Between Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines and Terminator: Salvation, the series has been coasting since the delirious high of James Cameron's last entry, Terminator 2: Judgment Day.  While the third installment was more or less a re-do of the first two movies and the fourth was a muddled post-apocalyptic war story, Terminator: Genisys looks like it's really trying something a little loopier for this franchise.

Granted, it's basically pulling a Star Trek from what we can tell, using Arnold Schwarzenegger's salt-and-pepper T-800 as a Spock Prime figure, resetting the timeline without wiping Cameron's movies on the maps.  But at least it's doing it with some Back to the Future Part II-style verve, looping itself in on the original Terminator. 

This time, when John Connor sends Kyle Reese back to 1984 to protect his ma, Reese discovers that Sarah's already protected by a Terminator who adopted her years before, turning her into a battle-ready warrior.  Together, Sarah, Kyle, and Papa-nator set out to exploit the ramifications of all this time traveling, trying once again to stop the war with Skynet before it even starts.

Emilia Clarke takes over as Sarah, with Jai Courtney as Reese, Jason Clarke as John Connor, Byung-hun Lee as a new liquid metal Terminator.  The cast also includes Simmons as a detective obsessed with Sarah Connor, Courtney B. Vance and Dayo Okeniyi as Miles and Danny Dyson, along with  Matt Smith, who plays a mysterious ally of John's.

Earlier this week, we saw some new official images from the sequel featuring Clarke, Simmons, and Schwarzenegger.

Alan Taylor, the Game of Thrones alum who swam in a sea of CGI on Thor: The Dark World, directs here.  He's working from a screenplay by Drive Angry director Patrick Lussier and Laeta Kalogridis, who was a producer on Cameron's Avatar and even did uncredited work on that script.

After sitting out Salvation, Schwarzenegger is back for Genisys, and he recently commented on his return, telling Slashfilm, "I always said that I would do another Terminator if the story was great, and I really enjoyed this story when I read it. I think that the people who were involved made me feel like this was going to be a good movie and that they were going to go all out with the project. It’s not just 'Let’s exploit this franchise and live off of some of the great ones that we’d done in the past.' They really took it seriously. They really figured out a way to continue the story and kind of ignore the last one, basically."

Terminator: Genisys wipes out Salvation in 2D and 3D on July 1st, kicking off a whole new trilogy of human vs. Skynet action.