Source: Warner Bros"One of the joys of this film is you get to see all the machines in the lexicon of Skynet," says "Terminator Salvation" director McG. "It's just like a contemporary military: you've got machines in the water, in the ground, in the sky... It was an amazing adventure just looking at the different Terminators of this world because you want to see the success and failure of everything Skynet tried on their way to the T-800, their most proficient killing machine."
Created from drawings by production designer Martin Laing and his team of art directors, the army of machines that rampage through "Terminator Salvation" came to life under the direction of Stan Winston, the legendary creature creator who designed the original T-800. Sadly, Winston passed away during the making of this film. "Stan confided in me once that he created imaginary monsters as a child to keep him company," McG reflects. "He said he felt like the only kid in the world who did this. Little did he know his childhood friends would come to be the heroes of millions. But most of all, Stan was a good guy who loved what he did. It was a real honor to have had the opportunity to work with Stan Winston. I intend to dedicate this film to his memory."
John Rosengrant, an effects supervisor at Stan Winston Studio, led the 60-member team to create this generation of Terminators, and also oversaw all the special effects make-up. Winston originally hired Rosengrant to work on the first "Terminator" film and became the artist's mentor. It was the beginning of an incredible journey, one that has seen phenomenal advancements in animatronics and special effects over the intervening years.
For Rosengrant, the sheer volume of work demanded by this production required some innovations. "The challenge on 'Terminator Salvation' was to come up with lighter-weight materials that still replicated metal," says Rosengrant. "We used combinations of urethanes and plastics, which were painted using breakthroughs in paint technology to achieve a metal look."
On "Terminator Salvation," the challenge also became creating Terminators that would be logical extensions within the world of the "Terminator" universe. "Because we're in a period prior to the timeframe of the first three films, we had to, in a sense, reverse-engineer," explains Laing. "In the same way that your laptop from ten years ago was thick like a brick and then, over time, got thinner and thinner, the Terminators you already know are the thin laptops and our Terminators are the bricks. They're more primitive in their brutality and bigger in their design."
On top of that, McG had a specific aesthetic in mind that would color the entire film, but especially the machines. "I didn't want a shiny, robotic world," McG expresses. "I didn't want a clean future. I really wanted a distressed future. I wanted a dirty patina on the metal of the machines, like they're a bunch of Soviet era tanks that haven't been able to go in and get painted or tuned up in a long, long time."
Moreover, because the film takes place post-Judgment Day, a full complement of Terminators, many of which were only hinted at in the earlier films, is revealed. "We are in an interim period," says Christian Bale, "In the flash forwards to 2029 that we've seen in previous movies, Skynet has absolute dominance of all the armies of T-800s and Hunter-Killers. But what we're seeing here is the genesis of the T-800. In the present, we've got a lot of T-600s, which are more primitive versions of the T-800, and a phenomenal array of machines."
Skynet's preeminent foot soldier is the T-600, which McG describes as "bigger and nastier" than the T-800, "a `57 Buick compared to a 2009 Mercedes Benz."
A hulking seven-foot-three, rudimentary version of what would eventually become the T-800, with a simplistic rubber skin pulled over the face and rag-tag clothing to hide the endoskeleton, the T-600 "prowls the badlands looking for anything with a heartbeat, an unrelenting machine with a singular focus of killing," McG continues.
They carry a mini-gun, an M203 lower unit, capable of anywhere from 3,000 to 6,000 rounds per minute, and a backpack full of ammunition. The filmmakers wanted to design the T-600s as machines that are no longer manufactured but maintain their patrols in the field, battered and weathered, their camouflage mostly lost, damaged in battle, or eaten away by the elements. As Kyle Reese said in "The Terminator," "The first ones were easy to spot."
Created using both rigged and manned puppets in combination with CGI, the T-600s appear in the film in various states of disrepair. "It gives them a creepy, zombie-like quality when you see, for example, the whole lower jaw exposed or areas torn out of their faces," says Rosengrant.
Seen in "flash-forwards" in the earlier films was the Terminator aircraft called the Hunter-Killer. Hunter-Killers, or H-Ks, patrol the skies, scanning the ground below with massive floodlights. Like the T-600s, the "Terminator Salvation" version of the H-Ks represents a more rudimentary beast than what Skynet would eventually develop.
Patrolling like drones in search of human survivors are small devices called Aerostats. These four-foot-long aerial sentries buzz about the land, hunting for any sign of human life. Equipped with digital camera and laser-imaging technology, they send wireless reports back to Skynet, which then sends in the Harvester.
"One of my favorite Terminators is the Harvester, which are the machines that collect the people," says McG. Approximately 80 feet tall, the Harvester resembles a spider, with multiple steel arms and legs extending from a thorax-like body with jointed claw-like appendages for capturing its prey, and multiple camera eyes on long stalks for viewing the carnage. "Its job is to break into any structure where humans are hiding, grab its prey and put them in the Transporters to be taken to Skynet."
But failing that strategy, the Harvester unleashes Moto-Terminators. "Because the Harvester is such a big beast, as it's collecting humans there are always going to be the few that escape," Laing continues. "So, in the same way that a shepherd uses sheepdogs, the Harvester has Moto-Terminators, which are bike-like Terminators that race off after the humans and bring them back. They also have guns and the ability to kill, but the goal is to retrieve escapees and return them to the Harvester so it can put them in the Transporter."
These slick machines are based on the Ducati motorbike, a personal favorite of director McG. The Italian company was approached by the filmmakers and was thrilled to be involved. They supplied four identical hyper-motored bikes for use in filming.
"We had to have credible-looking Moto-Terminators in this picture, so we went to the designers and the whole team from Ducati," says McG. "Ducatis are sleek, powerful, agile machines, so that felt like a great place to start as we created the language of the Moto-Terminators."
The visual effects team was able to overlay the Moto-Terminator look over the practical Ducatis. The production also had a practical Moto-Terminator made in Los Angeles, which was used during filming.
Skynet covers the land with these machines, but for the seas, lakes and rivers, it has developed a unique underwater Terminator called the Hydrobot. Resembling four-foot-long segmented serpents, eyeless but with razor-sharp heads that drill into their victims, Hydrobots respond to sound and vibrations in the waters they prowl. "The Hydrobots turned out to be pretty fun, interesting characters," says Rosengrant, "sort of a cross between a psychotic crab and some sort of sea serpent. They're wicked, vicious things with these pincher-like claws on the front and an auger kind of drill bit. Once that gets a hold of you, you're definitely finished."
These machines were especially challenging for Rosengrant and his team, "not only because of how detailed they were but because they had to work in water, and were going to get punished pretty hard," he continues. "When working in water, most of the radio control devices that you would usually use are out the window; instead you're working with cable or pneumatics. And the Hydrobot needed to be durable enough to be wrestled and thrown around and chucked out of helicopters and punched through things, but at the same time not be so unwieldy that we couldn't puppet it."
They ended up using a combination of steel structures that were kept as lightweight as possible and lightweight urethane parts painted to look like metal. "We ended up getting a lot of extra shots that none of us thought we would get with the practical model," Rosengrant states. "We thought it would have to be augmented with CGI, but we were all amazed by how well it turned out."
Watching the Stan Winston puppeteers working the various rigs, Bale found their dedication inspiring. "They'd practiced for so long, and really got the movements down," says Bale. "With the Stan Winston team, it's incredible to see the painstaking detail they give all their work, their incredible patience, and their complete love for what they do. I love seeing people who are just obsessed with what they do, and these guys are obsessed with building models. They want to perfect what a T-600 really would look like turning its head and attacking somebody. They take it very, very seriously, and I think that's wonderful."
But by far the most innovative of Skynet's creations isn't entirely metal: Marcus, the human Terminator hybrid who learns of his cyborg adaptations over the course of the film.
Marcus's special effects make-up and prosthetics were created by Rosengrant, whose team developed several variations to accommodate the many different conditions Marcus finds himself in, including a full reveal of the interior endoskeleton after his capture by the Resistance.
A combination of large prosthetic pieces sculpted using the latest technology, make-up, and CGI, the creation of Marcus was a complex endeavor that demanded creativity and patience, especially on the part of Sam Worthingon, who spent as many as six hours straight in the make-up chair being worked on by a team of three artists.
The total effect, which McG was able to accomplish with help from the creative team of artisans from every corner of the production, was an iconic vision that truly created a new chapter in the "Terminator" saga. "Every other picture in this series has been present day," the director says. "Our film is a totally new beginning. We show the genesis of these fearful machines; we go into Skynet. We see the CPU that will represent the rise of the machines to a place of complete dominance. It was an incredible thrill for me to play a part in the continuation of this incredible story, which inspired me so much throughout my life, and remains prescient and relevant today."
For Bale, who was able to see footage during production of the Terminators in action, the thrill was equally intense. He notes with a wry smile, "We went through filming thinking we were the leads, but it ain't so in the slightest. People aren't coming to see us. We've got to provide some kind of a story to it, because no matter how great the Terminators and the explosions are, you've got to have a good story or otherwise what's the point? But let's face facts: the Terminators are the rightful stars of the movie. And they're going to blow everyone away."
See Also: Judgement Day Happened: Building The World Of Terminator Salvation / Schwarzenegger Confirms Terminator Salvation Appearance But Only In Stock Footage And CGI / The Trailer For The Asylum's Terminators / The Governator Returns! - A Big Bad Killing Machine From Terminator Salvation / Terminator Salvation Terminator Voice Changing Helmet / Exclusive Images From Asylum's The Terminators / The Sexy Women Of Street Fighter: The Legend Of Chun-Li / New Terminator Salvation Flash Poster And Video Clips / Production Artwork For Terminator Salvation / Dark Horse To Release 25th Anniversary Terminator Comics / Warner Bros - Comic Con 2008 Sneak Previews / Special Effects Master Stan Winston Passes Away / The Japanese Now Have Human Robots - How Long Will It Be Until We Are Replaced!
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