Terminator Genisys is a twisted, disappointing experience from start to finish that essentially guts a once-promising franchise and leaves it for dead. While Colin Treverrow’s Jurassic World revived a dormant franchise with gusto and stupid fun Terminator Genisys kills a dormant franchise by ripping out the pulse that made us fear robots in the first place.
James Cameron’s iconic The Terminator and T2: Judgement Day essentially had the same plots - save a member of the Connor family so they can save the future from Skynet - but each adventure still felt different because Cameron found new ways to tell it. The Terminator told its story with simplicity and as little exposition as possible. T2 added to the mythos of the franchise, but never stalling the plot. Genisys, which completely ignores Rise of the Machines and Salvation, shows that Alan Taylor only paid attention to Cameron’s visual genius but forgot how good a storyteller his idol is.
The plot for Genisys is, too put it simply, a great example of overthinking. In a mysterious alternate timeline, someone sent a Terminator (Arnold Schwarzenegger) to 1973 to save Sarah Connor (Game of Thrones’ Emilia Clarke) from a T-1000 (the ‘liquid’ Terminator, first seen in T2). In 2029, John Connor (Jason Clarke) sends Kyle Reese (Mr. Bland Man... I mean, Jai Courtney) to 1984 to save his mother and has no idea about the ‘73 Terminator. So when Kyle arrives in 1984, he quickly learns that “everything has changed.” Sarah is a trained warrior who has a Terminator sidekick lovingly nicknamed “Pops.”
Kyle is essentially Sarah in the first Terminator, but the big difference is that he has to sit through countless boring speeches of exposition that kill the film’s momentum. Action sequences are bizarrely short, jagged and sloppily edited to make sure writers Laeta Kalogridis and Patrick Lussier can continue adding plot holes to be filled in the upcoming sequels.
Still, shots that mirror scenes in Terminator and T2 are weirdly in slow-motion, as if Taylor is pleading for fan acceptance. This even bleeds into the dialogue and music. Every time someone repeats a line from the previous films, Hans Zimmer copycat Lorne Balfe brings back the classic Terminator melody. Principal Strickland is in the theater with you, yelling “McFly! Don’t you get it? This is for you fans!”
Now, if there was a hint of good acting in Genisys, this would all be easy to take. There is next to zero chemistry between Emilia Clarke and Courtney. Then again, I’m sure Courtney wouldn’t have chemistry with a bologna sandwich. Schwarzenegger is strangely the best star among the leads, ripping off the one-liners about his age with the kind of joy that the rest of the film doesn’t have. And yes, J.K. Simmons is sadly underused as a drunk detective in 2017 who followed the case of the mysterious warrior from the future for 30 years. (Now, wouldn’t that have made a good movie? Instead, it’s the background of a supporting character in a bad movie.)
Genisys makes it obvious that no matter how hard you try, a Terminator movie is still a Terminator movie. The first half is mired in convoluted jumbo, but by the time John Connor is revealed to be a cyborg - as seen in all the trailers - it becomes Terminator or Judgement Day all over again. There’s an attempt to keep the plot going to see the destruction of Skynet, but we know it can’t stick. After all, like every blockbuster these days, you need a cliffhanger and a satisfying ending. Maybe all that’s left for this franchise is to really jump the shark.
screenshot from YouTube trailer