Terminator Salvation, due in May of next year, stars Christian Bale as John Conner. The film will be a quasi-reboot of the series, picking up after the machines have destroyed civilization and Conner is leading a small band of survivors in a war against the machines. The following is an open letter to McG, the director of the film.

Dear McG,

Lots of people have been talking about your new movie this week. Several sites have posted some leaked material featuring the work of production designer Martin Laing. Many sites had a behind the scenes featurette with Laing and a gallery of concept art, most of which were taken down at the request of the studio. One of the only ones to survive at time of this writing is on io9. Ain’t it Cool News reported that while James Cameron did not have a hear-to-heart with you, as you claimed in July, he still has high hopes for the film.

When I saw you at Comic-Con in July, I was very pleased with the early footage and what you and the cast had to say about the film. One thing you said was that you were interested in what we thought about the early images and the direction the film was heading. I hope it’s not too late, because I have a few suggestions.

First of all, bravo on hiring Martin Laing. This guy doesn’t have a huge list of credits, but his work on City of Ember was great, and the concepts for new the Terminators look really good. In the leaked featurette he seems very tuned in to the fact that this film takes place at a very particular time in the story line of the Terminator universe: after the nuclear holocaust, but before any machines are sent back in time to meddle with the Conners. So while the machines are really badass, they’re actually less advanced than Arnold’s T-800. Also, they have no need to be disguised as humans, so we’re treated to Terminators that take the form of motorcycles, snakes, and a huge Transformer-like behemoth called a Harvester.

While the images of these new (or is it old?) Terminators have me salivating, they also raise some concerns. I’d like to know that you’re going to avoid what I call The Matrix Revolutions Problem. The first Matrix was a great movie, the second one was alright, but The Matrix Revolutions was a steaming pile of crap. There are many reasons for this, but there are three I’d like to focus on here: One, the plot felt like it was on autopilot, the conflicts previously set up were being worked out without any convincing new conflicts being introduced. Two, the battle between the humans and the machines became epic to the point of feeling bloated and silly. Three, the Matrix sequels were completely inside the rabbit hole. Rather than being about the incursion of an fantastic reality upon the real world, they were fully immersed in that fantastic reality.

The first of these concerns, that the plot will feel locked in place, could be a real problem for the Terminator series because of the use of time travel. (Spoilers of the existing three Terminator films ahead.) We know that Kyle Reese has to survive up to the point where he’s sent back to save Sarah Conner and father John Conner. We also know that John Conner survives long enough to send him, that the machines will send three Terminators to kill the Conners, and that the resistance will send two Terminators to protect them. Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines did show that the timeline can be altered, as Judgment Day was delayed from when it was originally predicted to happen. Also, Christian Bale’s line in the teaser trailer, “This isn’t the future my mother warned me about, I’m not sure if we can win this war,” indicates that you and the writers have realized this is a concern. My advice is this: If you have to amend the timeline, fine. The important thing is that a sense of urgency and dread permeates the film. The original films, especially the first two, succeeded because they created a tension between inevitability and resistance.

The second concern, that the need to one-up previous villains will make the new film outlandish, parallels the trouble the Matrix films encountered. The set-up of the first Matrix was so cool: you’re plugged into a machine, but you can free your mind and fight, and the machines send agents after you. Simple enough. But in the second and third films, we were introduced to computer viruses and architects and all kinds of complicating crap. All of which probably looked really good on paper, but when inserted into the movies they really just distracted from what was great about the first film, namely that technology is a means of control that we have the power to resist. As much as I’m looking forward to seeing Christian Bale and Sam Worthington destroy a 50 foot tall Harvester, don’t forget what made the action sequences in the first two films work so well, a sustained feeling of desperate survival. The heroes didn’t really fight, rather they tenaciously avoided extermination like cockroaches.

The third concern could be a blessing or a curse. What the first Matrix shares with all three existing Terminator films is that a fantastic reality comes into conflict with the normal worldt. The prospects that the world is an elaborate computer program or that a man who saved your life is a warrior from the future are much easier to swallow when we share in the initial disbelief of Neo or Sarah Conner, respectively. The Matrix sequels suffered because the outlandish state of the world was a given. The Terminator films, up to this point, have always been careful to include characters that are in the same frame of mind as Sarah was in the first film, unable to believe that a war with the machines is possible. This tension over the acceptance of the future is the driving force of conflict in the first three Terminator films. Sarah Conner exemplifies this in T2, she’s a prophet betrayed by those she’s trying to save. The harder she tries to convince people that the nuclear holocaust is coming, the more they think she’s crazy.

Terminator Salvation can still be a great movie, McG — don’t listen to the haters. You just need to focus on the elements of the previous films that can thrive in this new premise, and let go of the ones that cannot. There’s nothing in the previous films that indicates how John’s war against the machines ultimately turns out. Godspeed, McG, and remember: “the future is not set, there is not fate but what we make for ourselves.”