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.

Given the $160 asking price, no kidding. Hardcore fans can pick one up from GeekStuff4U in September, and use it with their Mac or PC.

Like your T-600 toys? Check out the T-600 Voice 'N' Vision Skull and Power Fist, or the T-600 bobble head. Good times! [Solid Alliance (translated) via Akihabara News]

Despite its unique, burly look, the Terminator was actually a standard, 9-pin controller that supported a variety of systems (including C64 and Vic-20). Today, it's both a fairly rare collectible and the only joystick that we wouldn't recommend carrying through airport security.

Looking back, I swear that I played with one of these controllers as a kid, but then again, it's just as likely the thing was a real grenade. [flickr via technabob]

The 19-year-old, a Nevada native named Sean Stanley (we publish his name in hopes of honoring, not embarrassing, this hero) was wandering nude around the highway until he was ordered to stop by police—at which point he immediately headed into a crowded casino. He was tased by police there in the casino, in full view of a group of children (nudity and gambling, now there's a great family trip), despite his claims that he was a Terminator sent from the future, a wry reference to the Terminator films.

As it turns out, Stanley was actually stoned out of his mind on LSD and pot, though we don't have concrete evidence as of publication that he is not a Terminator. Stanley was charged with indecent exposure and resisting arrest by the police, and honored by us with the prestigious Tracy Morgan Award for Intoxicated Hilarity (hence the video accompanying this story). Congratulations, Sean! [Yahoo! via Geekologie]

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]

So, what are the preconditions, according to Singer?

1. The AI or robot has to have some sense of self-preservation and ambition, to want power or fear the loss of power.

2. The robots have to have eliminated any dependence on humans.

3. Humans have to have omitted failsafe controls, so there's no ability to turn robots or AI off.

4. The robots need to gain these advantages in a way that takes humans by surprise.

At the moment, says Singer, these conditions do not exist. "In the Terminator movies, Skynet gets super intelligence, figures the humans are going to eventually shut it down, thinks, 'I better strike first.'" However, in today's army, "we're building robots specifically to go off and get killed." He adds, "No one is building them to have a survival instinct—they're actually building them to have the exact opposite."

As far as human dependence, robots may do more and more human dirty work, but robots still need the meatbags to handle their dirty laundry. "The Global Hawk drone may be able to take off on its own, fly on its own, but it still needs someone to put that gasoline in there." Still, it's not hard to see how this precondition could eventually be overcome.

The failsafe discussion is surprisingly two sided. "It seems rather odd that people who grew up watching Terminator in the movie theaters wouldn't think, 'Hmm, maybe we should have a turn-off switch on there.'" But on the other hand, "brilliant AI could just figure a way around it." Besides, "we don't want to make the failsafe all that easy, because we don't want a robot that comes up to Bin Laden that he can just shut off by reaching around the back and hitting the switch."

We of course assume that robots will never gain the element of surprise. "You don't get super-intelligent robots without first having semi-super-intelligent robots, and so on. At each one of these stages, someone would push back." The scary thing is, Singer does acknowledge that the exponential growth of super-smart machines may indeed catch us by surprise eventually. "By the end it's happening too quickly for people to see."

No matter what preconditions are prevented deliberately, there is a point on every futurist's timeline where computers become "smarter" than humans, in terms of sheer brain capability, and no matter what happens up till that point, the game then changes completely. "In the Terminator movies, Skynet both tricks and coerces people into doing its bidding." How do we stop that from happening?

"Some people say, 'Let's just not work on these systems. If they're so many things coming out of this that are potentially dangerous, why don't we just stop?'" says Singer. "We could do that, as long as we also stop war, capitalism and the human instinct for science and invention." [More from my interview with PW Singer]

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

A humanoid robot is a general-purpose robot that looks a lot like a person, complete with a head, torso, arms and legs. The "total package" humanoid can walk bipedally, like a person, and use its hands to dexterously manipulate objects in the world.

Current prototypes like the Honda ASIMO can deliver tea and politely shake hands with their human masters, but based on some great sci-fi movies, humanoid robots are supposed to be terrors on the battlefield—walking titanium endoskeletons crunching over human skulls and mowing down pesky humans with massive handheld Gatling guns.

Will we ever really see a humanoid robot army? I think so, and here are my top five reasons why.

1. There is a one-to-one mapping between the human and the humanoid body.
Robots aren't yet smart enough to play without supervision. That's why human soldiers control unmanned aerial vehicles from thousands of miles away by twiddling joysticks. It isn't easy, but flying a plane through empty space is child's play compared to maneuvering a ground-based robot through rubble and wreckage. And what if you need to do something more complicated than just stepping over a curb, like defusing a bomb?

It's called telepresence. With telepresence, a person feels as though they are the robot by controlling the robot's body and seeing through its eyes. Human-shaped robots are infinitely easier to manipulate because there is a one-to-one mapping between man and machine. Instead of shoving around a non-intuitive joystick, slide your hands into gloves that map your fingers to robot fingers thousands of miles away. Now put your human expertise to work, without putting your human butt in danger.

2. Humanoid robots take advantage of human environments and equipment.
Nothing beats a tank for crossing the desert, but what about crossing a living room? Every human city is designed for a very specific type of animal: homo sapiens. We humans come in a very specific range of sizes and weights, and our environments tend to have specific temperature, vibration and noise limits—all of which simplify the problem of designing a robot. Humanoids are naturally suited to navigating environments designed for humans; they can walk through doorways, climb steps, and see over counters and furniture.

Along with our cities, most military supplies are designed for use by humans. That means a humanoid robot can wear human body armor, boots and camouflage. In addition, it can fire standard-issue weapons and ammunition, removing a need for specially-designed weaponry. Humanoids could also potentially pilot human vehicles. Rather than creating an autonomous vehicle from scratch, just put a humanoid robot in the driver's seat of a standard vehicle. And when a robot squad is on the go and under fire, it always helps to be able to scavenge enemy weapons and improvise. The infrastructure is there, and humanoid robots exploit it.

3. Humanoid robots are easier to train.
War is largely improvised, and that means learning new tricks on the fly. So, how do you teach a robot comrade how to defuse a new type of coffee-can landmine? Without a degree in engineering, you probably don't. But given a humanoid robot, intuitive training approaches are available to regular soldiers. An easy but tedious method is to physically push the robot's limbs through the proper series of movements. Alternately, take direct control through teleoperation and then perform the activity yourself. The robot then just needs to remember how you did it.

Ideally, however, a robot can be trained just like a person—by watching. Robots who learn by demonstration can be quickly trained by ordinary people who do not speak robot-ese or do any programming. That's because it's how we learn from each other. The trainer simply performs the task (e.g., a flying scissor kick) and the robot watches and intuits how to do it. Humanoids are much better at learning by demonstration, thanks to that one-to-one mapping between its body and yours.

4. Teamwork is easier between humans and humanoids.
It is doubtful that robot armies will operate completely autonomously in the near future. Human-robot teams will likely be the norm, as they are today. Therefore, it's important to make sure that human and robot allies can work together without stepping on each others' toes. And that means they've got to have good communication.

Human combat teams communicate and cooperate using language and gestures, and by paying attention to each other's facial expressions and emotions. Robot warriors that recognize human body language will be able to make fast decisions in loud, hazardous environments. Perhaps even more important, a human soldier should be able to understand what a robot is thinking naturally, by reading its body language instead of looking up an error code in an instruction manual. Using the highly familiar human form-factor creates a natural communication channel that allows humanoids to cooperate with humans in chaotic environments where split-second decisions are the norm.

5. The locals could potentially interact with humanoid robots.
War is becoming less about conventional fighting on a mass scale and more about cultural awareness. Last month, President Obama unveiled plans to send hundreds of "social scientists" along with soldiers to Iraq, to counsel the military on local customs. Relative to the faceless robots currently in use, a humanoid robot provides the opportunity for some kind of natural human interaction with non-combatants. Instead of an impersonal unmanned ground vehicle wrecking through walls or an unmanned aerial vehicle dropping bombs from afar, humanoid robots (armed or unarmed) could patrol areas wearing local garb, speaking the local language, and obeying local customs. How P.C.—or just freaky—is that?

On the other hand, humanoid robots can be horribly terrifying.
Mind games are a part of every battle. During World War II, aviators painted snarling teeth on the noses of their fighter planes. Nowadays (and back then), bombs have funny messages written on them, like "Boom shacka lacka," and "You want fries with that?"

Now imagine the enemy reaction on Robot D-Day, when thousands of super-powered humanoid robots march out of the crashing surf, bullets plinking harmlessly from their razor-sharp gilded breast-plates as death metal blares from their metal mouth speaker grilles.

Terrified yet? Well calm down, sissy; humanoid robots aren't on the battlefield, yet. But they might be soon, thanks to their natural ability to communicate and cooperate with humans, the ease with which they can operate in our environments and use our tools, and the terrible fear that blossoms in the heart of man upon laying eyes on the great and horrifying visage of the humanoid robot war machine.

Machines Behaving Deadly: A week exploring the sometimes difficult relationship between man and technology. Guest writer Daniel H. Wilson earned a PhD in Robotics from Carnegie Mellon University. He is the author of How to Survive a Robot Uprising and its sequel How To Build a Robot Army. To learn more about him, visit www.danielhwilson.com.

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.

As we know, the machines have been revolting ever since some poor dumb caveman was flattened by the first wheel carved out of stone, but machines' violent outbursts became more prevalent during the industrial revolution, as people were constantly being sucked into giant mills and looms and stuff, pretty much on a daily basis. As man got a grip on his technology, fatalities eased up a bit until the arrival of the automobile, probably the most vicious manmade killer in history.

Lead by cars, but accompanied by every mechanical and electrical object from the sweet video arcade game to the good ole Walkman headphones to the unassuming ballpark Pepsi machine, the ultimate machine revolt was bound to occur in the mid 1980s. At least in Stephen King's head. He knew then what we're finally coming to grips with—we are building things that operate beyond our control, and it doesn't take a quantum brain and titanium exoskeleton to put a sizeable dent in the human race. Though probably even King would acknowledge that it certainly helps.

Don't believe me, that Maximum Overdrive is an underrated gem and a prescient predictor of future events where we all end up on sailboats because they're not technically machines? Have a look at this total stoner dude's video review. Or the Wikipedia page. [Man Vs Machine, and More Machine Manglings on Giz]

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]