We Chat with the Writers of Terminator Genisys!

On any red carpet, the stars of the film and other celebrities get the lions' share of attention from the press, and sure, it is cool to see and talk to them, but it's the behind the scenes contributors that often have the more interesting things to say. We love talking to these people and see how the process of getting the film made happened along with what goodies may still be in store for the Blu-ray or future installments. So when we saw the writers of Terminator Genisys walking by, we had to nab them! This writing duo consists of Laeta Kalogridis and Patrick Lussier. They are not related, but are "best friends" as well as writing partners. Patrick's favorite Terminator film is T1 and Laeta's is T2, so they balanced each other out well in paying homage to both. On the red carpet, we decided to go with the hard hitting question that we knew no one else would ask first.

TheArnoldFans: I love the movie! So, why no sunglasses? Did the producers talk to you about no need for a sunglass scene in the movie?

Laeta: It was never talked about that I can recall.

Patrick: Holy shit!

Laeta: I know! Oh my god!

Patrick: Well, there’s a flashback where you see him with sunglasses, and it was talked about that being one of the only times you see it. Because most of the other times you see him  except for one part, it starts at night and there’s not an opportunity to have that. We gave him a teddy bear instead!

Laeta: Yes, that’s true. He got sunglasses in (T2) right away at night.

TAFs: Did you have, in an early draft, some great action scene that you wish made it in that didn’t make the cut?

Laeta: Oh there’s a list, we always write something that would cost $300 million, that’s what we do! I don’t know if I can pick one! There are so many fun unbelievably expensive and ambitions things that we messed with.

Patrick: Let’s say that when Byung-Hun Lee (T-1000) came back, he did not come back alone. He had reinforcements that made that 1984 sequence so expensive, that it wasn’t filmable at this time.

Laeta: Even bigger, yes yes.

TAFs: Are you aware of anything that was shot, that will make it into the final blu-ray?

Patrick: No actually. All the big action that was shot is in the movie. Very little of the great moments didn’t make it in. Especially Arnold’s moments. Everybody rediscovered that every Arnold moment is pure gold, so it’s like “My god, we just need more Arnold because it’s pure gold!”

Laeta: Yeah, keep adding Arnold!

TAFs: How did you feel about the early reveal in the trailer? Did you feel that was too soon, or were you OK with that?

Patrick: Here’s the nice thing, marketing didn’t tell us how to write the movie, and we didn’t tell them how to market it! 

Laeta: Yeah, that’s it. I think we saw it when everybody else did.

During the after-party, we again talked to Patrick Lussier.  This time we mentioned we were fans of the TV series, Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles. Very small Genisys spoiler: In the film, a couple of the actors time-travel and when they arrive, the are on a freeway! So we spoke about T:SCC also having a similar scene. Lussier told me that in the original script, it had the character’s time-travel energy sphere appear inside of an upper freeway overpass so there was a little more danger happening there when the nude characters were hanging for life on exposed rebar from the crumbling overpass.

Speaking of The Sarah Connor Chronicles, we mentioned we heard there MAY still be a Terminator TV series in the works and Patrick Lussier MAY have hinted he’d possibly be a writer on this series. But there was a lot of hinting, winks and "we’ll see what happens" in this conversation so nothing is official yet.

One last great tease we got from him was regarding Arnold playing a BAD T-800 again. We mentioned that we (and many fans) think there has been enough of Arnold as good-guy/protector/guardian Terminator and we'd love to see him back as a ruthless killing machine again in possible future films. You can't really count his brief moment in T3 being reprogrammed to kill John Connor by tossing him around and pounding a car to death. Well, Patrick was understandably cagey, as he does have ideas for the next 2 films, but he basically said that we may be getting what we want, but they would save it for a point "when it's the most gut-wrenching." Sounds promising!

Thanks for chatting with us, Patrick and Laeta! What other things would the fans like to see in future Terminator (if they do get made)?