Following 2009’s “loud and dull” Terminator: Salvation, the franchise will get a reboot of sorts with next year’s Terminator: Genisys. Though after seeing the first trailer, I’m more inclined to call it a remix than a reboot.
It starts off with a familiar storyline: John Connor (Jason Clarke), several years in the future, has tasked lieutenant Kyle Reese (Jai Courtney) with the mission of going back to 1984 and saving his mother, Sarah Connor (Emilia Clarke, aka Daenerys Targaryen), from the Terminator sent to kill her to prevent John’s crucial leadership in the rebellion. When Kyle arrives, Sarah repeats the franchise’s classic catchphrase, “Come with me if you wanna live.” So far, this feels like a fairly straightforward recreation of The Terminator.
But then Sarah informs Kyle that “we” have already destroyed the T-800 that’s after her—the “we” being her and Arnold Schwarzenegger, playing a future version of the T-800, who has blown his younger self to smithereens. After that, things get weird: Sarah explains to Kyle that “everything’s changed” and that, in some strange alternate course of events, they’ve figured out a way to stop Judgment Day from happening. There’s even a brief scene that suggests Sarah was taken under the Terminator’s wing as a child.
So are we supposed to disregard the previous films in the franchise before seeing this latest edition, or watch them all over again so we can tell what in the world is going on? Hopefully, things become a bit clearer when Terminator: Genisys opens July 1, 2015.
