Sometimes I can’t tell when my job stops being ‘journalism’* and free advertising for major studios. Right now I don’t have that problem: this is essentially free advertising. But everybody loves looking at posters and new images from upcoming movies, so we all pretend like it’s ‘news’ and not commercials and marketing materials.
Yahoo Movies has the three new posters from Terminator Salvation, which fit together into one long lady-repelling poster that you can frame over your bed. They also have a bunch of new stills, my favorite of which – a shot of the creepy-ass T600 herding humans into Auschwitzian cargo ships – is included below.
These posters and still come from this weekend’s WonderCon, which sounds mostly like a bust. One thing that did come out of the show, though, was the continued discussion about just what T4 will be rated. When I was on the set of the film last year, McG showed us some footage from the movie that seemed to skirt an R rating, especially a topless scene featuring the exceptionally hot Moon Bloodgood. McG has said again and again that he never even thought about the rating and that Warner Bros encouraged him to just make the movie he wanted to make and they’d deal with it when the time came. So is that topless scene in the movie? McG is hedging his bets.
“It was a function of whether it’s gratuitous or is it servicing the story? Sometimes, you want to say that the softness of the human flesh is one of the things we’re fighting for. It’s decidedly human and it’s not like the machines. Or does it just feel like a juvenile moment in an otherwise very serious film?”
Yes, a very serious film about people shooting at robots. I’m predisposed to like this movie, but let’s not get carried away, McGinty.
Anyway, that reads to me like the escape hatch for cutting the scene from the movie should the MPAA sqwuak. What’s interesting is that the MPAA has been very lax lately with R ratings – I’ve seen some R rated films that I couldn’t believe got past the board this year, including the remake of Last House on the Left – but will that carry over to the PG-13? McG mentioned that Titanic had toplessness in a PG-13, but that didn’t have badass chaingun wielding robots. Advantage: McG.
Look, McG is a bit of a huckster. When he does interviews and attends cons he doesn’t answer questions so much as he launches into his patter – this is rehearsed stuff that I’ve personally heard from his mouth on three or four occasions now. I think he’s aiming to get the hardest possible PG-13, but he’s getting a PG-13. The rest of this stuff is a lot of misdirection.
Hey, that felt like something that wasn’t just advertising.
* and lord knows I use that term loosely