Welcome to my new series of articles, Works in Progress. Here I will take an in depth look at some the biggest adaptions, sequels and reboots set to grace our cinemas in the foreseeable future. I will question the pros and cons that the film will be faced with and ultimately determine whether the film will work at all. First up in the firing line is Terminator: Genisys. Thanks to Entertainment Weekly we now know what the synopsis of the film will be. John Connor sends Kyle Reese back in time to save his mother, Sarah Connor, and ensure his own existence, but what Reese finds isn’t what he expects. Sarah is orphaned at a young age by a Terminator and is bought up by another Terminator. It’s a very intriguing yet confusing concept, it keeps a little of the past while refreshing the franchise enough to make it stand on it’s own. That is about all we know about the story, but things should become clearer once a trailer is released. But complicated story aside, there are still some ups and downs for the reboot.
This is a great opportunity for Emilia to expand her range as an actor and show she isn’t just obsessed about her dragons. Speaking of obsessed; someone with a passionate and obsessive fanbase starring in the film is Matt Smith. The Eleventh Doctor will try to break away from the Tardis playing an unspecified character (at the time of writing) that we simply know as being a friend of John Connor. Smith has the difficult challenge that every departing Doctor has, not just being known as the Doctor. While others in past haven’t been able to escape Doctor Who, this is Matt’s best chance. He will always be know as the Doctor but this is a great chance to show that he can play something else from the Doctor, which he has proved in the past, but also possibly play a new iconic character. As a fan of Smith, I really hope he can do well in this role and finally crack mainstream America. And it seems like Paramount have faith in him too. When the cast photo was released exclusively for Entertainment Weekly, Matt is one of the main characters on the pictures. So it looks like we can guarantee that Smith has a big role in the film, even if we don’t know what it is.
While there is a lot of excitement for the cast and the fact that Terminator is coming back to the big screen, there is still a lot of damage control to do for the film. The first problem is director Alan Taylor who really needs to build support for him. While Taylor does have fans from his work on Games of Thrones, there were many fans and critics who weren’t happy with his work on Thor: The Dark World. Many felt that the film wasn’t as strong as the first Thor film or the rest of the films in Marvel’s Phase 2 like Iron Man 3 and Captain America: The Winter Soldier. Because Thor: The Dark World was his first feature film that is how people are going to recognise his style of filmmaking. He needs to show what it was about his filmmaking that made Paramount sign him up to direct Terminator, do what he did so well in Games of Thrones and see if he can apply it to the Terminator franchise.
The problem that Salvation and even Terminator 3 had is that it focused on male leads. Even though Arnie is synonymous with the franchise, what made Terminator work; especially in T2: Judgment Day was a strong female lead character. Linda Hamilton is great as Sarah Connor and is known as one of the strongest, toughest, badass female characters of all time. It made the films stand out from everything else around at the time. It does look like the focus of Genisys is on Emilia Clarke, so Terminator has a great chance to recapture what made the franchise great in the first place.
So, can Terminator: Genisys work at the cinema? It has an excellent chance of working. It has a great cast, an intriguing way of refreshing the franchise for the better while still keeping some nostalgia and a great opportunity of presenting something different from everything else being released next year. But this will only work if the story’s great too, and they don’t spoil it in the trailer.