The last four Terminator movies were written with back-to-back sequels in mind, and Terminator Genisys was conceived as the first installment of a new trilogy.
Co-writer of Terminator Genisys Patrick Lussier recently spoke to The Production Meeting Podcast about the scrapped sequels for Genisys; revealing more of what we could have expected from those movies had they continued and the movie resonated with the wider audience.
“We wrote the script for like two drafts of the next one; the direct sequel and uh had an outline for the third one and what that would be. Answered all the questions that were presented in Genisys and brought everything back around and closed it all off… “
Patrick Lussier told PMP | Transcribed by TheTerminatorFans.com
Patrick Lussier also noticed something familiar from the planned Genisys sequels which appeared in Terminator: Dark Fate… The C-5 plane sequence.
“… it was way huge but it had some… and there are some little things in Dark Fate that I noticed here and there. You know we had a C-5 sequence – and I see that in Dark Fate. I said ‘oh uh, I remember writing a thing with the C-5’.”
Patrick Lussier told PMP | Transcribed by TheTerminatorFans.com
Terminator: Dark Fate director Tim Miller, previously stated that the C-5 plane sequence was James Cameron’s idea…
“Jim’s way of getting things done is simple. He just told me, ‘Make the best C-5 plane crash sequence ever done in the history of filmmaking.’ “
Tim Miller told CinemaExpress
Tim then reiterated his statement (twice more) regarding James Cameron’s conception of the plane sequence a month later:
“Jim had a whole notebook full of um, action ideas, in a vacuum – you know, not tied to character; ‘I’d like to see, uh, a truck fall through the ice- an icy river and get swept away underneath,’ which kinda became the humvee underwater sequence there um, even though there’s no ice on the river. So, you know, he uh… we kind of, but we didn’t- it wasn’t quite as um, mercenary, I guess as that. There was an organic nature to that sort of a thing but some of ’em you back into, like the C-5 sequence; you kinda… they wanted… Jim wanted to do a big air battle C-5 sequence and I said: ‘Well, they just did that in the Mummy,’ and he said ‘Well, I didn’t see the Mummy.’ and I said ‘Therefore it doesn’t exist,’ [laughter].”
Tim Miller told TIFF | Transcribed by TheTerminatorFans.com
“Jim casually throws off shit like, “It’s got to be the biggest variable-G plane crash sequence ever put to film. I’ll see you later. I’ve got to go back to Avatar now.” That sort of shit happens [laughs].”
Tim Miller told Esquire
Patrick Lussier was then asked about the direction the Genisys sequels would have taken:
Obviously Genisys is a love letter to T2, and also the original, but were the sequels getting away from that and forging a new path?
The Production Meeting Podcast | Transcribed by TheTerminatorFans.com
“Yes, yeah, they were introducing new characters, the were- they dealt more with what happens, you know the sort of… the uh… how the future, and where SkyNet comes from and what that sort of type of time loop is – you know the Matt Smith character, that was all very- became uh, much more of a focus and uh, so, it it… they were probably a little trippier and and stood away from T2 a little more um, uh like started having their own identity um, you know there’s a- there’s sort of uh, an interesting escaping of fatalistic part of it um, you know, how it opened was very cool uh but you know they- that’s all. Who knows maybe one day they’ll release it as a comic book or something.”
Patrick Lussier told PMP | Transcribed by TheTerminatorFans.com
We aren’t so sure that fans want a new identity forged for the franchise, the reasoning as to why fans liked this franchise in the first place has not changed (The Terminator and T2: Judgment Day).
The franchise has failed to recapture the magic of the first two movies, and Genisys also failed to recapture that magic, resulting in Terminator: Dark Fate – a movie which suffered the same fate with audiences.
We do however believe fans of Genisys would love a comicbook resolve but that could be said of all the Terminator movies which didn’t get sequels.
Would you like to see a Terminator Genisys comic series?
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