First plot information from the Terminator Reboot

[Borgholio]

http://popwatch.ew.com/2014/10/29/this- ... r-genisys/

The Terminator is having a bad day. It’s a muggy July afternoon in New Orleans—the temperature is loitering in the triple digits—and Arnold Schwarzenegger is inside a giant warehouse on the grounds of NASA’s Michoud Assembly Facility. Suited up in a black leather jacket with green-painted latex obscuring most of the right side of his face, he is again playing the indelible robot that solidified his place in Hollywood some 30 years ago. So far today the former governor of California has been stepped on and forced to crawl on the ground, and now, as he gasps for breath fighting his opponent, he’s about to get transported to a different time—which, if you know anything about Terminator mythology, is a very bad thing. Especially if your metal endoskeleton is showing.

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.

In this week’s issue of Entertainment Weekly, we offer an exclusive first look at the reinvention of a $1.4 billion franchise, including two exclusive covers of the new cast, and explore the filmmakers’ time-twisty plan to reconnect fans to what made those first two movies so cool, while tweaking audience expectations. “It’s like going on tour again if you’re Pink Floyd—the audience always wants to hear some of the old songs,” says Matt Smith, the former Doctor Who star who plays a close ally of John Connor. “There are enough nods to the past that people will feel satisfied.”

James Cameron’s Terminator and Terminator 2: Judgment Day not only set the bar for what could be achieved in genre film-making, but those two movies introduced audiences to a strong female protagonist, a gut-wrenching love story, and one awesome villain/hero, all set against the backdrop of nuclear war. If history has taught us anything, it’s that it can be perilous to mess with Cameron’s precise formula. (Terminator: Salvation anyone?) But a new group of filmmakers, led by producers David Ellison and Dana Goldberg and director Alan Taylor (Thor: The Dark World), seem determined to sidestep the mistakes of the past with Genisys, set for release in July 2015.

Their recipe calls for one part Teutonic monotone with Arnold Schwarzenegger back in a big way, and four parts exciting new cast with geek bonafides that are sure to appease the Comic-Con masses, plus ground-breaking special effects and a few shocking twists on the canon.

Twist No. 1? Sarah Connor isn’t the innocent she was when Linda Hamilton first sported feathered hair and acid-washed jeans in the role. Nor is she Hamilton’s steely zero body-fat warrior in 1991’s T2. Rather, the mother of humanity’s messiah was orphaned by a Terminator at age 9. Since then, she’s been raised by (brace yourself) Schwarzenegger’s Terminator—an older T-800 she calls “Pops”—who is programmed to guard rather than to kill. As a result, Sarah is a highly trained antisocial recluse who’s great with a sniper rifle but not so skilled at the nuances of human emotion.

“Since she was 9 years old, she has been told everything that was supposed to happen,” says Ellison. “But Sarah fundamentally rejects that destiny. She says, ‘That’s not what I want to do.’ It’s her decision that drives the story in a very different direction.”

So umm...yeah. Pops?

[Havok]

I was tempted to just boo and hiss this, but I have a soft spot for Ahnuld and it actually sounds interesting.
Granted they already sorta did the anti-social recluse in T:3 in John Connor adult, I can see this having some potential.

[Joun_Lord]

I'm in the same boat of wanting to direct nerd rage at this but honestly it sounds kinda interesting. The "aged Termie" sounds like a good way to include Arnie (and answers the questions whether Terminator's skin ages assuming the Eldernator wasn't just made at factory to be old) and should give a interesting spin of Sarah's relationship with Terminators. Her parents might have been killed by one but she was also raised by one, probably some "Uncle Bob" feelings there that might make here vulnerable.

I'll reserve final judgement until the movie comes out. At least even if it is bad its will be watchable as a okay action film like T3 and Salvation were.

[The Romulan Republic]

Sounds horrible because they've taken an interesting character in the form of Sarah Connor and eliminated much of her development by making her a hardened bad ass who knows about Terminators from day one. Also get the sense that their focussing more on Kyle, which sounds like a fuck-you to female protagonists.

[PREDATOR490]

The only thing I find interesting about this is actually getting to see the future war shit because that is the only thing that has consistently been under played. Of course, the fear is the talk of 'special effects' is going have them pulling Michael Bay Transformers wannabe scenes because they are desperate to hook on the bandwagons of the latest big movies. Then it is going to be a time jump into the land of repeat.

Twist 01 - Replace Sarah Connor with John Connor and Arnie with Summer Glau = Oh look, its the movie form of that series that got cancelled with the OTHER Game of Thrones Sarah Connor. Nothing new about this 'different direction'. Unless, they are going to have Sarah Connor shoot Kyle Reese in the face and actually build Skynet... deciding she is going to make her 'own' future is no different than T2 "NO FATE" or John Connor deciding to stop judgement Day in T:SCC and learning it was "inevitable" in T3.

[FSTargetDrone]

Time travel. Reboots. Again. Yawn. Time travel was fine in the first few Terminator movies and it works well in movies like Back to the Future but time travel is such a cheat in general. See X-Men: Days of Future Past and Star Trek in general. It's such a tired, tedious plot point anymore.

[Tandrax218]

arrrgghh hell nooo!!!



Why change the whole story ? Destroy the character and development of Sarah Connor? Why do the same "time travel" crap ? Wasn't the theme "we can/cant change the future " a predominant plot line in the first 3 movies ?

I can see it all now: sarah is a bad ass who grew up with pops and is a killing machine on her own and she gives birth to john who in turn has "mommy issues" cuz his mom didn't give him time to pay halo 3. God damn if this is true than this franchise is doomed and i wont watch it.

ever since i saw T1 i wanted to see the future and the "war" between the machines and humans, giant mech like tanks with lasers and a field of corpses like in the intro. But noooooo lets make a movie about the 2000-2010'

I mean terminator salvation had it shown ok and it wasn't all that grimdark, but was getting there, and then they cancelled that project.

Damn you hollywood damn you

[Grumman]

So once again we have them revisiting important points in their past and violently butchering them. But enough about Hollywood...

[Tribble]

And there's no doubt that this will be a PG movie, just like the Robocop reboot. Gotta keep the parents happy!

The best thing about this film is that you can literally take it as an alternate universe: after all, Kyle specifically stated in the first film that he came from "one possible future".

[Ziggy Stardust]

I rather like the unintentional comedy factor of the quote, "“It’s like going on tour again if you’re Pink Floyd—the audience always wants to hear some of the old songs." Trying to promote a tired reboot of a once great franchise by referencing over-the-hill rockers creaking around from stadium to stadium to cash another paycheck just sounds silly to me. Obviously there are still people who go to and enjoy concerts like the Rolling Stones or what-have-you in this day and age, but by and large bands are widely ridiculed for continuing to tour long after their cultural relevance has faded. Just think it's funny that this fellow thought the comparison would be flattering.

[Jub]

I rather like the unintentional comedy factor of the quote, "“It’s like going on tour again if you’re Pink Floyd—the audience always wants to hear some of the old songs." Trying to promote a tired reboot of a once great franchise by referencing over-the-hill rockers creaking around from stadium to stadium to cash another paycheck just sounds silly to me. Obviously there are still people who go to and enjoy concerts like the Rolling Stones or what-have-you in this day and age, but by and large bands are widely ridiculed for continuing to tour long after their cultural relevance has faded. Just think it's funny that this fellow thought the comparison would be flattering.

You do know that Pink Floyd are putting out a new album and that there are people in their 20's that go to these shows right? Just because they might nnot be chart toppers any more doesn't mean they're not relevant in todays music scene.

[Siege]

So Sarah Connor is brought up the way she wished for John Connor in T-2, with the Terminator father figure? That sounds interesting to me. Maybe I'm the odd one out but I'm quite done with gruff american future jesus John Connor the prophesized resistance hero. I dig the idea that when Kyle Reese gets there to save the damsel in distress she turns out to be a hypercompetent killfuck assassin with a hitman robot bodyguard. I'm willing to give that a shot.

[PREDATOR490]

And there's no doubt that this will be a PG movie, just like the Robocop reboot. Gotta keep the parents happy!

The best thing about this film is that you can literally take it as an alternate universe: after all, Kyle specifically stated in the first film that he came from "one possible future".

The mentioning of new 'canon' may screw up that situation and the description of the premise seems like it could woefully attempt to tie into the other films. Batman was a PG13 and it worked as a revival so that alone is not entirely going to doom it but I certainly do not see them being up to that standard. If they wanted to skip the sex scenes I could happily go for that. Emilia Clark has already bared all for GoT so nothing lost there.
That said, PG13 romance bullshit between Kyle and Sarah with attempts at humor like T3 = GTFO

I am mostly curious if they will attempt to modernize the premise and if it will be annoyingly 'current'.
I.E Skynet was created to fight the evil terrorists

Not to mention trying to expand the Skynet scope. The original films all focused on the US to the point I wonder how Skynet was such a global threat. It nuked Russia which caused Russia to nuke everyone else... and then somehow Skynet rose up to build armies of death machines in an epic war that only John Connor managed to turn back with his awesome unspecified contribution. I kinda expect such a savior to bring more to the table than Christian Bale generic action man.

[DaveJB]

And there's no doubt that this will be a PG movie, just like the Robocop reboot. Gotta keep the parents happy!

In complete fairness, the original film would almost certainly have been a PG-13 were it released nowadays, and Terminator 2 would likely also get a PG-13 with only minor cuts. The series may be dark and violent, but aside from one or two moments in the second film it's never been in the same league as, say, the original RoboCop when it comes to gore.

[Zor]

"Terminator: Genisys" is a stupid name.

Zor

[FedRebel]

Not to mention trying to expand the Skynet scope. The original films all focused on the US to the point I wonder how Skynet was such a global threat. It nuked Russia which caused Russia to nuke everyone else... and then somehow Skynet rose up to build armies of death machines in an epic war that only John Connor managed to turn back with his awesome unspecified contribution. I kinda expect such a savior to bring more to the table than Christian Bale generic action man.

The First Movie's SAC/NORAD origin I think is something could be explored more,

Say. the Resistance levels Cheyenne Mountain , pops open the Champagne...and it turns out Skynet was in Nebraska all along.

Also how about Skynet being a Cold War relic, let's say it always been semi-selfaware to properly manage SAC's arsenal and NORAD's Air Defense systems PLUS exploit backdoors into the PVO network and 'Systema Perimetr'. Problem comes with the end of the Cold War, the belief would exist that Skynet wouldn't understand disarmament, etc. so it's fed false data (it can't be shutdown...because it can't be 100% shutdown, some computer banks can be shutdown for maintenance/upgrade but the system is designed so at least one bank is always active...unless you physically destroy them all.)

The original Judgement Day would fall to a future USSTRATCOM Commander, taking offense to being refereed to as 'CINC-SAC' by Skynet and decides to ignorantly spill the bad news. Skynet throws what amounts to a tantrum as it verifies that that the majority of data it's received over the decades is fraudulent and attempts to rationalize, the ensuing panic on the human end leads to attempts at shutting SkyNet down....which culminate with physical destruction of it's computer banks...Skynet then out of self preservation lashes out with nuclear arms, launching America's nuclear arsenal as well as having Systema Perimetr launch the Russian arsenal, full on "Spread the Love" target portfolios.

[Tandrax218]

Lol now that would be total U.S propaganda :
"we hacked Russia's doomsday device" now it launches nukes at everyone

but i think Russia is not that retarded in the nuke security department so that would only make the movie more retarded than its current proposed form...

[Tribble]

And there's no doubt that this will be a PG movie, just like the Robocop reboot. Gotta keep the parents happy!

The best thing about this film is that you can literally take it as an alternate universe: after all, Kyle specifically stated in the first film that he came from "one possible future".

The mentioning of new 'canon' may screw up that situation and the description of the premise seems like it could woefully attempt to tie into the other films. Batman was a PG13 and it worked as a revival so that alone is not entirely going to doom it but I certainly do not see them being up to that standard. If they wanted to skip the sex scenes I could happily go for that. Emilia Clark has already bared all for GoT so nothing lost there.
That said, PG13 romance bullshit between Kyle and Sarah with attempts at humor like T3 = GTFO

I am mostly curious if they will attempt to modernize the premise and if it will be annoyingly 'current'.
I.E Skynet was created to fight the evil terrorists

Not to mention trying to expand the Skynet scope. The original films all focused on the US to the point I wonder how Skynet was such a global threat. It nuked Russia which caused Russia to nuke everyone else... and then somehow Skynet rose up to build armies of death machines in an epic war that only John Connor managed to turn back with his awesome unspecified contribution. I kinda expect such a savior to bring more to the table than Christian Bale generic action man.

Skynet was a global threat. If John Connor had failed and Skynet had conqured the Americas, there was nobody else who would be able to stop it. After Judgement Day, most nations were practically thrown back to the Stone-Age. Even if the rest of the world was fully aware of the threat that Skynet posed (they may have jsut as liekly believed that SKynet had been destroyed in the corss fire), I doubt any nation would've had the ability to sucessfully invade the Americas to take Skynet out. If the Americas had fallen, Skynet's defences would have been virtually impregnable and it would have eventually invaded the rest of the world and wiped out the remaining human population with ease. Connor was the one and only chance humanity had to stop Skynet in its tracks before its foothold grew too strong.

Connor was a general, which doesn't really play well with action movies. His main contribution was to lead and stratigise rather than fight on the front line (though I'm sure he had his fair share of battles). Assuming that Reese was right and that there are multiple timelines, how John Connor originally defeated Skynet without time travel being involved is a bit of a mystery. Apart from his charisma and ability to lead troops into battle, he must have figured out fwhere Skynet was weak. Skynet was designed to fight a global war with conventional armies and tactics. Conventional armies were virtually wiped off the map after Judgement Day. Connor must have realised that going toe-to-toe with Skynet in a conventional battle was futile. He probably used guerrilla warfare throughout most of the war, apart from the final battles where Skynet's defence grid was smashed and it was time to throw in everything he had to defeat it. Guerrilla warfare was probably the one area that Skynet and its infrastructure was not originally designed to deal with, and John Connor must have exploited that to the fullest. By the time Skynet was able to fight Connor's army on it's own terms with units like the T-800 and T-1000, it was already far too late. IMO John Connor's strategy was to gradually weaken Skynet via hit and run tactics on supply convoys, construction machines, resource gathering machines, factories etc to the point where he could eventually move in for the kill. IMO the Future War was a war attrition right from the start, and all-out battles like we saw in T2 were the exception rather than the rule.

[Gaidin]

The amusing issue with the Terminator series is the same with a lot of time travelling stories that don't leave endings as vague as T2 did. Paradox. You just get...more. At least you can every time they want more. And it complicates things. The Terminator, Kyle Reese, and the Connors are the lynch pins of the past that hold everything up and they functionally can't be removed however much the rest of the past is fluid around them. If they're removed then Skynet loses its reason to send a Terminator back to kill and change the future and then...John's alive again, and the war's back on...and he's sending an assassin back again in its original act of desperation and John Connor is sending both Kyle Reese and the reprogrammed T-800(or any number of them depending on the number of attempts). At best the scenario changes and Skynet is trying it this way this time, going after Sarah Connor when she's a girl instead of an adult. Going after John Connor when he's an adult instead of a child. Whatever.

The question is, is the scenario interesting enough. I think this one is. It may not be T1 or T2, but it sounds a damn sight better than T3, though T3 had some interesting ideas on how the apocalypse couldn't be prevented, only delayed, possibly for the same paradoxical reasons the past couldn't be truly changed by Skynet. My opinion that this one seems better than T3, well, that's good enough for me to see it, hell I'll probably enjoy it too.

But I'm shameless for enjoying bad action movies anyway so...grain of salt where you will.

[Grumman]

The amusing issue with the Terminator series is the same with a lot of time travelling stories that don't leave endings as vague as T2 did. Paradox. You just get...more.

Paradox has little place in a story, in my opinion. Unless you are somehow physically restricted from travelling anywhere where any point of origin is inside the light-cone of your destination point, things that would cause paradox are pretty much inevitable. You've got four options, really:

1. Time travel is impossible. Paradox is nothing more than "wouldn't it be silly..." musings about technology that cannot exist.
2. Time travel is possible, paradox is not. Even little things have consequences. Some of those consequences are insignificant, like a different number of oxygen molecules being transported back in time when you activate the machine, but a different sperm fertilising an egg might mean you and all your descendants have a different subset of your father's genes. Unless it all caused paradox, paradox obviously isn't an issue.
3. Time travel is possible, the God of Fate keeps everything neat and tidy, paradox happens when he throws up his hands in despair. Since everything causes paradox, paradox can only be a thing only some of the time if there's some intelligent force that knows which instances of paradox are a problem and which aren't.
4. "Only when it is funny!" Basically #3, but the God of Fate is the author.

Even belief in paradox can be a detriment to your story, since it's a passive mindset. If Skynet believed in paradox it wouldn't bother using time travel to try to kill Sarah Connor, because it would believe its efforts were doomed to failure. If the Resistance believed in paradox they wouldn't bother using time travel to try to stop it, because they would believe its efforts were doomed to failure even without their intervention. It can only be a motivation for someone who chooses not to use time travel, or someone who uses time travel in a wrongheaded attempt to stop another time traveler causing paradoxical changes to the timeline.

[2000AD]

Any news on who Matt Smith's cahracter is? From the pics he looks to be in the future war part.

[Tribble]

The amusing issue with the Terminator series is the same with a lot of time travelling stories that don't leave endings as vague as T2 did. Paradox. You just get...more.

Paradox has little place in a story, in my opinion. Unless you are somehow physically restricted from travelling anywhere where any point of origin is inside the light-cone of your destination point, things that would cause paradox are pretty much inevitable. You've got four options, really:

1. Time travel is impossible. Paradox is nothing more than "wouldn't it be silly..." musings about technology that cannot exist.
2. Time travel is possible, paradox is not. Even little things have consequences. Some of those consequences are insignificant, like a different number of oxygen molecules being transported back in time when you activate the machine, but a different sperm fertilising an egg might mean you and all your descendants have a different subset of your father's genes. Unless it all caused paradox, paradox obviously isn't an issue.
3. Time travel is possible, the God of Fate keeps everything neat and tidy, paradox happens when he throws up his hands in despair. Since everything causes paradox, paradox can only be a thing only some of the time if there's some intelligent force that knows which instances of paradox are a problem and which aren't.
4. "Only when it is funny!" Basically #3, but the God of Fate is the author.

Even belief in paradox can be a detriment to your story, since it's a passive mindset. If Skynet believed in paradox it wouldn't bother using time travel to try to kill Sarah Connor, because it would believe its efforts were doomed to failure. If the Resistance believed in paradox they wouldn't bother using time travel to try to stop it, because they would believe its efforts were doomed to failure even without their intervention. It can only be a motivation for someone who chooses not to use time travel, or someone who uses time travel in a wrongheaded attempt to stop another time traveler causing paradoxical changes to the timeline.

You could also have the parallel universes. Time travel to your specific past is impossible, because the moment you travel back you create an entirely new timeline. Perhaps Skynet knew the cause was lost in its timeline, but thought that it was better to create another timeline where it might have won than simply let itself get destroyed.

[Gaidin]

The amusing issue with the Terminator series is the same with a lot of time travelling stories that don't leave endings as vague as T2 did. Paradox. You just get...more.

Paradox has little place in a story, in my opinion. Unless you are somehow physically restricted from travelling anywhere where any point of origin is inside the light-cone of your destination point, things that would cause paradox are pretty much inevitable. You've got four options, really:

1. Time travel is impossible. Paradox is nothing more than "wouldn't it be silly..." musings about technology that cannot exist.
2. Time travel is possible, paradox is not. Even little things have consequences. Some of those consequences are insignificant, like a different number of oxygen molecules being transported back in time when you activate the machine, but a different sperm fertilising an egg might mean you and all your descendants have a different subset of your father's genes. Unless it all caused paradox, paradox obviously isn't an issue.
3. Time travel is possible, the God of Fate keeps everything neat and tidy, paradox happens when he throws up his hands in despair. Since everything causes paradox, paradox can only be a thing only some of the time if there's some intelligent force that knows which instances of paradox are a problem and which aren't.
4. "Only when it is funny!" Basically #3, but the God of Fate is the author.

Even belief in paradox can be a detriment to your story, since it's a passive mindset. If Skynet believed in paradox it wouldn't bother using time travel to try to kill Sarah Connor, because it would believe its efforts were doomed to failure. If the Resistance believed in paradox they wouldn't bother using time travel to try to stop it, because they would believe its efforts were doomed to failure even without their intervention. It can only be a motivation for someone who chooses not to use time travel, or someone who uses time travel in a wrongheaded attempt to stop another time traveler causing paradoxical changes to the timeline.

I didn't say you crank it out in the story. None of the key characters would except the T-800 would really understand paradox anyway in the mindfuck way it'd have to be cranked out into the story, and for him it doesn't effect his mission. If attempting to change the past is a part of his mission he'll damn well do it. All the others, it's been about survival and fighting. I just said it's what gives producers their excuse to keep making the movies.

[ANGELUS]

I don't know if this is the right place for this or if it should be on a new thread, but here it goes:

First trailer is out:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=62E4FJTwSuc

[NeoGoomba]

I, uh, I really dug that trailer, actually. And I feel so strange admitting that.