So That's Who Flips The School Bus In Terminator Genisys

In just a few weeks, when Terminator Genisys hits theaters, it’s bringing a ton of action along for the ride. One of the big, exciting scenes that we’ve seen in the trailers and TV spots involves that school bus flipping over on the Golden Gate Bridge, and a new clip gives us our best look yet at this moment.

Just a warning, there’s a rather large reveal about the antagonist of the film in this footage, so if you’re trying to avoid spoilers, you might want to sit this one out.

We’ve seen bits and pieces of the bus scene, usually intercut wither other action, but this clip from Paramount UK gives us a more complete view of this particular incident. As you can see, the brakes are gone, the cops are after the heroes, Arnold Schwarzenegger’s T-800, Guardian, is trying to catch up to Sarah Connor (Emilia Clarke) and Kyle Reese (Jai Courtney), and they have something else to contend with.

If you’ve been paying attention to the promotion, it is no surprise that the bus flips forward a couple of times. While we’re not entirely sure of the physics involved, it’s still an impressive feat (it should be pretty damn fun to see on an IMAX screen), and now we know how just how this goes down. John Connor (Jason Clarke), or at least a version of the character that was once the savior of mankind, clings to the bottom of the bus and essentially pole-vaults the massive vehicle into the air. Bet you never thought you’d see that.

This also reaffirms what many already assumed, that John Connor is not a good guy in Genisys. Or at least this John Connor isn’t, as we know is some kind of new breed of machine, not quite mechanical, but not exactly human either. At this point we don’t know if this is the real John Connor, or simply a facsimile cooked up by Skynet, but either way, when the visage of your son/bro from the future is trying to kill you, that’s bound to bring up a glut of rather strong conflicting emotions.

Terminator Genisys takes place in multiple times, including the future, 1984, and even further back, when Sarah Connor is a child and Schwarzenegger’s T-800, who she calls Pops, rescues her. While we suspected there was at least a stopover in the present day—the cars in the scene on the bridge look more or less contemporary—Dayo Okeniyi, who plays Danny Dyson, son of the Cyberdyne CEO, confirmed that at least part of the action is set in the here and now. We’re not sure exactly how that comes about, or how much time we’re talking about, but it is one of the many questions we have that will be answered when Terminator Genisys opens on July 1.

Brent McKnight