I'm Tim Miller, the director of Terminator Dark Fate.

And this is notes on the scene.

Every scene in the movie has a life of the tone, right?

And you talk about it when you're prepping.

This is the cabin scene, and this is the turbine hall scene.

And this is the pick up chase in this pick up chase.

We really wanted to do something that wasn't a big gun thing, right, because we got a lot of guns in the movie.

But we also have this amazing opportunity.

The defenders air not suddenly limited to what kind of weapons they have in the 20th century or fighting techniques in grace.

Who is the super soldier from the future who comes back to protect Danny?

She's augmented.

She's stronger than him, and she's faster than human.

And she's a total mad ass.

It opened up so many doors for us in terms of what we could do with action.

So this is the beginning of the scene.

Right after they've had a big fight inside the factory, they run outside and then you steal his pickup truck.

They're being chased by cops as they flee the scene of this lots of gunfire and now grace here something because she's a super soldier.

She's got augmented years.

She can hear things that other people can't.

And what she hears over here is a big truck engine revving at maximum rpm.

Because Terminator, who they knew was chasing them, has stolen a truck.

And, like Terminators d'oh!

Shortest distance between two points.

He just goes right through the wall.

So now the chases is really joined in earnest.

What we did for this scene here is the pickup truck is actually being towed, and these characters inside here are actually CG.

You know, stunts are very dangerous these days and stunt people our very brave.

But we don't like to put people in danger when we don't have to on again.

In these scenes, you always want to show that not only is it dangerous for the main characters, but it's dangerous for everybody around them.

And part of the fun is scenes like this where you have ah lot of bystanders put in mortal danger.

You know, hats off to the stunt crew because these cars are still hurtling by at 30 or 40 miles an hours that come around this corner, a little game of chicken with the truck, and I thought, Oh, this would be really cool to do it from behind.

So we constructed so that there's literally no way for her to go forward and she has to go backwards again.

We do some cool stuff to make it look much more dangerous than it actually is.

This truck was actually a little bit further back.

It was really back here and this truck, this car right here is CG.

The pace at which you have to shoot some of these scenes is such that you can try and do it all practical.

Or you can mix techniques and try and save time.

And also, you know, it's a little safer and you want to save lives, too.

You don't want to put anybody in danger, and the damage it does to the door is also set up the fact where the door swings open.

So I thought if the driver's side of the car door was open somehow, seeing them unprotected during this whole chase, I thought, would be more interesting.

This car is not really there, and this door is not really there and aside from her being exposed, I really wanted this one moment with Grace, where another car hits the door and she's so focused.

And she's so hyper aware of everything that's going on around her that she doesn't even acknowledge the fact that the death was just inches away from her.

All of this is really just prelude to the big beat, which you're gonna happen on the highway for that piece and to get the actors in it.

There's actually under here.

There's a whole platform on wheels that was on a big slider track that went off this way, and it's got a big chain that tons of stunt guys manipulating this thing that pulls the the truck into the guard rail at high speed.

The guard rail is not actually there.

Even this one here is in the foreground.

But the guard rails cut off where the truck actually hits and it doesn't hit a guardrail.

It slams into the end of the track, and I wanted to do this other thing here where I wanted it to look like.

Mackenzie is about to get her leg smashed into the guard rail and she pulls it back right at the last second.

So you'll see her leg is out right here.

So now she's gonna swing in and and she pulls the leg.

And just before they hit the little things like that, who's going to know?

I know.

I think it makes it all cool.

I wanted to get rid of the big thing at the front because I was just bored with it by that point.

Wait, do this sort of squeeze moment.

We're actually shooting this on a blue screen stage because I wanted it to look like, you know, they're scraping the guardrail, which we set up.

So these air digital sparks that are coming up here This is a digital car, and this is a digital truck coming over here for just this one shot that we kind of sandwich in between.

You can, you know, sort of seamlessly sort of slip these little shots in here that are It's a mix between what you shot on the day and what you did on the stage later.

There's so much in action in this movie, you have to have a plan.

I mean, there's 600 people were that were on this set.

I mean, I'm counting catering everything else.

You have to be on your a game and have thought of everything.

I think part of being a director, one of the biggest parts is being able to sit in meetings.

It's an amazing skill that I've developed.

Directing is to sit in meetings and talk about over and over again what you would like it to be, and then have everybody else tell you why you can't have it and then you come up with Well, what if I could do this?

Well, how about if I change it to that?

Or what about that?

There's so many of those little junctions when you design an action scene that you, you, you come, too and you either go.

Okay, we'll change the action, or I'll do it digitally or or we'll just cut it completely.

It really is a collaboration of who could do what and what's the best way to do.

Any given thing.

Giant trucks moving around in high speed requires a little place.

When we first started shooting this movie, we hadn't decided on rating, but I knew the Terminator's DNA is R rated.

I wanted to make an R rated movie.

Jim wanted to make an R rated movie.

Arnold really wanted to make an R rated movie, but of course, these are big money decisions in PG 13.

It's a wider audience, and there's a lot of arguments on both sides.

And honestly, I understand the economic arguments for these things, but I knew that we could pretty much change it to an R rated from an effect standpoint later, all the blood is digital.

Anyway, The one thing I couldn't get was the language.

So I made sure that every place it was natural for the characters to curse or speaking sort of the way everybody else speaks.

Certainly the way I speak, we would always get some coverage with that, and and honestly, it was.

It was the thing that came most naturally.

I don't think I told Mackenzie to say here, I think she just did.

There's two things I wanted to match about Jim Cameras Page number one.

Inside the action sequences themselves, you have to stay focused on character because if she starts blowing up and you're not focused on the characters, but you're focused on wide shots and spectacular visual effects.

I think you've failed because you want the audience to put themselves in the character in danger.

Secondly, Terminator movies and all of Jim's movies from aliens on they always have this very slow build.

They usually have some action out front, kind of wet the appetite, and you have a lot of character building.

And then when it ramps into the action, it stays there, and this tension stays high for a long time.

So I wanted to replicate that.

No e this'll was really one of The sequence is built around certain moments.

I want to take away all traditional weapons from her, and I wanted to show how strong and cool she is with nothing.

She could make a weapon out of nothing big comic book fan.

I was loved Bull's Eye and Daredevil because he could use the seed from a lemon as a deadly weapon or a paper clip or a playing card.

And I had that kind of in my mind when I wrote when I wrote this scene and I thought, What can we do with her?

That she could fight off Terminator in this highway scene and came up with the idea for these for these rebar, and she is so strong that she could hurl these things at supersonic speed.

So this is actually Mackenzie Davis on on the road at I Speed hanging out the doorway.

And then this is done as a separate peace on the back lot.

So the truck is stationary, doesn't even have to see the wheels.

Here are CG because the wheels aren't rolling.

All of this out here is all digital.

This is one of Mackenzie stunt doubles, and I wanted to do something that shows just how powerful and fearless she is to jump out of a car at 90 miles an hour.

She doesn't even think twice about it.

I wanted it to be very simple and efficient.

What we end up here with, I think, is a cool move.

But it's actually just the most efficient way to get into the back of the truck from there.

If you're super soldier and can jump, you know, eight feet way had a whole variety of things for her.

Sometimes in the back, she had just had a little a little thing about about this size in her hand and The rest is digital extension for this.

And she was just throwing this little thing.

Sometimes she had a full rubber version of the Rebar, and she was actually throwing that.

But this part right here was this is one of those things we don't plan on.

But later on, you say off this, I should have done this way to begin with.

When we put it all together in the edit room, it just didn't seem as compelling.

And I thought it should really be like she throws one.

It doesn't work.

She throws another.

It doesn't work.

So what is she going to dio?

She throws two at once at the same time to overwhelm him so he can't get to him.

And they both go through and penetrate.

We mock that up in the edit bay, and then we went, and we did some re shoots.

It makes the whole sequence work.

Lodge to Robert Patrick pushing the truck glass out.

And the Terminator two.

This movie is fulfilled with his little you want to.

Do you want to do this like fan service stuff?

Because I'm a fan.

But you also don't want it to be heavy handed or people feel like they're watching the same movie over.

Never again.

I also wanted to do a little shot right here to show the spikes are going through his Endo skeleton and all the way through into the back of the truck.

What's actually there in this shot?

I think it was just a little stub with a Hornish over game shoulder like that to keep it in place.

And that's actually what he grabs.

This is digital.

This is digital.

You know.

We talked a lot about how to reveal Gabriel Sze abilities, the ability to split.

That's like the big reveal for the Terminator of the movie.

And and, of course, my initial instinct.

Waas.

We should delay that right?

We show a lot of other stuff.

We show what a bad as he is, and then we up the ante later on, and Jim said none in it and you go big early.

So this whole scene was designed to kind of back into that big moment.

The whole technology of this Terminator is that he is this combined form of liquid metal and endo skeleton.

I really try and walk that line between wanting t honor the franchise, but also I want to make it different.

I want the fans to feel like we're not just telling the same story over again.

We're trying to bring something new to the mythology and anything in here.

I'll have a reason.

If you ask me any question about how any of this happens, I will have a rationale I will never use the excuse of.

Well, it's a good movie.

So who cares, right?

Of course.

On some level, you don't want to bore the audience with too much exposition and all of that.

But I do think that as a director, you should have thought about all that, because in a subtle way, it kind of plays out and throughout, the film is sort of a foundation that is semi logical, even if you don't wanna be boring.

The audience with lots of signed fictional terms about time travel because it's all bullshit.

But it's cool bullshit, right?