McG opens the door to his trailer excitedly. ''Get in here,'' he says. Gladly. It's August 2008, and it's 95 degrees on the set of Terminator Salvation. We're in the desert on the outskirts of Albuquerque, N.M., and inside the director's tricked-out silver Airstream lies salvation of another kind: air-conditioning.
McG has 15 minutes before he's due back on set to shoot a fight scene between Christian Bale and a T-800, one of Skynet's latest and most lethal killing machines. But first, he wants to show the Terminator ''sizzle reel'' that he unveiled a month earlier at Comic-Con — a baptism by fire when he and the cast of the reported $200 million tentpole flick faced down a roomful of 6,500 fans who regarded both him and Salvation with suspicion, if not outright hostility. Why the hell were they making another Terminator? Wasn't the franchise dead after 2003's jokey T3? And what on earth was it doing in the hands of a guy like McG?
All fair questions. But right now McG doesn't seem worried about them. He turns out the lights and directs me to a seat in front of a huge flat-screen TV, pops in a DVD, and cranks up the volume. It has to feel...big. And the next three minutes are big. So big that when it's over, McG plays it again. Then he says something strange: ''The old McG is dead!''
The artist formerly, and formally, known as Joseph McGinty Nichol knows what you think of him. He's spent the past decade battling the perception that just because of his name, he's some shallow jackass. Or, as he puts it, ''a lightweight with some hip-hop nickname and a gold chain around my neck, who drives a Lamborghini.'' It drives McG nuts that with nearly $570 million under his belt at the global box office, he still has to explain himself. ''If you can't get past my name after 12 years in this industry, you're not invited,'' he says in his L.A. production office two weeks before the film's release. ''If you don't have the hustle to figure out that McG's short for 'McGinty,' which is my mother's maiden name, and that she's the least funky person ever, I'm kind of done. My name won't define my movies. My movies will define my name.'' He pauses to let this sink in. ''Look, I know I have a body of work that would not suggest that I am a credible storyteller. I need to prove myself on this film. Before you can be Johnny Depp, you have to do your time on 21 Jump Street.''
When McG signed on to direct Salvation, he knew that hardcore fans of the franchise would cry sacrilege. So he decided that he needed the Godfather's blessing. He went down to the set of James Cameron's Avatar, hoping to get a benediction (or at least some advice) from the man who created T1 and T2. But he walked away empty-handed. ''Cameron was very cordial, but he didn't give me his blessing,'' says McG. ''He did tell me, 'I know how you feel. When I directed Aliens, I was following Alien and the mighty Ridley Scott, and people thought, 'Who is this James Cameron? All he's made is Piranha 2!'''
A wide smile spreads across McG's face when he says this. He's not the subtlest guy in the world, and you can tell that he just wants to come right out and say it: Charlie's Angels: Full Throttle is his Piranha 2 and Terminator Salvation will be his Aliens.
NEXT PAGE: ''Christian and I have, like, three scenes together, which is good,'' says Sam Worthington. ''Because we're like two runaway trains when we collide.''
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