Roll Credits catches up with Terminator Salvation director McG, to ask him just how he thinks his vision will go down with audiences...

"I don’t like trying to get performance out of characters when I’m saying, 'Hey Christian, see that tennis ball? That’s a 7 foot robot trying to kill you and that green screen is ultimately going to be a post apocalyptic downtown Los Angeles'. That’s bullshit."

Firstly, the film is so rich that there must have been sequences you had to cut. Will they be on the DVD?

Yeah, but I have a very particular position about that, I always maintain that what is released is, indeed, the director’s cut. And shame on any director who doesn’t have the wherewithal to – right over here is a woman named Sue Kroll, she runs Warner Brothers, and she may like something or not like something, but it’s my job to articulate why it’s critical, that’s in the film. There’s an example of a topless scene with Moon [Bloodgood] that was designed to echo the Kelly McGillis/Harrison Ford scene in Witness. It was very innocent, but at the end of the day we all looked at it and felt, 'Oh that feels gratuitous and feels like we’re placating the genre, and it may give people a platform to stand on to take the film less seriously, and we don’t want that'. So nobody pressured me to make that decision, I made that decision.

No, I’m a big fan of strong female characters, Jim Cameron is a strong fan, I think the strongest female characters in history have got to be Ripley in the Alien pictures and certainly Sarah Connor. So I come from a place of an empowered female position, and I think that the film tries to suggest a secondary gain of the bombs going off, because there’s no more ageism, there’s no more racism and there’s certainly no more sexism. Everything is ability based. You know how to fix a broken leg, go fix that broken leg. You know how to get the helicopter running, get it running. Nobody is hung up on the minutia and the ridiculousness of things that we’re hung up on today. Without ever shining a lantern on it, you’ll notice that’s very, very prevalent in our picture.

How did you go from directing Charlie's Angels to being in charge of one of the biggest franchises in movie history?

I mean, it’s the privilege of the public to put people in boxes. You take the body of material that anybody has been a part of and you draw conclusions. Who would ever guess that a guy that was on 21 Jump Street with a ridiculous name like Johnny Depp would go on to be one of the great entertainers of our time?! You’ve got to earn your stripes and pay your dues, and I’m certainly willing to earn mine and fortunately I’m most comfortable in this genre ironically, these are the films that I grew up on. This was my film school, this was my passion, so I’m very comfortable working in this world and you just sort of take the good with the bad, you take your lumps along the way.

On this picture I tried to get away from being a cheerleader and really just let the film do the talking. It started at Comic-Con some year and a half ago, over a year ago, and we just said this is what the film is, and we let it speak for itself, and you try to honor the fan base by making elegant choices. Stan Winston, certainly Christian Bale, people have to take a closer look. And they weren’t excited about the prospect of the Charlie’s Angels guy making a Terminator movie, and respectfully, why would they be? What have I done that would suggest I’m the right guy? So you take a step back, you work that much more diligently, and you let the film do the talking.

How many drafts did you go through before finally settling on the final script?

I read a draft that John [D Brancato] and Michael [Ferris] wrote and that’s the reason why I’m here. I remember talking to [original director] James Cameron about it. Why is this worth telling? I said, 'Because it’s the future war and people are interested. I’m interested. It’s not a contemporary movie with the machine coming back in time and chasing someone. This is that world that you’ve only ever given us a tiny glimpse of and therefore that’s the point of entry'. He nodded and went, 'Oh that’s cool'.

We went through a couple of writers. Christian and I were working very intimately. Christian had an excellent shorthand with Jonah Nolan. He did some production work while we were in New Mexico, and at the end of the day I think it’s the responsibility of me actually to be the arbiter of what goes in the film and what goes out. It’s always a team effort. There are a great many moving parts and that was the case in the writing of the script to say the least.

Where can you see the Terminator franchise going?

I’ve arced out a second film and a third film.  We’ll see what the appetite is. If the people jump up and say we want more, we’re certainly going to be ready. There are a great many places to go in a world where what was once science fiction is now upon us.

How and why did you convince Christian Bale to take on another franchise?

That’s exactly why it was appealing because he’ll say himself he’s bloody minded and he always likes a challenge. I went over to England and I saw him. I wanted him to play Marcus. He was more interested in playing Connor and we went about the business of working on the script. You gotta understand, Christian Bale is so passionate about acting and about his craft. He has no entourage. He’s got no assistant standing out there in the hall. He drove here in a beat up pick-up truck. He is about the work. That’s who he is. And to work with an actor who’s that focused and that intense, I think, is to all of our benefit.

You famously used practical effects as far as possible in Terminator Salvation, with the help of the Stan Winston studio. Why do you prefer them to CGI?

I think the public has an intimate understanding of physics and I think filmmakers underestimate that. We all know what’s going to happen right there [demonstrates by dropping a pen on the table] and if I just said, 'We’ll do the CG pen', the audience would go, 'Something was off about that dopey CG pen and it didn’t respond correctly when it made impact with the table'. I also don’t like trying to get performance out of characters when I’m saying, 'Hey Christian, see that tennis ball? That’s a 7 foot robot trying to kill you and that green screen is ultimately going to be a post apocalyptic downtown Los Angeles'. That’s bullshit. I think that’s a cop out. You can’t reach your highest level of performance in the absence of a tactile environment. I think from a place of performance, from a place of feeling the heat, it’s in the interest of building everything, creating as much as you can in camera, and honoring the audience in that respect.

Has James Cameron seen the film yet?

I don’t believe he has seen the movie. I look forward to showing it to him. He was the first guy I talked to when I was considering making the movie. I went down there out of a position of respect to kiss the ring and told him what my intention was. He says he reserves the right to like or not like the movie. I said I reserve the right to like or not like Avatar and we both giggled and went on our way. But he told me that story about his following the great Ridley Scott in the Alien picture and people said, 'Who’s this guy who made Piranha 2 think he’s doing following Ridley Scott'. He thought, 'I can honor the mythology and tell the story'. I think we’re all glad that Aliens got made. Hopefully we’ve done our job and created a new idea in a world that he most certainly created.

Interviews by Judy Sloane