Terminator Genisys - Review

"I'll be back."

We won't be waiting.

The Plot

In the future, humanity has achieved victory over the machines of Skynet thanks to the leadership of John Connor (Jason Clarke). But Skynet has put to use their secret weapon, a tactical time machine to send a Terminator back in time to kill John's mother, Sarah Connor (Emilia Clarke), which would erase John from existence. To stop the machine, John sends back his most trusted soldier, Kyle Reese (Jai Courtney) back in time to save his mother. But when Kyle arrives in the past, he discovers Sarah is already battle trained and prepared for his arrival, as well as under the watchful eye of her own Terminator Guardian, Pops (Arnold Schwarzenegger). With the timeline drastically changed, Kyle must join forces with this new alternate timeline Sarah and her Guardian in order to combat an unexpected new threat to the past and future.

Review

Terminator Genisys was meant to be a rebirth of the very forced franchise churned out of the first two Terminator films. The method the writers of the film chose to go about this? Time Travel. It has become a device that is known for fixing problems in sci-fi movies that need a reboot. The two biggest, and probably only examples, are J.J. Abrams' Star Trek and X-Men: Days of Future Past. If I had to compare Genisys to one of those films, I'd say it is more in line with Days of Future Past. Both films use time travel as a plot device to wipe away the previous continuity in order to establish a new one by directly referencing events that occurred in previous films. However, Days of Future Past did this very seldom and was really focused on telling a story that requires time travel for an unseen point in time in the film's series chronology. While Genisys directly takes you back to the first Terminator film and does shot for shot scenes from it as well. This is where the biggest problem lies.

Genisys possesses a story that cannot stand on its own. A reboot's job is to completely start fresh, referencing the old, while making way for the new. This film however, almost requires you to have seen the first two Terminator films in order to fully understand what is truly at stake. Yes, there is enough to make it feel like a stand alone, but the first hour of the film just required too much homework of watching the previous films in order to fully understand it. Ironically though, the first half is the best part, which is a testament to how good the first two Terminator films are. It is the second half of the film where things really fall apart, because in the second half the heroes (the human ones) time travel to 2017 in order to combat a new threat. And this threat is a very familiar face.

If you've seen the trailer, then you know who the threat is. If you haven't, then I won't say here. It is a shame really, because the new threat the writers devised for this film is actually an intriguing premise that gets poorly handled. The very existence of this new threat, along with the new old threat that creates the new threat, is at the center of what is wrong with the movie. The story gets too convoluted in trying to explain this new threat, as well as tries too hard to bring the characters to our current present day for future installments. This was all really about getting the characters where the studio wants them to be so that they can do whatever they want with them without feeling like they're disrespecting the franchise. Unfortunately all this convoluted mess feels more as a disrespect rather than a respect. It just doesn't work and doesn't make that much sense if you were to think about it.

But how are the performances? They're below passable. The leads that is. Emilia Clarke is an incredible actress in Game of Thrones, and given that the director of this film is from Game of Thrones one would expect a great performance. Unfortunately, she is far from being the successor to Linda Hamilton. Plus, you'd think at this point since she's raised by a Terminator she'd be a lot more muscular like Hamilton in the second film. But here she looks like a normal girl, who can handle guns, but not the beast of a woman Sarah Connor is usually associated with. Then there's Jai Courtney. I'm pretty sure the guy is really nice, or has a good agent, because he's pretty much in every major Hollywood film. But he's just so wooden, that he'd be more perfect as a Terminator rather than the human hero.

The three big standout performances though come from Schwarzenegger, Jason Clarke, and J.K. Simmons. The three of them are easily the best parts of the movie. Schwarzenegger stills shows he's old but not obsolete as the Guardian Terminator, Jason Clarke proves to be an admirable and heroic John Connor, while Simmons plays a his role, that I won't specify, with such memorability, you'd wish he was in the film more. Their performances are the only saving grace of the film. Which is saying a lot since most of the action scenes in the movie are not bad, but not impressive either. Which doesn't help making this convoluted plot anymore watchable.

Final Thoughts

Despite being convoluted and confusing, while also blatantly setting up for sequels, the film itself is passable entertainment. But by passable, it actually suffers from being extremely boring. Which is a word that should never be associated with The Terminator. It is a forgettable film with competent direction, but a terrible misguided story that doesn't give its leads enough to work with. You won't remember watching this film, as I'm having a hard time remembering anything in the movie after seeing it a few hours ago from writing this. So in the end, it can be passable, but it is not memorable.

SCORE: 4/10 - The four is for Emilia Clarke, Schwarzenegger, Jason Clarke and J.K. Simmons