By the end of the last Terminator flick, Rise of the Machines, Earth is left nuked to oblivion thanks to the evil AI system Skynet. A less than heroic John Connor, played by the scrawny Nick Stahl, is chilling in a bunker with a bum ankle. Lame. Cut to 2018 and the character is now well on his way to the badass Connor we briefly saw in Terminator 2—the leader of the human resistance and an all-around deadly SOB. Who better to fill the role of mankind’s savior than curse-crazy Christian Bale? “I felt like we needed to get the series back on track, so I grounded it in Christian,” says McG, the director behind the Charlie’s Angels movies and the latest in this saga, Terminator Salvation. “We needed the most credible actor of his generation.”

Not just a sequel, Salvation hopes to kick off a new franchise. “It’s a new series,” explains McG, “like what Christopher Nolan aspired to do with Batman Begins or the relaunching of Bond with Daniel Craig.” The plot centers on John Connor as he works his way through the ranks, not yet in full command of the human forces. A mysterious Marcus Wright (Sam Worthington) shows up with a human background and a partly mechanized body, and Connor must entrust him with the safety of his father-to-be, Kyle Reese (Anton Yelchin), so Kyle can eventually go back to the time of the original Terminator to sire John. Got it?

Nervous Arnold Schwarzenegger aficionados and skeptical sci-fi fanboys can relax with McG behind the camera; he’s aware of his pedigree: “Nobody was excited about my directing a Terminator sequel. People were like, ‘What? You mean that Charlie’s Angels guy? Fuck him!’” But the always excited director promises to stay faithful to James Cameron’s classics. “The first Terminator scared the shit out of me,” he says. “And after watching the second one, I knew what I wanted to do with my life.”