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Mostow Makes T3 His Own
Johnathan Mostow, director of the upcoming Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines, told SCI FI Wire that it's daunting stepping into the shoes of James Cameron, the franchise's creator and original director. Does Mostow feel pressured? "It wasn't until now, when you stuck microphones in my face," he joked to reporters during a recent visit to the film's Los Angeles-area location. "Obviously, it's a daunting semi-masochistic effort to step into this director's chair, but no pain, no gain."
Mostow added, "I just don't think about it. What can I do? I worry about things I can control. All I can control is just trying to make the movie as good as I possibly can. I'll leave it to other people to sit there and go, 'Well, it wasn't as good' or 'It was better' or whatever. It's sort of irrelevant. All I'm hoping is that this is a movie that as a story stands up as a companion piece to the other two movies, and that essentially I've done justice to the franchise, and that I've told a good story that people go to and they go, 'You know what? That was a good story. That was an enjoyable two hours spent in a movie theater, and I was engrossed in what it was.'"
Mostow (U-571) spoke during a break in filming in the Rose Hills cemetery in Whittier, Calif. In the scene, Arnold Schwarzenegger reprises his most famous role as the leather-clad cyborg, and he must negotiate a phalanx of sheriff's deputies while removing the coffin of Sarah Connor from a stone-and-stained-glass crypt. Why would Mostow want to take on the venerable series? "I thought that there was a great story to tell, and for me it's about the story," Mostow said. "I think ultimately, at the end of the day, that's why people go to the movies--if there's a compelling story with characters they care about. And the world that Cameron created is one that allows for opportunities in storytelling that you don't usually get. ... It's a decade later, and all the issues that [the main character, John Connor, played by Nick Stahl,] faces as a young adult are totally different than those that he faced as a kid. That's really interesting. Here's this kid that's carried this burden of being this leader in the future. It's very lonely, because nobody else in the world knows about it or believes. Even if he tried to explain to somebody, they'd think he was crazy, and that's a really interesting character."
Though the film is only in its fifth week of production, it has already undergone at least one major cast change--Claire Danes stepped in for Sophia Bush, who left the film after shooting began. "The gamble that I took [with Bush] was that her star quality would compensate for the fact that she probably was too young for the part," Mostow said. "At the end of the day, after looking at a couple days' worth of footage, she was just too young. She's a terrific actress, with great star qualities, and I think she's going to be a major movie star."
Winston Pushes Limits In T3
Special-effects guru Stan Winston told SCI FI Wire that he'll have to top himself with the robots and effects on the upcoming Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines. But Winston, who created animatronic dinosaurs for the Jurassic Park movies and cyborg endoskeletons for Terminator 2: Judgment Day, added, "We have twice as much to do in half the time. We have a lot of stuff to do in a compressed period of time, and we're doing it."
"We go into every movie with the idea of what are we going to do differently and beyond anything you've seen with the Terminator, with Arnold?" Winston said in an interview during a break in filming on the Los Angeles-area location of the film, which brings back Arnold Schwarzenegger as the titular cyborg. "You've got to end up knowing that you're going to see Arnold at the end of this movie in a way you've never seen him. You've got to know that there's a new Terminator, everybody knows it. We have the TX, ... the female [Terminator]. What does she look like? She's got to be beyond what you've seen before. ... It can't be a replication of what we did with Robert Patrick and the T-1000 [in T2]. We have to create a new Terminator. Someone that you believe could in fact kick Arnold's ass and in the shell of a very beautiful woman. So that's what we're doing, and that's what we've done."
Winston would not divulge details about the new special effects, which he promised would include actual operating robots. "In Terminator 3, ultimately, [we will have] the most advanced robotic effects and the most advanced digital effects and an advanced blending, and above it all, artistically and creatively, the new Terminators will be beyond what you've seen in the previous movies. That's what we have to do."
