Anton Yelchin (Alpha Dog, Star Trek, Charlie Bartlett) is in negotiations to star as John Connor’s father Kyle Reese in director McG’s Terminator 4 (which remains untitled and, apparently, thankfully, isn’t being called The Return of the Terminator after all). Yelchin would be playing a teenage version of Reese, who was played by Michael Biehn in the original James Cameron film.
According to Terminator mythology (which is getting more complicated all the time), Reese was born after the first war and survived the capture and killing of his fellow humans only to be put into one of Skynet’s concentration camps. John Connor, Reese’s son, led a resistance movement that freed Reese and some others from the Skynet camp. Reese then volunteered to go back in time to the year 1984 to protect Sarah Connor, the mother of John Connor who is the resistance leader, from a Terminator sent by Skynet to kill her before she can give birth to John to stop him from leading the resistance.
As will sometimes happen when you time travel, Reese gets into some shenanigans that actually bring about the future he’s trying to save…don’t ask me about the paradox effect. All I know is that while running from the Terminator (played by Arnold Schwarzenegger), Reese and Sarah have a night of “relations” that ultimately impregnates Sarah and brings about her son, John. Reese was later killed by his own pipe-bomb while attempting to destroy the Terminator. I’m not sure how the TV series has added to this story.
Now, from what we know about Terminator 4, Reese becomes friends with Marcus (played by Sam Worthington - now cutting his chops on James Cameron’s Avatar), an early version of the Terminator played by Arnold Schwarzenegger from the first film. Christian Bale will play a 30 year old John Connor now fighting desperately to save a decimated civilization against machines that have taken control. Other plot details are still sketchy.
With production scheduled to start in early May, Paul Haggis (writer of Crash, Casino Royale, Quantum Of Solace) also has been in talks about coming on board to do some rewrites on the script. David Campbell Wilson, John Brancato and Michael Ferris wrote the screenplay.
So what do you think? Will Anton Yelchin make a good Reese?
It’s interesting, because in the TV show, Kyle is between 5-8 I think when Judgment Day happens, so according to them, he wasn’t born DURING the war…
But as far as Anton, I think he’ll do alright, I really liked him in Alpha Dog.
[...] posted the news about Anton Yelchin getting the part of Kyle Reese in the upcoming Terminator 4 film awhile ago, but now more details about his part and [...]