I don’t know if there’s a Guinness Book Of World Records entry for this sort of thing, but it’s hard to think of any actor who has had their hand in as many franchises at one time as Jai Courtney. The actor has starred in “Jack Reacher,” “Divergent” and “Insurgent,” “Live Free Or Die Hard,” and this weekend’s “Suicide Squad.” Whatever you might think about Courtney, his agent is earning his salary and then some. But don’t worry, I haven’t forgotten about last year’s “Terminator Genisys,” the reboot/retcon of the beloved sci-fi franchise that failed creatively and commercially and killed any plans for future installments. And according to Courtney, maybe we should all just be moving along from the T-800 at this point.
Speaking with Business Insider, the actor revealed that given his tentpole involvement over the years, he’s learned not to get hung up on whether or not they are successful enough to fire up a followup, and if they are, whether or not he’ll have a role. But when it comest to “The Terminator,” the man who played Kyle Reese thinks maybe Hollywood should stop already.
“If it seems like an obvious movie to make then cool. But with ‘Terminator,’ who knows, it’s probably time to leave it where it is. But if they can get back in there and dig around and decide there is another film to make, I’ll take the call,” he said, perhaps smartly keeping the door open if anyone wants him down the road.
Frankly, the only way I see forward is if whoever takes on the series next — and let’s face it, Terminator is too valuable to lay dormant for too long — they take a page out of Neill Blomkamp‘s “Alien” book and come up with a concept that continues the story after “Terminator 2: Judgment Day,” and ignores everything that happened after. But if you have another idea, share it below.
One of Genisys’ problems was that it felt like Terminator fanfiction. If the story was handled properly, it might have been a somewhat decent film. Instead, it just makes Salvation look better.
Also, since we all know the likelihood of this franchise just sitting there doing nothing isn’t a reality (for now, at least), the biggest hope I have for it is that whoever does something with it next conveniently forgets Jai Courteney’s phone number.
I agree on that one. It was like someone just took all the best stuff they liked about the first two films, combined them with deleted scenes and items we’ve heard of (the discovery of the time machine, the T-800 trying to smile in a T2 deleted scene, etc), and tried to tickle our nostalgia like ‘Jurassic World’ and ‘The Force Awakens’ did.
Personally, I feel the Terminator was never meant to go as far as it has come. Cameron ended it in a place that kept it vague enough to be satisfying…but then, Hollywood kept thinking we HAD to get to Judgement Day, and the Future Wax-I mean, War.
The biggest problem is that the whole mission around stopping Judgement Day is little more than a joke. When it was the first 2 films, one could believe it. But now, it’s like Freddy Krueger trying to be scary – it just comes off as bad comedy. I just kept laughing in the theater everytime someone in Genisys said they could stop Judgement Day, and even Reese’s ‘it was over’ at the end, I didn’t buy for a second.