The Terminator franchise has now been going for thirty years, and it's going to need a reboot of sorts if it plans to stay alive.  Personally, I'd be fine letting lay fallow or never coming back to it again since every sequel diminishes the ending of T2 ("We might have saved the world!"; "Nope.  No you didn't.  In no way what so ever.")  But as the cover of EW proclaims, Terminator: Genisys (spelling is for nerds) is trying to "save a billion-dollar franchise."  And how do you go about that?  With a character description that will have you scratching your head.

Hit the jump to learn more about the movie and to check out the Terminator: Genisys images from EW, which provide a first look at the characters.  The film opens July 1, 2015 and stars Emilia Clarke, Jai Courtney, Jason Clarke, Matt Smith, J.K. Simmons, Dayo Okeniyi and Byung Hun Lee.

We know that Terminator: Genisys isn't going to be a sequel or a reboot, and according to Courtney, it's a "reset" for the franchise.  The movie takes place in 2029, but also has Kyle Reese (Courtney) going to 1984.  EW [via The Playlist] provides a few new details about the film:

Sarah Connor isn’t the innocent she was when Linda Hamilton first sported feathered hair and acid-washed jeans in the role. Nor is she Hamilton’s steely zero body-fat warrior in 1991’s T2. Rather, the mother of humanity’s messiah was orphaned by a Terminator at age 9. Since then, she’s been raised by (brace yourself) Schwarzenegger’s Terminator—an older T-800 she calls “Pops”—who is programmed to guard rather than to kill. As a result, Sarah is a highly trained antisocial recluse who’s great with a sniper rifle but not so skilled at the nuances of human emotion.

"Orphaned" seems like wrong verb choice here since "orphan" in a parentage sense usually applies to birth parents, so unless she was created by robo-sperm, EW's description raises more questions than it answers.  Or this could just be a poor verb choice on EW's part and when it says "orphaned by", it means a Terminator killed her parents, therefore making her an orphan.  Either way, does this mean a Terminator was kicking around in the 1970s?

Also, I like the idea of a "Pops" Terminator, which calls to mind the Big Daddy from BioShock—an unstoppable killing machine working to protect its ward.

Producer David Ellison adds:

Since she was 9 years old, she has been told everything that was supposed to happen.  But Sarah fundamentally rejects that destiny. She says, 'That's not what I want to do.' It's her decision that drives the story in a very different direction.

We still don't know where an adult John Connor (Jason Clarke) factors in, and according to the EW cover, Matt Smith is playing "????", but judging by his outfit, it looks like he's planning a fellow soldier.  Also, I love that there's a Terminator totally photo-bombing their cover.