Next year’s new Terminator movie now has an official title: Terminator: Genisys.
Well, that’s stupid.
Off the top of your head, which title is worse: Terminator: Genisys or Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice?
Eh, Dawn of Justice still takes the cake. It sounds like a court case:
The news about the Terminator title was spilled by Arnold Schwarzenegger in a Facebook post announcing the film had wrapped production:
Hasta la vista, baby. I want to thank the cast and crew of @TerminatorGenisys for a fantastic shoot. It was challenging, it was fun, and it was rewarding. From our director to the producers, from the camera team to catering, from visual effects to hair and makeup – we couldn’t have done it without you. I can’t wait to see our finished project and I know we’ll remind the fans why they fell in love with the Terminator. On July 1, 2015, I’ll be back.
As of right now, no one has any real idea why it’s being called Genisys instead of Genesis. ScreenRant made some educated guesses, pondering if maybe “Genisys” refers to some new high-tech corporation (ala Cyberdyne in the previous films) or is perhaps a new name for Skynet. I have no such patience for actual cogent analysis of this subtitle. Instead, I like to imagine a John Glover circa Gremlins 2-like corporate type looking over the marketing plans and declaring in go-getter fashion, “I love it. You’ve have all done fantastic work here, people. Truly inspired. Just one thing – can we change the subtitle? ‘Genesis’ just sounds so, I don’t know, biblical. We don’t want people thinking this is a religious Terminator film, fire and brimstone and all that.”
John Glover as everyone’s boss in Gremlins 2
And then the first know-it all who pointed out that John Connor is an obvious messiah figure, right down his J.C. initials, was fired on the spot.
The plot for this movie is being kept a huge secret. So, it’s certainly possible that there is an actual story reason for why they’re calling it “Genisys.” In fact, I really hope there is. Otherwise, this smacks of that one time the Sci-Fi Channel decided SyFy just sounded so much cooler than “Sci-Fi.” Incidentally, BadAssDigest did some digging (or maybe just a cursory Google search) and discovered “there is a company called Genesys in the real world and they don’t do DNA stuff but rather make software for customer service centers.” So, that’s something.
The original Terminator films gave us Linda Hamilton, Michael Biehn, and Edward Furlong/Nick Stahl/Christian Bale as Sarah Connor, Kyle Reese, and John Connor respectively. Genisys will give us Emilia Clarke, Jai Courtney, and Jason Clarke in those same roles, with Arnold’s Terminator the only hold over. There will apparently be some Back to the Future 2 time travel shenanigans with multiple versions of the Arnold Terminators running around. Or not. We’re mostly going off of a couple of people who claim to have read the script, which was written, btw, by Laeta Kalogridis (Shutter Island) and Patrick Lussier (Drive Angry). Joining the cast is Dayo Okeniyi (The Spectacular Now) as Miles Dyson’s grown son, J.K. (“Get me Spider-Man!”) Simmons as a hard-boiled detective, and Matt (“Raggedy Man”) Smith in a mystery role. Alan Taylor (Thor: The Dark World ) landed the directing gig, and from the sounds of it he now has 11 months of post-production and editing to plow through since they just finished filming.
Those guys who read the script have surprisingly revealed that this movie may not suck (yay!), and we could very well get that trilogy it’s supposed to kick-start. So, don’t hold this new subtitle against them. Well, actually, yeah, still do that because it’s a dumb title. That doesn’t mean the movie will be just as bad.
It just occurred to me that it’s possible that you actually think Genisys sounds really cool. If so, can I ask why? Explain yourself in the comments.
Terminator: Genisys opens in the U.S. and Canada on July 1st, 2015.
