McG's trailer depicted the Mad Max world in a cohesive, and new voice.

(Since then, the trailers have painted the picture of a bigger action movie with more CGI and more polish. It'll be interesting to see how the stylistic themes collide in the final product.)

Everyone was clearly working hard to make this movie not suck. A month earlier, one member of the construction crew had been stung by a scorpion. This tale of a real life emergency made McG's informal poll amongst journalists as to whether or not a James Cameron cameo would be too cheesy for the content seem a little less impressive, but earnest all the same.

That night, as I watched the first and last actual filming of my visit, the crew of 150 or so people had one goal—put a giant bulldozer through a wall. The scene could only be done once (lest they rebuild the brick wall) so it was rehearsed endlessly. A jib arm would track an actor's movements as he infiltrated SkyNet, then, BOOM. Wall comes down.
Well, that's not including the military-grade explosions from SkyNet's rhythmic death flames (that ushered a periodic deathly wall of heat onto onlookers), but you get the point.

And after several hours of rehearsal and constant mini meetings between directing, cinematography and visual effects departments (tediously boring in spite of the endless pyrotechnics), I can spoil that the brick wall does come down and our protagonist lives to tell the tale.

But whether or not the Frankensteinian T-600 lurking in the background noticed, I do not know.

Machines Behaving Deadly: A week exploring the sometimes difficult relationship between man and technology.

For a cool $185 you too can wear the boots Connor sports in Terminator Salvation. The S.I. Assault boot features prime urethane shock absorption, a moisture-wicking liner and a vulcanized rubber sole for wet/dry traction and silent movement. But really the best feature is that it'll still look good in 2018, which is more than you can say for most of your clothes. [Oakley via Uncrate]

There's an E.T. moon jump at 3:07 too, if you're feeling nostalgic, and a little twist at the end that I hadn't heard or seen until just now. Could be just me. I'm sheltered. [Updated: Link to the HD Apple Trailer Site original here]

Early reports indicate the game is very smooth and complex, and we can tell from the trailer than specifics of gameplay will be varied (different weapons, vehicles) and full of shit blowing up. We don't have a price or release date for you, but Gameloft says it's "coming soon," which hopefully means before the end of the summer. [Terminator: Salvation via Boy Genius Report]

As you can see, one series illustrates, literally, how to pin a terminator down using a helicopter. Thanks to this storyboard, John Connor was able to pull the feat off in the film. Hit up io9 to check out the rest of the series. [io9 and Amazon]

As you'll see, the design is a bit more alien-organic, with terminators more alluded to through part design than outright placed, doggy-style, on two wheels.

This and other Terminator: Salvation concept art can be seen in The Art of Terminator Salvation by Titan Books. We just hope that editors were kind enough to omit the rear angle shot. There are anatomical facts about terminators that we just don't need to know. [Jalopnik, flylyf via automotto via likecool via ubergizmo and Wired]

Take the T-600 Voice 'N' Vision Skull, for example, which will cost discerning parents $29.99. Who wants to see their kid look like this?

There's also the Terminator equivalent of those Hulk hands that were everywhere a few years back: the T-600 Power Fist ($24.99). It shakes, it makes noise, and the fist flies off and hits your little brother in the face for minutes upon minutes of good times.

And there are loads and loads of other things, from action figures to endoskeleton patches. Seriously, is this amount of kid-targeted marketing normal for a movie deemed inappropriate for kids under the age of 17? [Ain't It Cool News]

[Trailer Addict]

Is John Connor relaxing inside his stylish aviator jacket/nuclear submarine only to be jumped by a T600 lurking behind one of his CRT monitors? Or did some camera guy just leave the red recording light on again?

I'm not sure the photo is conclusive either way, but the suspense is killing me. Photo Courtesy of Warner Bros. Pictures, check out another exclusive shot over at io9