First look: ‘Terminator Genisys’ in photos, plot details, Emilia Clarke, Matt Smith
Fans got the first batch of photos from Terminator: Genisys in a new Entertainment Weekly article. This reveal great first looks at Emilia Clarke as Sarah Connor, Jason Clarke as John Connor, Jai Courtney, Matt Smith and Arnold Schwarzenegger who returns as the Terminator.
The article also gives fans a glimpse at the story, which is “set in 2029, when the Future War is raging and a group of human rebels has the evil artificial-intelligence system Skynet on the ropes. John Connor (Dawn of the Planet of the Apes‘ Jason Clarke) is the leader of the resistance, and Kyle Reese (Divergent‘s Jai Courtney) is his loyal soldier, raised in the ruins of postapocalyptic California. As in the original film, Connor sends Reese back to 1984 to save Connor’s mother, Sarah, from a Terminator programmed to kill her so she won’t ever give birth to John. But what Reese finds on the other side is nothing like what he expected,” as explained in the EW article.
This is the first film in a new trilogy and the photos show Emilia Clarke as a gun toting Sarah Connor in the film directed by Alan Taylor (Thor: The Dark World) and written by Laeta Kalogridis (Shutter Island) and Patrick Lussier (Drive Angry), as Genisys sets out to take basic elements of the original 1984 film and rework them in striking new ways.
Sarah has been raised by Schwarzenegger’s Terminator, an older T-800 she calls “Pops,” who is programmed to guard rather than to kill. Sarah is a highly trained “antisocial recluse who’s great with a sniper rifle but not so skilled at the nuances of human emotion,” the article says.
“Since she was 9 years old, she has been told everything that was supposed to happen,” says Ellison, who credits James Cameron’s T2 as one of the reasons he chose to spend his career making movies. “But Sarah fundamentally rejects that destiny. She says, ‘That’s not what I want to do.’ It’s her decision that drives the story in a very different direction.”
Clarke has expanded on the notion that her character was brought up by the T-800. “Oh, she’s just a normal girl growing up in a world with a Terminator for a dad,” laughs the star. “What was her first date like? Did he kill many of the dates she brought home?”
Jai Courtney confirming that his character, Kyle Reese, will have a romantic storyline with Sarah.
“I had never fallen in love on screen before,” says Courtney. “It was interesting to do that, especially when you’ve got a backdrop of the future and the past and all this other shit… endoskeletons, robots…”
The article recounts the long and failed history of the franchise and Arnold speaks about his return.
“I knew eventually that another Terminator was going to get made,” Schwarzenegger says. “People always have to go through that painful experience of doing a sequel, or something like that, without me.”
This article appears in Entertainment Weekly‘s Nov. 7 issue.
Terminator: Genisys will open in on July 3, 2015.