Alan Taylor agrees; Terminator: Genisys marketing has revealed too much

Last Updated on August 2, 2021

If you've somehow made it this far without subjecting yourself to the reveals contained within TERMINATOR: GENISYS' spoiler-filled marketing campaign, you should probably do yourself a favour and quit reading this. Why not check out this article instead? That looks like fun. The rest of you are probably all too aware of some of the questionable choices that the marketing team behind TERMINATOR: GENISYS has made and it turns out that you're not alone, the director of TERMINATOR: GENISYS wasn't exactly pleased by those choices either.

Alan Taylor spoke with Uproxx about the upcoming Terminator film, and one of the topics they discussed was the game-changing reveal that John Connor (Jason Clarke) has become some sort of Terminator as Taylor definitely wasn't planning on that reveal becoming common knowledge before the film premiered:

I certainly directed those scenes with the intention that no one would know. One of my favorite moments – and I think Jason Clarke did a great job with it – is when he walks into the hospital in 2017 and everything from there until the turn, you’re supposed to think, Oh man, this is great. – I know there was kind of a challenging calculus going on in the heads of those who market this thing to decide that this was the right thing to do. I think they felt like they had to send a strong message to a very wary audience that there was something new, that this was going to new territory. They were concerned that people were misperceiving this as kind of a reboot, and none of us wanted to reboot two perfect movies by James Cameron. I think they felt they had to do something game-changing in how the film was being perceived.

When asked if he had been consulted before the trailer was released, Alan Taylor said that he "had a few heads ups and a few unpleasant conversations where I squawked about this or that" but in the end the revealing trailer went forward. As much as I dislike trailers which lay out the entire plot, TERMINATOR: GENISYS's decision to spoil itself has certainly got us talking more about it.

Has TERMINATOR: GENISYS managed to keep any surprises up their sleeves? You can find out on July 1, 2015.