Several outlets, journalists and websites — including SpoutBlog, Entertainment Weekly, Nikki Finke, Anne Thompson, ComingSoon.net and the Associated Press — have covered the Terminator Salvation panel at Comic-Con in some detail by now.
Among other things, we have learned that Warner Brothers is deliberately spreading misinformation about the film to keep spoiler hounds off the scent, and Kyle Reese will get to say the immortal line “Come with me if you want to live” to John Connor, and the filmmakers are making a big deal of the fact that they have a multi-racial cast (as though previous Terminator films did not co-star the likes of Paul Winfield and Joe Morton), and so on.
But what intrigues me just a little bit more is a tiny detail that has come out of the comparatively under-reported Sarah Connor Chronicles panel. Entertainment Weekly writes:
In season 2, say the producers, the universe has been expanded, and the core group we met last spring will be rubbing shoulders with the real world. We’ll see the Connor family crumble, and what that stress does to a mom — even as Skynet continues to evolve. Some of the actors — Dekker and Headey, especially — may be directing some of the show’s online content going forward, and they’re writing Richard T. Jones’ Christian faith into the show as part of Agent Ellison’s character.
I am curious to see how they do this last bit. The Terminator franchise has always had mythic or religious overtones — I have often quipped that the first film is one of my favorite Christmas movies, and of course expressions like “Judgment Day” carry a certain thematic weight — but I am leery of anything that would literalize these allegorical allusions.
I am leery, in other words, of anything which would suggest that the “apocalypse” wrought by these machines is identical to the “apocalypse” foretold in the Bible — and there has already been at least one episode of this series that seemed to nudge in that direction, if I recall correctly.
Still, I’m all in favour of bringing faith issues to the fore. And if they are doing this partly in response to the faith that the actors themselves are bringing to the set, then that is all the more intriguing.
For more on The Sarah Connor Chronicles and its use of biblical motifs, whether directly or by way of Johnny Cash songs, check out this post and others at Carmen Andres’s blog In the Open Space: God & Culture.
JUL 29 UPDATE: Carmen has posted her own two bits on the news from Comic-Con, and she links to this interview from back in February in which Richard T. Jones talks about the “divine timing” that he believes is manifesting itself in his acting career.
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