A pair of “Terminator Salvation: The Future Begins” (or as we like to call it here, T4) news for you today. One involves Arnold Schwarzenegger, who is so well-known and connected with the Terminator mythology that you can pretty much call him just “Arnold” and everyone knows who you’re talking about; and the other with Helena Bonham Carter, a very curious name that has been attached to T4. How does a dame more associated with tight corsets and stuffy British melodramas end up in a sci-fi movie about killer robots? Let’s find out, shall we?

From the LATimes comes this article with Arnold, who was given an early look at T4 by its director, McG. We’re not talking about the entire movie, of course, as they’re still shooting this thing as we speak down there in New Mexico. But Arnold saw enough of the footage that, well, he didn’t really like what he saw, which is probably not what McG or the studio wanted to hear when they arranged the screening for the Terminator turned Governator.

Here are Arnold’s thoughts about what he saw:

“I still don’t know how it will play out with this one… They showed me some footage, but I don’t have a feel for the movie. I didn’t see enough. I wasn’t sure who the Terminator was. I don’t know if there is one or if he’s the star or the hero. These are the things that determine the success and how the strong the movie will be.

“I’ve seen very little footage so I don’t really have a feel for it. I hope they do well, and I hope it is a huge hit. I do hope it creates a spectacle on the screen. That is what James Cameron created.

“With Batman and Terminator, those big movies, there’s a certain expectation and if you don’t live up to it, if the movie is not a 10, then the business will be soft… If ['Salvation'] is pushing it forward, it will be breaking records all the time. If [director McG] has the T4 and the kind of shots that has the audience thinking, ‘Now how did he do that?’ — then it is ‘Terminator’ and you can blow everyone away and every record at the box office.”

Meanwhile, Helena Bonham Carter has confirmed to SciFiWire that she does, indeed, play a part in T4. And not just any part, either. She plays a “very bad person” in the upcoming movie.

More:

“I kind of play a baddie, definitely a baddie… I don’t know how much I’m allowed to say, but I’m a very bad person.

“Tim [Burton] would have killed me if I hadn’t done it, because he’s such a Terminator fan… I’ve been in big movies before, like Apes, and Fight Club was big in a different way, and Charlie [and the Chocolate Factory] and Sweeney Todd were big, but I’ve never been in this kind of big popcorn action movie, a male one, an action one.”

FYI: Apparently Carter actually came in at the last hour to replace Tilda Swinton in the role.