Emilia Clarke’s ability to mutate from one genre-bending series to a record-breaking franchise headliner is enough to deliver a whiplash to the audience. The Game of Thrones alum has time and again proven her mettle to the theatre-going fans and Home Box Office viewers and each time the results have been the same: unanimous love and support in favor of the young Brit. However, all of it came crashing down when the actress took on the role of the iconic and fabled Sarah Connor in 2015’s Terminator: Genisys, directed by Alan Taylor.
Emilia Clarke Sets Off Alarm Bells For Terminator Loyalists
Riding on the coattails of Terminator: Salvation, the Arnold Schwarzenegger-helmed franchise gets a hard rebooted launch and a humbling crash-and-burn immediately following its ambitious take-off. The then-newly arrived Emilia Clarke as Sarah Connor puts on a decent show for the franchise loyalists as well as those remotely interested in where the Terminator universe is headed 30 years after the premiere of James Cameron’s film.
Also read: “They were just not well written”: Arnold Schwarzenegger Disses $440M Emilia Clarke Terminator Movie
However, it is not the actress who remains at fault for the overall performance and delivery of the poorly received film. Holding a 26% rating on the film critic rating site Rotten Tomatoes and $89.76 million in domestic box office collection, Genisys fails to bring back the magic ensconced within the original timeline films. As Emilia Clarke would later go on to say about her experience on the sets with director Alan Taylor: “He was not the director I remember. He didn’t have a good time. No one had a good time.” Apparently, both the director and his leading lady had gotten “eaten and chewed up” while filming Genisys.
She counted herself lucky and fortunate to not have to return to further spin-offs or sequels of the franchise.
The Ripple Effect of Terminator: Genisys Reaches the MCU
The unbelievable reach and influence that one single event has on a larger array of phenomena related to or associated directly with the events of Terminator: Genisys is something that can only be computed by the likes of John Connor or the Terminator himself. However, in the real world setting, Emilia Clarke would first hand go on to experience the cruelty such a failure incurs on the cast and crew of an already struggling film from its relatively successful contemporaries. The film industry can be blatantly vicious.
And so, as news of the Genisys crew’s trouble filtered through the studio lots to reach the adjacent set (which incidentally was occupied by the 2015 cast of Fantastic Four (helmed by Miles Teller, Kate Mara, Michael B. Jordan, and Ben Grimm) the response was funny yet insulting. As per Clarke, the cast and crew of the 20th Century Studios film walked around wearing a T-shirt on which was printed: “At least we’re not on ‘Terminator.’” It was very obviously a taunt aimed and leveled at Emilia Clarke.
As the Solo actress now reclaims her good fortune with her upcoming highly-anticipated run with MCU’s Secret Invasion in the company of all the major players, including Samuel L. Jackson, Martin Freeman, Ben Mendelsohn, and newcomer Olivia Colman, Marvel fans decidedly regret the mockery that puts a permanent stain on the relationship of the star with her new audience this early on in the fandom.
Secret Invasion premieres on 21 June 2023.
Source: Vanity Fair
