EMILIA Clarke wasn't even born when The Terminator came out in 1984. Nor, for that matter, was Jai Courtney. Jason Clarke was a 15-year-old high schooler in Australia, a world away from Hollywood, but the ideal age to have his mind blown by director James Cameron's story of a murderous cyborg from the future.
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As for Arnold Schwarzenegger, well, he was the Terminator - and he warned us from the start that he'd be back.
The four lead actors in Paramount Pictures' Terminator: Genisys came to the project from vastly different backgrounds. But each signed on knowing they were assuming the mantle of one of the most venerable science-fiction franchises in film history - a series that, like the Terminator himself, has taken a licking and kept on ticking over three decades and four films, racking up $US1.4 billion in worldwide grosses.
As the subtitle suggests, Genisys marks a fresh start for the franchise after 2009's poorly received Terminator: Salvation, taking the key story elements from the series' best-loved instalments - the original film and 1991's Terminator 2: Judgment Day, also directed by Cameron - and remixing them in unexpected ways. Leading humankind's war against the self-aware computer network Skynet, John Connor (Jason Clarke) sends his lieutenant Kyle Reese (Courtney) back in time to save the life of his mother, Sarah (Emilia Clarke) - who, in a twist on the original mythology, has been raised from childhood by a T-800 cyborg (Schwarzenegger) programmed to protect her.
Billing the July 1 release as a "reset" of the series, the team behind Terminator: Genisys is attempting to pull off a delicate balancing act, luring in new audiences who may never have seen a Terminator film without alienating the hard-core fans who were there from the beginning.
With a $US170 million production budget and a potential new trilogy in the offing, the stakes are high.
"It's not a light thing to step into," said director Alan Taylor (Thor: The Dark World).
"A lot of fans hate this already because it's presuming to step on territory they love. The chances of it going wrong are glaring."
From the outset, securing Schwarzenegger's involvement was seen as critical. Schwarzenegger, 67, who had sat out Terminator: Salvation (he was busy serving as governor of California), was drawn in by the script by Laeta Kalogridis and Patrick Lussier.
"I felt they came up with some new ways of moving on with the project that I was genuinely excited about," Schwarzenegger said.
The only really tricky thing to wrap his head around? Acting opposite a digitally created version of himself as he appeared in 1984.
"To see a fight scene where you fight yourself - it really is wild," Schwarzenegger said.
He laughed. "It will be interesting to see who people will be rooting for."
Los Angeles Times
