Behold the brand new, totally rebooted cast of Terminator Genisys. They look fine. I mean, it's a cover of a magazine — it is what it is. However, the plot reveal inside the actual magazine issue is a WHOLE OTHER FUCKING MATTER. Spoilers ahead.


Entertainment Weekly has Emilia Clarke as Sarah Connor, Jai Courtney as Kyle Reese, Matt Smith as Mysterious Future Guy and Jason Clarke plays John Connor. Look, these aren't shots from the movie; they're magazine covers, so we don't know if this is actually what the movie will look like at all. I will say that Jason Clarke is a pretty good-looking John Connor. Kyle and Sarah look squinty and the smiling Terminator is just... sigh.

However, inside this reveal was a paragraph that dropped this MASSIVE plot bomb that basically changes the entire fabric of the Terminator universe forever.

Sarah Connor isn't the innocent she was when Linda Hamilton first sported feathered hair and acid-washed jeans in the role. Nor is she Hamilton's steely zero body-fat warrior in 1991's T2. Rather, the mother of humanity's messiah was orphaned by a Terminator at age 9. Since then, she's been raised by (brace yourself) Schwarzenegger's Terminator—an older T-800 she calls "Pops"—who is programmed to guard rather than to kill. As a result, Sarah is a highly trained antisocial recluse who's great with a sniper rifle but not so skilled at the nuances of human emotion.


The hell? So Sarah Connor knows about Terminators this whole time? This negates the awesomeness that is the original Terminator. Also, a little girl being raised by a Terminator is not an action movie, it's a Funny or Die sketch. After the heartbreak that was Terminator Salvation, I really don't know if my soul can take much more of the smearing of the Terminator franchise. I like Alan Taylor (Thor: The Dark World) but DADDY TERMINATOR? No. Fuck that. No.

Hey maybe I'm overreacting, this is a huge twist. Maybe they can pull it off. Maybe I'll be eating my words in a few months. I truly hope so. But I'm also not sure how I'm going to react when Sarah Connor calls the Terminator "pops."