The Terminator franchise has gone through some immense changes over the course of its five installments. Most recently, 2015's Terminator Genisys ended with the promise of more adventures in the newly-rebooted universe, but now it looks like we won't see any further stories in that particular continuity. Having said that, it turns out that there was a plan in place for Genisys 2, and it would've fleshed out cyborg John Connor in far greater detail. Terminator Genisys star Jason Clarke recently opened up about the story and explained:
What I remember was that second one was going to be about John's journey after he was taken by Skynet...like going down to what he became; half machine, half man. That's where the second one was going to start, and that's about all I knew.
So if you walked away from Terminator Genisys scratching your head about the fate of Jason Clarke's John Connor, then it sounds like the later installments in the proposed trilogy would've fleshed out that narrative in more detail. Specifically, it looks like the second film would've explained how John became a Terminator-human hybrid. Terminator Genisys ended with Sarah Connor, Kyle Reese and the older-looking T-800 ("Pops") driving off into the sunset to take part in another mission to prevent the rise of Skynet, but the second film would've shifted focus to give us more backstory on the villain's arc.
Expanding that narrative would've been incredibly significant for the future of the series because Terminator Genisys made some incredibly bizarre choices with John Connor. Unlike films like Terminator 2: Judgement Day and Terminator: Salvation, the movie explicitly took the focus off of him and even changed his alignment to make him the villain of the story. It was a bold take on the character, and Jason Clarke seems particularly remorseful for the fact that they never got a chance to see that narrative thread all the way through to the end.
Of course, despite Jason Clarke's recent remarks to Collider about the ill-fated Terminator trilogy, the franchise is preparing to move in a new direction. James Cameron recently decided to return to Terminator in a creative capacity, and a sixth installment is set to hit theaters next year under the direction of Deadpool director Tim Miller. It won't be a continuation of the Genisys storyline, but the war between man and machine will continue to rage on the silver screen.
Stay tuned for more updates related to the Terminator franchise as new information becomes available to us. The next installment in the series is set to debut on July 26, 2019, and you can catch Jason Clarke as Ted Kennedy when Chappaquiddick debuts in theaters this weekend on April 6.
