Overall, the plot of the upcoming Terminator Genisys has been kept a mystery. We know that it plans to rewrite the original timeline, and that it takes place in multiple eras, but now one cast member has shed a bit of light on one new place we’ll see the action go down, as well as his specific role.
Dayo Okeniyi, who you’re probably most familiar with from the first Hunger Games movie, where he plays the teen tribute Thresh, plays Danny Dyson in Genisys.
If you’re up on your Terminator 2: Judgment Day trivia, Danny is son of Miles Dyson, who creates the neural-net processor the ultimately leads to Skynet. Danny was born in 1988, and now played by the 26-year-old Okeniyi, that puts the time close to the present, which, when talking to BlackFilm, the actor confirmed, saying:
The timeframe in which we see Danny Dyson is the present time. The movie has the past, the present, and the future.
Thus far in all of the clips, trailers, and TV spots that Paramount has released, we’ve seen scenes set in the future. That’s where John Connor (Jason Clarke) sends Kyle Reese (Jai Courtney) back to protect his mother, Sarah Connor (Emilia Clarke). There are also been a number of scenes that take place in the past, 1984, when the first movie in the franchise is set, and where this new Sarah Connor is not the Sarah Connor Reese expects to find. In addition to those, we’ve also seen glimpses of an even more distant past, where Arnold Schwarzenegger’s T-800, Guardian, rescues Sarah as a young girl.
While some have speculated that we could make a stop in the present—those scenes on the Golden Gate Bridge feature cars that look more or less contemporary—this is the first confirmation of that fact. It also leads to a great many questions. How do the characters get there? Do they travel in time from 1984? If so, how? Where will the bulk of the movie take place? Will we hop around through time through the entire movie, or do we hit the future and the past and settle into a narrative set in the present?
Essentially, this statement serves to illustrate how little we actually know about the plot of Terminator Genisys. For as much as has been revealed, including what many assumed was a huge spoiler, we’re still almost completely in the dark. Which is how it should be.
For his part, Okeniyi offers information about his character, offering a peek into his character and the role he plays. See how he explains it after the jump...
In our movie, Danny, who was a kid seen in T2, is a lot older in the time that we jump into and on the cusp of taking the reins of his father’s position. He’s very ambitious and wants to create great technology for the future. He’s created this technology that he is unaware of but it’s the Trojan horse that creates the Terminator.
So it sounds like kick starting the machine takeover that ultimately ends the world is a family affair, a father-son venture. That’s kind of sweet, except for the annihilation of the human race part, but that’s what you expect in a Terminator movie.
The closer we get to the release of Terminator Genisys, which is only a few weeks away now, the more things come into focus. Nothing is super clear, and it certainly appears that there is a great deal we don’t know, but that just means we’re in for a few surprises when we sit down in the theater on July 1.
