TERMINATOR: GENISYS review by Mark Walters – a small dose of nostalgia gets overly ambitious

TERMINATOR: GENISYS review by Mark Walters – a small dose of nostalgia gets overly ambitious

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It’s safe to say I love the TERMINATOR franchise, going back to the beginning with James Cameron’s 1984 classic. It’s one of the first times I can recall (as a child of the 1980s) becoming aware of the concept of time travel in film, something that would often be played with on the big screen in the years that followed. TERMINATOR 2 (or as many call it T2) actually seemed to improve on the ideas established in the first film, ramping up the budget and action, and solidifying Cameron as a blockbuster director in Hollywood. Heck, I even liked TERMINATOR 3, which I know I’m in the minority on, but it had just the right amount of cool stuff in it to be entertaining. As for TERMINATOR: SALVATION, well, even I can’t apologize for that one, as it just felt like all the soul of the franchise was lost within it… and Sam Worthington’s flat performance didn’t help. The newest effort to revive the series is TERMINATOR: GENISYS, which alters the timeline so much that almost none of what we saw before even seems to matter anymore – but can that possibly be a good thing?

This new story opens with Kyle Reese (Jai Courtney) narrating and explaining what happened on “Judgement Day”, the fateful day when Skynet (a self-aware computer hive program) attempted to destroy humanity and take over the world. Like we knew from before, a resistance army rose up against the machines, led by John Connor (Jason Clarke). We learn that Connor rescued Reese at a young age, trained him, and became his leader and good friend. Connor briefs his troops that Skynet has a new time travel weapon, and is going to use it to attempt undoing the victories of the resistance. This leads into the original story where the first Terminator robot was sent back to 1984 to kill Sarah Connor. We see the events play out the way we remember them, even an almost shot for shot remake of the opening to the first film, but just as the naked T-800 walks over to the punks at Griffith Observatory asking for clothes, he’s met by (ready for this?) an older version of himself! Arnold Schwarzenegger shows up as an aged T-800 and does battle with a nicely done CGI version of his younger Terminator self. We also learn that Sarah Connor (Emilia Clarke) is working with this older T-800 to stop the freshly arrived Terminator. And when Kyle Reese appears in their 1984 time, she ends up coming to his rescue now, as he’s met by a liquid metal T-1000 Terminator (Byung-hun Lee) that for some reason is waiting for him… who sent it back and why? We never find out.

Through exposition amidst car chases and shootouts, we’re told that Sarah is not the helpless woman we originally saw in the first movie anymore, but now has been raised and briefed by the older T-800, who was sent back to save her when she was a child, as a different T-1000 Terminator was sent back to kill her then. Incidentally, we never find out who sent the T-1000 back to kill her as a child, nor do we find out who sent back the T-800 to save her… maybe that’s info to be revealed in the sequel. She refers to the ‘good’ T-800 as “Pops” now, and he even has a line about how the previous timeline has now been altered creating a new timeline that overlaps, and Kyle may be able to see or know events of others timelines due to a… you know what? It’s time travel jargon, and I’m not sure even I got it.

So we find out that Pops built another time travel device in 1984 which Sarah and Kyle must now use to travel forward, going to the year 2017 which is when Skynet comes online and destroys the world. They intend to stop it. Pops, unable to travel due to being damaged, must heal and simply wait until their return, at which point he re-joins with them to continue the fight. But there are new and unexpected threats waiting for them at Skynet, and the concepts of fate and choosing your destiny begin to overcome any pre-existing notions of where the story might be headed.

The first half of TERMINATOR: GENISYS is actually rather fun, heavy on the nostalgia for die hard fans, and even finding moments of charm within the character dynamics. It re-establishes the origins we’re familiar with, putting a slight twist on things, and feels like a promising film may be the end result. Then it hits the halfway mark, and suddenly things get overly ambitious. Film critics often use the word “convoluted” to describe a movie that has a complicated or disjointed screenplay. Never before has that word been more appropriate than it is here. The second half of the film becomes so complex and frenetic that you’ll wonder how it got so out of whack. The script by Laeta Kalogridis and Patrick Lussier tries to keep things interesting, and there are certainly engaging moments throughout, but the end result is rather messy. Alan Taylor (THOR: THE DARK WORLD) serves as director on the film, and manages to throw enough action sequences our way that it’s hard not to be entertained. But despite the excitement on screen, with a running time of two hours and six minutes, this feels more like a meandering three hour production.

Emilia Clarke does a fine job finding the balance between soft damsel in distress Linda Hamilton from the original film, and tough warrior Linda Hamilton from T2 – almost as if we’re looking at the perfect hybrid of the two personifications of that character. But as you watch the performance, one can’t help but wonder just how much this Sarah Connor has altered from what we knew? With the T-800 saving her as a child and raising her, providing her with knowledge of her own future and the future of the resistance, what kind of life has she led up to the point where Kyle Reese goes back to help? See, we don’t know. In the first movie she was a waitress at a crappy diner, and there’s a line in this film where John Connor tells Reese that she’s a waitress in 1984… but is she still a waitress, now that her past completely changed? The film rushes to the action so fast we never get much of a sense of her character in this present (er, past) timeline. The time travel alteration doesn’t stop there either, as in essence these new events kind of erase everything we saw before, even TERMINATOR 2‘s story. So technically, GENISYS negates the first two TERMINATOR movies because the timeline is no longer the same. Let that sink in. This movie changes things so much that technically the events of the first two films are no longer valid, or at the very least only exist in an alternate timeline. As a fan, I’m not sure I can enjoy that.

Arnold Schwarzenegger is the second downside to this outing, in that he feels like a bit of an afterthought. This story is about Sarah and Kyle Reese, and Arnold only shows up sporadically to kick a little butt and occasionally say a witty line, but even those moments feel like they’re done out of obligation and not necessity. Schwarzenegger gets top billing in the film, but he’s surprisingly not in it that much. There are jokes about his T-800 being “old, but not obsolete” as a cyborg, but the screenplay makes him feel a bit obsolete in spite of this. While I love Arnold in these roles, there really is only so much you can do with that character, and at this point we’ve kind of seen it all. The only moments that stand out for him are goofy character bits, which in essence cheapen the narrative and make it feel less like the darker Terminator stories we love. This is, after all, a PG-13 film.

Jason Clarke does some nice work as John Connor, who is a bigger part of the story than some might expect, but not in a traditional manner either. The advertising campaign has already spoiled a major plot point and twist that could have been a real shock for audiences, but I’ll refrain from mentioning it here for those who might have missed some of the trailers. Let’s just say Clarke gets to play the widest range of any character in the film, and appears to be having fun doing it.

And then there’s Jai Courtney, an actor that just can’t seem to effectively play any emotion without looking and feeling hollow. Peter Sciretta over at SlashFilm summed up something I’ve felt for a while – why does Hollywood keep using actors like this? They’re constantly panned, never seem good in the parts they play, and don’t even really seem to have much of a fan base, yet they keep getting these golden roles. Courtney fails to find any strength in playing Kyle Reese, save for one scene toward the end where he tries to express to Sarah why she’s so important to him, and even that scene is mediocre at best. Jai is a good-looking dude, but he’s nothing like Michael Biehn was in the original film, and hardly an actor with the chops to carry a story like this.

JK Simmons, fresh off his Oscar win for WHIPLASH, shows up playing a sort of comic relief role, and someone to assist our heroes in a those “how will they get out of this bind” moments, but it’s not a role that’s terribly memorable. Matt Smith (credited here as “Matthew” Smith) of DOCTOR WHO fame has a small but key role in the film that probably could have used a little more back story, and Courtney B. Vance also shows up briefly as Miles Dyson… who is still alive in 2017 because, uh, this story negated T2… remember?

TERMINATOR: GENISYS isn’t a terrible movie, but it’s hardly a great one either. The strong first half almost makes up for the messy second half, and most audiences will be wowed enough by the slick effects and grand explosions to where the script’s shortcomings won’t be terribly noticeable. And if I’m being fair, there’s enough good stuff here to outweigh the bad, just not enough to save the film entirely. As it stands, this is probably the third best in the franchise, but not by much, and only for select moments. I think there’s a way it could have been a lot better, perhaps ending it with Sarah and Kyle arriving in 2017 where a big surprise moment takes place, which could then lead into a sequel taking place in 2017, but instead we got an abundance of story crammed into what should have been a more compartmentalized production. THE TERMINATOR and T2 worked because at their core the stories were simple. GENISYS tries to do too much and barely gets out alive. When discussing this with friends, I realized this felt like watching a movie written by little kids. You remember how when you were in grade school talking to buddies about awesome movies you loved, and about how cool it would be “if this happened” in a movie, or “if then this happened”, and just came up with insane and silly stuff? That’s what the second half of this film feels like. See for yourself and let us know if you agree. Also, stay mid-way through the credits for a somewhat rushed tag scene that strongly hints the fight is not over.

TERMINATOR: GENISYS hits theaters July 1, 2015

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About the Author

Born and raised in Dallas, Mark has been a movie critic since 1994, with reviews featured in print, radio and National TV. In 2001 he started the Entertainment section of the Herorealm website, where he contributed film reviews and celebrity interviews until 2004. After three years of service there, he started Bigfanboy.com, which has become one of the Dallas film community's leading information websites. Bigfanboy hosts several movie screenings in the Texas area, and works closely with film and TV studios and promotional partners to host exciting events and contests. The site also features a variety of rare celebrity and filmmaker interviews, and Bigfanboy.com regularly covers the film festival circuit as well. In addition to Hollywood reporting, Mark has worked for many years as an advertising and sci-fi/comic book artist. Clients have included Lucasfilm Ltd., Topps Trading Cards, The Dallas Mavericks and The Dallas Stars. From 2002 until 2015 he managed the Dallas Comic Con, Sci-Fi Expo and Fan Days events in the DFW area. He currently catalogs rare comic books and movie memorabilia for Heritage Auctions, and runs the Dallas Comic Show conventions, but remains an avid moviegoer and cinema buff.