I happened to find myself talking to someone who is 2 degrees away from McG, but completely out-of-the-loop as to the director’s work. He’s just that guy she sees occasionally. So, while watching Mean Girls on ABC Family, I took it upon myself to let loose a few bullet points about the director.

- People give him a lot of crap for the fact that he made both Charlie’s Angels movies. These people are idiots who don’t fully understand big-budget directing OR the purpose of the Charlie’s Angels movies.

- More people should have seen We Are Marshall. Yeah, it was one of those “we will persevere” sports stories, but - once again - if you’re just looking to see what McG is capable of with his visual style, it’s not bad in the least.

- His name is McG. Yeah, it’s a nickname that makes him sound like a McDonald’s product, but the man can lens a film on a massive scale. When you saw J.Lo in The Cell, or managed to catch The Fall in an indie theater, you thought: “Wow, cool visuals,” not “What kind of director prick calls himself Tarsem.” Get over the unfortunate nickname, people.

I also mentioned that the tides have turned with the Terminator Salvation public perception. Something that Peter from /Film covers in his set visit post:

Our visit to New Mexico took place last July, before the video blogs became popular, so we’ve decided to record a video blog talking about our visit to the set of Terminator Salvation after the fact, and nearly a year later. You have to understand that perception of this film was a lot different back then. No one in the world had faith in McG, and no one wanted to see another Terminator film, especially after the third movie. Our experiences on set changed our opinions of what this movie is and could be, and I’m sure you’ve seen that in my enthusiastic coverage of the film over the last year.

What follows is Peter’s set report, including video/audio of him discussing the film’s set with Frosty from Collider. The whole post takes awhile to digest, and while I probably could pillage it for cool facts, well, then Peter would yell at me, probably. CHECK IT OUT HERE!

I will, however, point out that McG is already all-up in his next two projects. Namely, 20,000 Leagues Under The Sea for Disney and Terminator 5.

Filmjournal has quite the phone interview with McG, which doesn’t raise that much new info…except:

As he puts the finishing touches on Terminator Salvation, McG is already looking ahead to the next chapter in what the studio hopes will be another trilogy. “I strongly suspect the next movie is going to take place in a [pre-Judgment Day] 2011,” McG reveals. “John Connor is going to travel back in time and he’s going to have to galvanize the militaries of the world for an impending Skynet invasion. They’ve figured out time travel to the degree where they can send more than one naked entity. So you’re going to have hunter killers and transports and harvesters and everything arriving in our time and Connor fighting back with conventional military warfare, which I think is going to be fucking awesome. I also think he’s going to meet a scientist that’s going to look a lot like present-day Robert Patrick [who famously played the T-1000 in Terminator 2], talking about stem-cell research and how we can all live as idealized, younger versions of ourselves.”

As much as the time-traveling thing seems the most interesting element, focus on the theme that’s emerging here: Stem Cell research. Our younger selves. Don’t you think John Conner coming back from the future would first look for the other, younger John Conner?

I think we’re looking at a Terminator Trilogy about what it means to be a human, which is great, as a good majority of the sci-fi I really get into has to do with the eventual line when humans get so good at technology, they have to re-define what makes a human. Sweet, I say.

Too bad we’ll probably have to wait for it, considering Production Weekly is reporting that Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson has been cast in 20,000 Leagues Under The Sea, a remake of the first Disney live-action film that will be directed by McG.

I’m all for that shit. Much like the post’s titular man, it’s not Johnson’ fault I’ll always wonder what The Rock is cooking. He’s good in what he’s in, even if those movies tend to suck.