We don’t ask much from science fiction movies: entertaining plot lines, competent acting, huge explosions, and accurate predictions of the future. Many films fail to deliver on that final request, prognosticating about the world to come and screwing it up again and again. Many of these movies rely on the believability of their premise, but when that premise involves a prediction about the state of the world at a specific future date, they’re setting themselves up for failure when that day comes to pass without incident. Here are five films that forecasted doom and gloom that did not happen.

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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.

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McG and Bryce Dallas Howard, “This is our new baby, we named him T-600 McG-Dallas-Howard.”

The world of Terminator fandom let out a collective groan when the news was announced that McG, director of the Charlie’s Angels films, is at the helm of the upcoming Terminator Salvation. The film, the fourth in the more than twenty year-old franchise, stars Christian Bale as John Conner. Bale unfortunately did not join the rest of the cast in promoting the film at Comic-Con. There was a press conference immediately following the big announcement panel, and the star of the show, surprisingly, was director McG.

When asked about the overall feel of the film, McG said, “I’m tremendously influenced by Children of Men, hat’s off to that picture, I think it’s fantastic… By the same token, this isn’t designed to be an art picture, it’s for audiences the world over, so you’ve got to find a balance between that artistic take and what’s right for a film to be seen by a great many people around the world.”

Many fans are concerned that McG’s take will further derail the franchise, rather than improving upon the rather dismal third film. McG seemed more than prepared to address these fears, making explicit his interactions with James Cameron, the creator and director of the first two films. “I did not want to move forward on this picture if Jim were like, ‘Fuck you, what are you doing?’ It’s very simple, I would have acquiesced and said, ‘You’re right, you’re the creator of what this is, and I respect that.’ And he was very encouraging, we talked at length about the story, we talked about Sam [Worthington], and most particularly, we talked about his experience on Aliens, and the idea that you can’t live in fear, you’ve got to move forward.”

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Director McG and a gang of under-the-title stars came out to show a footage reel from the upcoming Terminator Salvation.

Highlights:

• Christian Bale didn’t show up, but an Asian guy named Tim rocked an impeccable Arnold accent, and a Comic-Con star was born.
• McG strongly hinted that there will be, one way or another, a dose of Arnold in T4.
• But that could just be “disinformation” designed to preserve “the joys in going to the movies is not knowing what happens.”
• McG is enough of a Terminator fanboy that he might not screw this up.
• Ron Howard’s kid took the job just to make out with Christian Bale. Common’s “just glad that we’ve got a black man in this film.”
• The “real” trailer for the film will premiere in front of Quantum of Solace later this year.

Full live blog transcript after the jump.

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Kevin Smith has a sort of Clerks-does-Letterman interview style. He uses it mercilessly on some Hollywood women who love to make pain: Gale Ann Hurd (producer Terminator, Terminator 2), Lucy Lawless (Xena, Battlestar Galactica), Jaime King (The Spirit, Sin City), and Pia Guerra (Y: The Last Man).

Highlights:

- Lucy Lawless has more sex than Kevin Smith (obviously)

- A 16 year-old palm reader warned Lucy of Jay Leno

- Jaime King is named after The Bionic Woman

- Zach and Miri opens on Halloween

Liveblogging transcript after the jump

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In the Terminator series an advanced computer system called Skynet makes a spontaneous leap from AI to full-fledged intelligence, which endows the network with a will and opinions of its own. This concept was considered science fiction until today, when google revealed its horrendous prejudice:

If we expect google to be an ethical entity it must be held accountable for its moral shortcomings. However, google has already proven it doesn’t only mean us harm.

Do a google image search of “belongs in prison.” The first person to appear is Chris Elliott. I thought this was a mistake–how could the man behind Cabin Boy belong in prison? So I asked google web search to clarify, “does Chris Elliott really belong in prison?” The first complete sentence on the page made its answer crystal clear: “Of course he does.”

I don’t know how google knows this, but let’s get a warrant first and ask questions later. We don’t know how many lives it could save.

• Iron Man 2 has a release date! Also, as hinted in the first film’s post-credits scene, and Avengers film is in the works, set to team up Robert Downey Jr’s character with the Incredible Hulk (Edward Norton’s Hulk? Let’s see how much money it makes!), Captain America and Thor.
• Rapper Common has been cast as “a freedom fighter and member of [John] Connor’s inner circle” in that new Terminator sequel where Christian Bale plays a grown-up John Connor.
• It Might Get Loud, a documentary about the history of the electric guitar directed by Davis Guggenheim (the director/producer of An Inconvenient Truth) and featuring appearances from Jack White and Jimmy Page, will make its debut in the market at Cannes.
  
• Milos Forman and Arthur Penn are among a group of major directors who have protested the newly-elected mayor of Rome’s proposal to shut Hollywood films and stars out of the budding Rome Film Festival.

• Iron Man had a huge weekend, grossing $104.2 in the States from Thursday night through Sunday, and a total of $201 across all international territories. And yet it appears that no one was interested in seeing anything else––overall, this weekend’s box office was down 13% from last year’s, when Spider-Man 3 had the best opening weekend ever with $151.1 million.
• Production starts today on that Terminator sequel starring Christian Bale, and its makers are determined to deliver a box office-friendly PG-13. “The PG-13 has increased in intensity,” says Victor Kubicek, the film’s broker-turned-writer-producer. Imagine him saying that in an Arnold voice, and I think you’ll feel better about the whole situation. I did.
• British production company Hammer Films will team with Spitfire Pictures to remake Let the Right One In, the Swedish vampire film that was all the rage last week at the Tribeca Film Festival, where it won the World Dramatic Narrative prize.
• Maya Entertainment, a distributor known for targeting Spanish-speaking audiences in the U.S., has purchased Sleep Dealer, Alex Rivera’s sci-fi immigration drama which premiered earlier this year at Sundance.

• Sunday night strike stories: According to Carl DiOrio at The Hollywood Reporter, “The WGA will respond to studio reps’ latest contract proposal on new-media pay by advancing its own new proposals.” Though DiOrio admits that “the simple fact is that nobody knows where this roller-coaster ride of collective bargaining will end,” his is still the glass half-full take compared to Variety’s take. Dave McNary says that while the WGA has been surprisingly lenient in the past few days about allowing writers to work on benefits and awards shows, “Optimism for a quick resolution as negotiations resume Tuesday has faded to nearly nonexistent.”
• With Enchanted expectedly taking the number one spot at the overall box office for the second week in a row, the real story this weekend is in the specialty market. The Savages opened to the best per-screen average of the week, with $38,280 in each of its five locations; The Diving Bell and the Butterfly opened to $85,300 across three screens, making it Julian Schnabel’s most impressive opening to date; and I’m Not There dropped a respectable 33% whilst expanding to 138 screens. To their credit, this time Variety managed to report it without being totally condescending.
• Deals: Ridley Scott will direct a Gucci family biopic for Fox 2000; Variety confirms fanboy whispers that Christian Bale is “closing in on the role of John Connor in Warner Bros.’ reboot of the Terminator franchise.”

• It’s hard to pick a single line to isolate from this Variety story about the soon-to-be-in-production fourth Terminator flick–I LOLed throughout. Is the the part where the film’s budget is described as “event-sized”? Maybe the part where the producers shamelessly hint that Governor Schwarzenegger will make a cameo? Or, maybe the meticulous breakdown of the Terminator chronology, ending with financier Derek Anderson’s insistence that “this is set in the future, in a full-scale war between Skynet and humankind” (phew!) Actually, everything you need to know is contained in the proposed title: Terminator Salvation: The Future Begins.
• Brad Silberling will direct Will Ferrell in a big-screen adaptation of Land of the Lost. The project, which is categorized as an “event comedy” (when did ‘event’ become an adjective?) is set up at Universal, who took a bath on their last “event comedy”, the bloated Evan Almighty. Thus, the Lost budget “was recalibrated from $125 million to $100 million in order to earn its start date.”
• Rejoice! Fred Durst’s directorial debut The Education of Charlie Banks is FINALLY coming to theaters and DVD! Caption that photo however you see fit.