New Stills For Terminator Genisys Have Emilia Clarke Packing Some Serious Firepower

When Entertainment Weekly drew back the curtain on our first look at Terminator Genisys just yesterday, fans of the franchise were left feeling underwhelmed. In revealing the stars of Paramount’s rebooted franchise, the images lacked the tone and world-weary feel of James Cameron’s classics. Hell, they even featured the iconic Terminator itself, but positioned in such a way where it looked as though the sentient slaughterhouse strolled onto the wrong photo shoot.

Either way, the magazine has served up another pair of promo images from the film, which feature Emilia Clarke’s Sarah Connor and Matt Smith’s character both packing some serious firepower.

Alas, we’re still unclear as to who exactly Smith will play in Alan Taylor’s sci-fi flick, and that’s because Terminator Genisys rewrites the fabric of Cameron’s films quite significantly and takes the renown origin story in a new direction. Whereas Linda Hamilton’s Sarah had quite the normal upbringing up until her encounter with Arnold’s T-800 cyborg, Emilia Clarke’s character was orphaned by one of Skynet’s mechanical henchmen at the age of 9, and has since been raised under the protection of Schwarzenegger’s Terminator.

Here’s a rundown of Genisys revamped plot

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.

It’s a pretty bold decision, not doubt. After all, rewriting what many consider to be one of the best arcs in sci-fi is obviously going to attract naysayers. But hey, at least it’s better than Terminator Genisys being a mere carbon copy of the original films.