Terminator Genisys not only promises to rewrite all you thought you knew about the ravages of age on robots and the English language. This story of killer cyborgs waging apocalyptic war on humanity will also make you believe in love again. That reassurance comes via an interview with Coming Soon, where J.K. Simmons enthused about his upcoming role in the franchise reboot, in which he’s believed to be playing a detective investigating a case involving Emilia Clarke’s Sarah Connor and the robots out to destroy her. Naturally, he says, that investigation leads him right to the heart.
“It’s a love story,” Simmons said by way of explaining what attracted him to take on a movie he worried would just be the “the formulaic yadda-yadda-yadda then cut to the stuff blowing up,” in a sentence that Paramount has already optioned. Instead, Simmons said he found Terminator Genisys to be “really much more intelligent and fun and funny and well-rounded and heartfelt.” Then it cuts to the stuff blowing up.
Of course, the idea of Genisys being a “love story” harkens back to the original Terminator, where technology launches nuclear holocaust against mankind in a desperate attempt to flirt, much like a boy will pull a girl’s pigtails. It also refers to the plot—which will be reimagined in the reboot—of Kyle Reese being sent by transgenerational matchmaker John Connor to go have sex with his mom, knowing that he lives in a dystopian age where eHarmony has become deadly self-aware.
While Simmons didn’t go into specifics, it’s likely that these will once again form the “love story” of Terminator Genisys. And like Kyle Reese, we will be hurtled naked—emotionally, possibly physically—back to a more innocent time, when our hearts were more open to being enslaved by the remorseless, unstoppable machines of romance.