Jai Courtney has revealed that he didn't study past incarnations of the character Kyle Reese, and has tried to put his own stamp on the role.
Jai Courtney
Courtney is part of the all star cast of Terminator:Genisys this summer, and will be the latest actor to take on the role of Reese - following in the footsteps Michael Biehn and Anton Yelchin.
And while Courtney is playing a familiar character, the fact that Reese is a solider in John Connor's army and sent to save Sarah Connor are the only similarities between this Kyle Reese and the ones we have seen before.
Speaking to Hero Complex, the actor said: To be honest... I don't pay any attention, really, to how the role has been played before. I might watch [previous works] for a point of reference as far as the world or the style [and] genre of filmmaking, but I [have been] asked if I studied Michael Biehn's performance [as Kyle Reese] in the first 'Terminator' and I'd be crazy to go and do that. It's not going to translate, and I wasn't hired for the job to emulate someone else's performance. It's a standalone film and the character's changed. The writing's changed.
It's not to say we abandoned all the setup. He's still a soldier in John Connor's army fighting the resistance, and he still has the task of saving Sarah Connor, but that's virtually all that links the two. I just can't see it being interesting as a performer nor it being interesting for the audience if I was trying to go in there and just steal things from someone who'd played that role already. I think there's archetypal similarities you'll get with doing a role like that, and you can pluck influence from other actors or other performances, but it certainly wasn't a concern of mine to try and hit specific things.
If you're talking about a biographical figure it's different. We know certain things about certain people in history that define them. But I think there was enough in the writing and enough in the character brief that provided the actors in 'Terminator' to kind of go with that, but then completely make it their own.
Emilia Clarke, Jason Clarke and Arnold Schwarzenegger will take on the roles of Sarah Connor, John Connor, and Terminator, while J.J. Simmons and Matt Smith are also on the cast list.
Terminator Genisys sees Alan Taylor back in the director's chair for his first feature film since the success of Thor: The Dark World in 2013.
As for Courtney, he is back on the big screen this week as he reprises the role of Eric in Insurgent, a year after he played the character for the first time in Divergent.
He has also completed work on Man Down and is set to star filming Suicide Squad, in which he will take on the role of Boomerang.
Terminator Genisys is released 3rd July.
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