Emilia Clarke is returning to the box office in a reboot to another beloved franchise Solo: A Star Wars Story. This time however while the movie might be getting a very mixed reception it may work in her favor; that she is not stepping into the shoes of a previous actor role or depicting an already established character.
Emilia Clarke definitely has no love lost with the Terminator franchise, when talking to Vanity Fair about the behind the scenes process for Genisys,- it was described as “chaotic”. Notably Clarke recently refused her likeness to be used in a Terminator Genisys Board Game that hit Kickstarter, while she might have contractual obligations for her likeness to be used in material already set in stone it is apparent that she wishes to totally distance herself from Genisys and brush it under the carpet.
Emilia spoke to Vanity Fair of how she watched Alan Taylor (Director of Terminator Genisys) going through a rough time while making the movie. She says she watched Alan Taylor get…
“eaten and chewed up on Terminator. He was not the director I remembered. He didn’t have a good time. No one had a good time.”
Emilia was apparently “relieved” that the film under-performed at the box office so she didn’t have to fulfil her contract on making sequels to Genisys.
Another troubled production and box office under-performer (Fantastic Four Reboot) also poked fun at Terminator Genisys.
News of the rocky production traveled, and Clarke says the crew on the famously disastrous Fantastic Four, which was filming nearby, even had jackets made that read, AT LEAST WE’RE NOT ON TERMINATOR. “Just to give you a summary,” she says, laughing.
It is unknown who or what were the root causes of chaos on the Terminator Genisys set but we are firm believers that good movies don’t have fun, happy film sets (what good James Cameron movies did have fun movie sets?) but in the case of Terminator Genisys everything was set to destruct from the offset as the core fundamental rules of making a solid Terminator movie were not apparent to us, the majority of the fans or even key players.
Jason Clarke even said recently…
They changed so many things in that. They twist and changed, it was just like, ugh.
It is good that both Clarke’s have some honest statements about the experience but let’s not also forget that Terminator Genisys was not a complex movie, nor was it too intellectual or smart (not at all), it just chose the wrong story to tell and if you follow the new wave of Star Wars ideology of “out with the old fans and in with the new fans” you really should expect to fail.
Stripping away a small interview with Producer Dana Goldberg (also a producer on the upcoming Terminator movie) the signs were already there when she said “This is not your father’s Terminator movie”.
The aim, like the Star Wars movies, is to reach a new audience of millennials (children) but blatantly forgetting the fact that in the year 2018 a 37 year old is also a millennial and also that not all millennials eat tide pods and have tide pod induced brain rot that could make them view Genisys as an all time classic.
Will Terminator (2019) have a placid set or will an angry red-faced Tim Miller be having daily melt downs while storming around a dysfunctional set/environment? We will never really know until we see the movie and until an actor like Emilia Clarke breaks the silence.
It does seem like the new Terminator movie is still trying to coax a new generation of fans, acting like all Terminator fans are so old we all died a decade a go from severe old age. The new wave Star Wars model looks to be in full swing with this “torch passing” Terminator movie but we are giving this one more chance before we have serious thoughts about how we feel about our fandom and the future (or non-future) of it, regarding this franchise.
On a final end note, respect to Emilia for honesty, while we were not a fan of her Sarah Connor she just had some mighty boots to fill (Hamilton’s) and the casting was one problem on Genisys- among many other issues, it doesn’t mean Ms. Clarke can’t have a flourishing career outside of Terminator and we do wish her well.
UPDATE (March 20th 2019)
Emilia Clarke Says She Regrets Starring in ‘Stupid Action Movies’:
In a Variety piece about Emilia Clarke’s Game of Thrones co-star Kit Harington; Emila was again honest in her feelings about regrets on project choices, while sharing similar project success and failures with Harington.
Emilia Clarke said:
Kit and I are counterparts in terms of experience. We are pretty much the same age, and our characters have had parallel journeys, and we as actors have had parallel journeys. We’ve both done stupid action movies we regret and fabulous things we’re proud of, and we’ve always come back to Thrones. And he’s the person I’d ask, ‘How are you handling this? Are you alright?’ We were in sync, even if we were filming on opposite sides of the world.
One would obviously think that Emilia is talking about Terminator Genisys (a movie she was glad she didn’t have to make a sequel to) and Solo: A Star Wars Story a movie which also didn’t fare well with fans and the box office.
As always we should never harbour any ill feelings for actors, this is their job and this was just the way things turned out.
As always we wish Emilia the best!
8 Comments
Always makes me laugh when these franchises try time and time again to reach younger audiences with a property that started before some of todays kids’ parents were even born, or just movies from the 80’s. Expendables 3, Total Recall remake, Robocop remake, Terminator Genisys, etc… All under-performed or flat out bombed. Expendables 1 and 2, Mad Max: Fury Road, Logan, Deadpool, Blade 2, Sin City, V for Vendetta, even “IT”, which focused soleyl on he first half of the story when the characters are kids, which was R-rated, was the highest grossing R rated movie of 2017. The numbers speak for themselves folks. I grew up on classic R-rated action movies, they didn’t make me violent. Though granted, there were cartoons, toys, videogames and Halloween costumes for them all back then as well, lol.
It is true that this Terminator was not a masterpiece to the cameron but there are some good ideas after the first 2 it’s just a shame not to have the assets to achieve by putting before the continuity of the last judgment. There are good action scenes but the script and the actors have not been too much to the author if I can say but mostly a big mess to understand the two hobbies to know the past and the future when you know that already in the 3 the last judgment was being said delayed whereas in Genisys it began in 1997. Being fan of the saga I will not be too hard on this film but it remains anyway a good Terminator of entertainment by movie action to science fiction.
Has anybody here seen the film Deadpool? I saw an excerpt of him and thought, “What a ^*$”£”.
IMDB says he has a twisted sense of humour. I never watched the film. Having now seen Celine Dion singing whilst that Deadpool guy prances around really worries me for that particular franchise.
I really could not stomach anything more than perhaps one piece of humour in an entire T film.
Secondly, I believe the franchise is stuck in a situation whereby the offset of all Terminator films is a large managerie of Terminator dolls, models, gadgets etc. These are mainly for kids, so it would seem future Terminator films have to be child friendly.
I always considered the original Terminator movie was aimed at adults and elder kids, so that is a problem.
When James Cameron said the film would be upbeet, the funny-voiced Deadpool guy in the mask immediately came to mind.
Should I worry that the new T6 film will be a joke?
Perhaps someone can enlighten me because I don’t fancy watching Deadpool unless someone can recommend it.
Deadpool is adult comedy with black humor/dark satire. While comedy suits Deadpool perfectly it is a different genre all together from TERMINATOR. We actually enjoyed the DP sequel more- some might not agree but we found it MORE funny and more enjoyable. Josh Brolin was cool as Cable and generally it felt like a better made movie. In terms of watching the first Deadpool? It’s the only easy way to view the work of Tim Miller as a Director. Your call.
I preferred Deadpool 1 better. It had just the right amount of mix of humor and action. Terminator reboot is in good hand.
It’s not surprising that she has a bone to pick. Let’s not forget that she was almost universally dismissed as Sarah Connor. People had higher praise for Jai Courtney(!)
I believe Emilia was cast because she was young, an up and comer on a popular television show and her eyes bear a resemblance to Linda Hamilton’s eyes. But it was a poor choice. She is teeny-tiny. The guns were bigger than she was and in that respect, it was impossible for her to stand in the shadow of T2’s Linda.
Had the film been a success, she would have still been criticized and at that point, obligated to return to a sequel where she would get more bad ink. So, it’s no wonder she colors her perceptions with a put down.
The best thing Terminator Genisys had going for it is that it made the most effort to capture the “look” of a James Cameron film – a very hard thing, indeed. If nothing else worked, the crew should get kudos for aiming for consistency. T3 and Salvation have nothing of the Cameron cobalt blue, this one kind of did. For what that’s worth…
Looks like Emilia Clarke is a box-office poison. First, Genisys and now Solo…. 2 of her blockbuster movies have flopped stateside. In fact, Solo is also flopping in overseas market also. At least Genisys was a hit in overseas.
Genisys probably broke even in total at the global box office, it simply made 440,603,537 you need to half that so 220,301,264 because the theatres get around 50%, its 40% for china if you include some kind of Chinese culture or participant I believe Jane Zhang’s song Fighting shadows was the exception. The film cost around 150,000,000 to make I’m guessing around 55,000,000 to market the film and we are not including Dvd, Blu ray and digital sales which possible got around an additional 40,000,000 worldwide you can view the website https://www.the-numbers.com/ for Dvd and Blu ray sales it only shows USA data, in the end the movie made around forty or fifty million.
Where as Solo at this moment of writing has brought in $315,244,805 worldwide 136,741,709 internationally Genisys brought in 350,000,000 internationally, Solo will finish at around 325,000,000, the cost to make that film, budget and marketing budget was much greater then Terminators.
It is not Emilia Clake’s fault its Disneys fault you can not release a big film one week after another in this case Deadpool’s, in general there must be some time in between mega expensive releases.
Eventually will Emilia come out and express her happiness that Solo flopped ? because financially the film is more of a disappointment then terminator. I never knew who Emilia Clake was until I seen Genisys in my opinion her version of the character is not the Sarah the fans knew but she delivered an amassing performance for what Genisys is, In the beginning of the movie it shared a common path of mythology associated with the franchise though it will always be separated and stand on its own.