Jai Courtney putting new spin on Kyle Reese in Terminator: Genisys

Jai Courtney has been discussing his role as Kyle Reese in Terminator: Genisys and has revealed that he hasn’t been studying Michael Biehn’s portrayal of the character in the original films.

“I don’t pay any attention, really, to how the role has been played before,” Courtney told Hero Complex. “I might watch for a point of reference as far as the world or the style of filmmaking, but I [have been] asked if I studied Michael Biehn’s performance in the first Terminator and I’d be crazy to go and do that.”

“It’s not going to translate,” he continues, “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.”

However, that isn’t to say that the character has undergone a complete overhaul, with many of the same qualities to be present in Courtney’s incarnation…

“He’s still a soldier in John Connor’s army fighting the resistance,” confirms Courtney, “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.”

Directed by Alan Taylor and co-starring Emilia Clarke, Matt Smith and Jason Clarke, Terminator: Genisys will open in the US on 1 July 2015 and the UK two days later.

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