The anticipated fifth instalment of the Terminator franchise, Terminator Genisys, finished shooting in New Orleans this past August. Appearing in the latest battle against Skynet are Emilia Clarke as the badass Sarah Connor, Jason Clarke as her son John Connor, Jai Courtney as Kyle Reese and Arnold Schwarzennegger, who’s reprising his role as the now-aged T-800. Aside from the cast list, there’s little else to go on. Or is there?
During an interview with Coming Soon, Courtney labelled the movie “a reset,” before being asked if the film would adopt an alternate timeline like J.J. Abrams’ Star Trek franchise:
I guess that’s a fair comparison, in a sense. There’s a world that’s been established, but we haven’t necessarily seen those characters in that light before. I think the beauty of time travel means you can shift a lot on a dime. Yeah man, after making it… it was a tough film to do. It was full-on, it’s a big big movie. A lot of us worked very hard but I think it’s gonna pay off and I think audiences won’t be disappointed. I’m really excited to see what happens with it.
Of course, this is nothing we haven’t heard before. Earlier today, we brought you the news that the film will be neither a sequel or reboot. We’d already heard vague talk of this being the case, but then Courtney again confirmed our suspicions to the Huffington Post:
“What I can say is that we start in a place we’re familiar with from the early films and then, you know, circumstances change. It somewhat shifts the course of events from that point. It’s not necessarily a sequel or a reboot. I don’t even know how you brand it correctly. We’re not remaking one of the early ‘Terminator’ movies. And it doesn’t necessarily carry on from the point where we left off.”