My initial reaction: ridiculous. My favorite movie of all time is Terminator 2: Judgment Day and ever since that movie came out, everything else in the franchise has been a disappointment except for the television series The Sarah Connor Chronicles. The problem that everything else has (outside of not having the oversight of James Cameron) is that they're continually trying to change the series. This is no exception. In fact, this actually goes out of its way to fully replace the whole series and reboot it.
Why? Because it will be soooo awesome to see that, as they've marketed it, the rules have changed and the entire purpose of everything we've seen before has been rendered useless? OMG but that means anything can happen!! Reboots can be fine (see: Batman Begins), but retconning a previous story for the purposes of shock value or a clean slate is lazy storytelling and something better suited for lame fan fiction.
Am I going to see it? You bet your ass I will. But that's not out of ANY excitement for this movie itself. It's entirely out of it my devotion to the previous films. I fully expect to think that this is as big of a misstep as Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines or Terminator Salvation. In fact, at this point, I wouldn't be surprised if they go with the absolutely dreadful decision to make John Connor a Terminator like they've wanted to do in the past. That will officially kill this movie for me, and I can see it coming from a mile away.
The beginning of Terminator: Genisys, the first of three planned films that Paramount hopes will relaunch the beloved sci-fi franchise, 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 post apocalyptic California. As in the original film, Connor sends Reese back to 1984 to save Connor's mother, Sarah (Game of Thrones' Emilia Clarke), from a Terminator programmed to kill her so that she won't ever give birth to John. But what Reese finds on the other side is nothing like he expected.
What do you think? Is the franchise keeping its steady nosedive or is this a course correction that will revitalize the series?
Terminator: Genisys will be released in theaters July 1, 2015.
Directed by: Alan Taylor
Written by: Laeta Kalogridis, Patrick Lussier, James Cameron (characters), Gale Anne Hurd (characters)
Starring: Arnold Schwarzenegger (T-800), Emilia Clarke (Sarah Connor), Jai Courtney (Kyle Reese), Jason Clarke (John Connor), J.K. Simmons, Matt Smith, Aaron V. Williamson, Lee Byung-hun, Sandrine Holt, Courtney B. Vance (Miles Dyson), Dayo Okeniyi (Danny Dyson)
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