The Terminator franchise has been traveling down a rocky road over the last decade or so. James Cameron's original movie and its sequel are classics, landmark entries in the action and science fiction genres that still hold up surprisingly well today. But as the franchise's copyright continually changed hands after the turn of the new millennium, Cameron's two fantastic movies were followed by a short-lived TV show and two more movies that were never any better than mediocre. So I guess someone figured that at this point, it would be as good a time as any to give the franchise a total overhaul. The result: Terminator Genisys, a disappointing hodge-podge of interesting ideas and lackluster execution that makes me long for the days when there were only two Terminator movies.
The year is 2029, and the war between Skynet and the human resistance is rapidly approaching its conclusion. A platoon of soldiers led by John Connor (Jason Clarke) stage a final offensive against a Skynet base in the ruins of Los Angeles, achieving victory but realizing that they were mere moments too late from preventing Skynet from activating their ultimate weapon to win the war: a time machine. Their investigation of the device leads them to discover that Skynet has sent a Terminator back to 1984 to assassinate John's mother Sarah (Emilia Clarke) before he is even conceived. Kyle Reese (Jai Courtney) volunteers to go back and stop it, but upon his arrival in 1984, he discovers that what he has expected is totally wrong.
You would imagine that events would play out similar to the original movie, but much like Reese, you're in for a surprise. Reese is only in 1984 for a few moments before he's attacked by a shapeshifting T-1000 (Byung-hun Lee). Clearly out of his element against a seemingly unstoppable model of Terminator he's never encountered before, he only manages to escape when he's saved by Sarah and an aging T-800 (Arnold Schwarzenegger). The duo were anticipating Reese's arrival, and — having already intercepted the Terminator Reese was sent to fight — need him to help with their plan to avert Judgment Day and the rise of Skynet.
None of this is what Reese had expected. Sarah is far from the frail waitress John had told him she would be. Instead, she is a jaded warrior raised since childhood by a Terminator reprogrammed to protect her at all costs, a cyborg guardian she's affectionately nicknamed "Pops." It quickly becomes apparent that something has drastically altered the flow of past and future events. So drastic are these changes, in fact, that a series of clues indicates that Judgment Day will not be on August 29, 1997, as projected, but twenty years later instead.
Sarah and Reese use a homemade time machine to travel into the future and fight Skynet head-on. It'll be tougher than they'd hoped, however, as it has evolved from a simple military defense system into "Genisys," a soon-to-be-launched operating system connected to every Internet-capable device in the world. But something is waiting for them in 2017. It's not just Pops, who has spent the intervening three decades building an arsenal, but a model of Terminator unlike anyone could have expected, one that knows exactly how to hit them where it hurts the most.
I honestly wasn't expecting a whole lot from Terminator Genisys when I entered that theater a few days ago. I was already filled with a sense of malaise following Rise of the Machines and Salvation, The clips I'd seen online didn't exactly make me very hopeful, and the fact that the people behind the advertising campaign went out of their way to spoil the movie's big plot twist actually kinda ruined part of the experience for me. But when you remove all that, Genisys is a movie that's terribly frustrating because you know it can be good, you know it can be something exciting and fun and special. But it's the same overblown, soulless Terminator movie that never captures the magic that James Cameron brought to the saga all those years ago.
The movie was directed by Alan Taylor, who had previously helmed the okay-at-best Avenger movie Thor: The Dark World two years ago. I never really had a problem with his direction on the Thor sequel, but it only felt kinda adequate upon reflection. I bring it up because I felt similarly in regards to his efforts here as well. Taylor's direction's not bad; there are actually some really cool action sequences and his use of 3D is pretty effective at times. But the action becomes monotonous after a while, and I had this strange, nagging feeling that I'd seen much of it done better in a lot of other, similar movies.
While Taylor's efforts are still serviceable at their worst, at least his direction is a lot better than the script. Penned by Laeta Kalogridis and Patrick Lussier, the idea to revitalize the Terminator franchise by revisiting the first movie from 1984 and giving a new spin on familiar events is a really interesting way to shake things up instead of going the traditional reboot route. The plot is unfortunately way more convoluted than it needed to be, however, and Reese's confusion between the original familiar timeline and the new, altered chain of events only reminds me of (and was done better in) the movie Frequency. The whole thing ends up being one big, disappointing mess that actually makes me wonder why they didn't just do a remake of the original movie from the get-go and been done with it.
And then there's the cast, almost none of whom do the movie any favors. First off, I have no idea, why they hired J.K. Simmons and Matt Smith. They have practically no screen time (especially Smith, who is probably in the movie a grand total of five minutes tops in what amounts to a glorified cameo), leading me to think that there's more planned for them if the movie gets turned into a trilogy like I've heard is planned. Why else would they bring in J. Jonah Jameson and Doctor Who?
Jason Clarke isn't bad as the latest actor to play John Connor, but I don't really know how to feel about Jai Courtney and Emilia Clarke. Courtney is forgettable, feeling more like a generic action hero you'd find in a direct-to-video movie from the '90s, coming nowhere close to the intense desperation we saw from Michael Biehn thirty years ago. I can say the same for Emilia Clarke, who never really comes close to filling Linda Hamilton's shoes. (Or even Lena Heady's, if you remember The Sarah Connor Chronicles.) Clarke is okay for what is asked of her, but much like Courtney, she doesn't have anywhere near the same emotional complexity of her predecessors. She comes off like a little girl pretending to be tough, instead of the paranoid, battle-worn warrior fans would recognize Sarah Connor as.
But the highlight of the movie, as with practically every Terminator movie, is the one and only Arnold Schwarzenegger. Nobody will ever accuse him of being a master thespian by any stretch of the imagination, but with the right role, he's great. He steps back into the Terminator like he'd never left it, with some awesome bits of action hero business and funny one-liners. This is the Arnold people have come to know and love, and I'm happy to see him again.
I think it goes without saying that Terminator Genisys is a generally inferior, assuredly mediocre movie. I can't call it a bad movie, as it's actually pretty fun at times. But with a convoluted narrative, disappointing acting, and a few other weird hiccups (is a parody of that old TV show Cops really necessary in the year 2015?), it just makes me wonder if anyone other than James Cameron will be able to make a truly great Terminator movie. I guess we'll have to wait and see...
Final Rating: **½
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