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Warning: Contains Spoilers
The new trailer for the upcoming reboot Terminator: Genisys has drawn fire in the US for revealing what many Terminator fans consider to be a major plot spoiler.
The film, which will be the fifth in the series, which made its debut in 1984, stars Emilia Clarke and two Australian actors, Jason Clarke and Jai Courtney.
Arnold Schwarzenegger, who played the original T-800 Terminator, also stars.
The series is set in Earth's present, a precursor for a dystopian future in which an artificial intelligence, Skynet, has taken over the world.
In James Cameron's original film, Schwarzenegger played a cyborg sent back in time from 2029 to 1984 to assassinate Sarah Connor (Linda Hamilton), whose son John was destined to become a resistance leader. A soldier from the future called Kyle Reese (Michael Biehn) was also sent to protect Connor.
The rebooted Terminator: Genisys roughly follows that storyline, but makes some dramatic alterations to it. And in a surprise move, the trailer released by Paramount Pictures this week reveals one of the film's major plot twists – that John Connor, who was a hero in the original films, is now a cyborg.
In the reboot, when John Connor (Jason Clarke) sends Kyle Reese (Jai Courtney) back in time to protect his mother, Reese arrives in what appears to be an altered past.
In the film's new continuity, Sarah Connor's parents were killed by a T-800 Terminator, and she was raised by another T-800, played by Schwarzenegger, who was sent to protect her and prepare her for what was to come.
Reese then finds himself, along with Sarah Connor (Emilia Clarke) and the Schwarzenegger T-800 pitted against John Connor, now seemingly revealed to be a human/cyborg hybrid.
The trailer features two scenes in which Connor is injured badly and recovers, seemingly constructed from the same "mimetic poly-alloy" first seen as a feature of later T-1000 Terminator models.
The new trailer also contains a hint of another possible twist in the storyline: Schwarzenegger's ageing Terminator comes face to face with the Schwarzenegger of the 1984 original, thanks to some nifty editing and the miracle of CGI.
There were three films in the original Terminator franchise, 1984's The Terminator, 1991's Terminator 2: Judgment Day and 2003's Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines.
An attempt to revive the franchise in 2009, with Terminator Salvation, was widely panned. That film also set the stage for an explosive tirade by actor Christian Bale, aimed at director of photography Shane Hurlbut, which was leaked to media.
Terminator: Genisys will be released in Australia on July 1.
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