Davidson graduate helps bring ‘Terminator’ back

It’s been almost three decades since Laeta Kalogridis sat in a Davidson College classroom expounding on Shakespeare and Jacobean drama.

Since then, Kalogridis has become a Hollywood writer and producer who often finds herself dreaming not of the 17th century, but of futuristic stories like the one she turned into sci-fi action flick “Terminator Genisys” with writing partner Patrick Lussier.

The film, new in theaters this weekend, is the fifth in a franchise launched by writer-director James Cameron in 1984. Most of them – including the latest installment – have focused on a cyborg (Arnold Schwarzenegger), a savior named John Connor (this time played by Jason Clarke) and that savior’s mother, Sarah (this time played by Emilia Clarke).

In devising yet another way to deepen the series’ mythology, Kalogridis asked these questions: “If you take the characters and put different pressures on them, and different life experiences, what will they do? How will they behave? Who will they become? What will change? What will not change about them? That became the organizing principle.”

Here’s what else we learned about “Genisys” during our recent conversation with the 49-year-old filmmaker, who along with Lussier and director Alan Taylor is a “Terminator” newcomer.

Arnold said “I’ll be back,” and he made good on the promise. The first “Terminator” film since 2009’s Schwarzenegger-less “Salvation,” (starring Christian Bale), “Genisys” re-introduces California’s ex-governor into the fold. Says Kalogridis: “When we first pitched the story, conceptually, we started from a place of ‘This will only work if Arnold is in it.’ ... In the second movie, you saw his character’s relationship with humanity start to change, as he learned and experienced more about human beings. I felt like there was an opportunity to delve a little bit deeper into that, but it was going to require seeing the machine having lived among humans longer. So from the outset, the concept was always that Arnold would be in the movie and that he would be the age that he is.” Was Ah-nold in from the start? “He waited to see a script, and then he was in once he saw the script.”

You can call it a comeback, but don’t call it a reboot. “I don’t think ‘reboot’ is accurate,” Kalogridis says. “This is much more about creating something that can live alongside the other movies, as opposed to something that in any way. shape or form replaces the movies. It doesn’t. It shouldn’t and it can’t.”

If you’ve seen the trailer, you know you’re in for more time travel, and with time travel can come confusion for audiences. So let the co-writer provide a spoiler-free explanation of the idea behind the new “Terminator”: “We wanted to create something that could exist in that same conceptual world, but be a separate timeline in a multiverse kind of a way, and something that was not going to negate anything that had happened in any of the other movies. This is a branching timeline that goes in another direction.” That should take care of any confusion you might have up front, right?

When she saw the “Genisys” trailer that spoiled what is perhaps the script’s biggest plot twist, Kalogridis’ response was: “Huh, look at that.” “Marketing is something of an art form now; trailer cutting is an art form,” she says. “The metrics used in making decisions about marketing, they’re not available to me. I don’t have a way of knowing if (revealing major plot points ahead of time) is or isn’t effective – all I can tell you is when we’re writing it, we think of people experiencing it without having seen that.” Don’t know what twist we’re talking about? If you’re lucky, it’ll stay that way until you see the movie.

Sequels are not officially in the works, but they’re officially in Kalogridis’ head. “I am very happy and very, very lucky to have been able to do anything in this franchise, so I’ll be excited if it’s just this movie, and I’ll be excited if it’s more than just this movie. We certainly have thoughts of ways to continue the story, if we get lucky enough to do that. At the same time, the focus at the moment is on the hope that this is a movie people enjoy.”

This story was originally published July 2, 2015 at 2:09 PM with the headline "Davidson graduate helps bring ‘Terminator’ back."