Terminator Genysis (2015)

Originally written November 6, 2015

Oh boy. I feel like back when the first two Terminator movies came out, if you were to show people posters for Terminator Genisys they would have thought it was a joke. First of all, the title. I mean seriously. Genisys. Really? But then you just see that these movies are still being made in 2015, with Arnold Schwarzenegger still starring in them. You know, the guy that played a robot back in the original movies. And now the same robot is still in the movies, but he’s…you know, old? Like it’s honestly an insult to a franchise that used to be amazing.

Okay, jokes about the title and an aging robot (which actually is explained in the movie for the record) aside, the movie is just kind of a mess. I’ve never seen a movie that decided to confuse the mythology of the series it belongs to so much. Basically, the Terminator series has always involved time travel, which admittedly can always get confusing enough. But Genisys is the fifth movie in the series, and so far the first four movies managed to create a cohesive, even if a bit confusing, timeline. Sure, things get changed along the timeline here and there, but for the most part all events existed on the same timeline.

Then Genisys happens. They try their best to explain what’s going on in the movie, but it still makes no sense. Basically, the movie opens in the future (2029), when humans are still at war with the evil Skynet. The leader of the resistance against Skynet, John Connor, finds out that Skynet is sending a cyborg known as a Terminator back in time to 1984 to kill his mother, Sarah Connor, and stop John from ever being born. So, to protect his mother against the Terminator, John sends a soldier named Kyle Reese back in time too. Sound familiar? It should, because this is the exact plot of the first Terminator movie, and so events are coming full circle and making sense.

Then…for some reason…Kyle Reese goes back in time to find himself in an alternate timeline of 1984 where we have the good Terminator from the second movie protecting Sarah Connor, who is the badass from the second movie instead of the helpless damsel from the first movie, against the bad Terminator from the first movie. Sound confusing? It should, because it makes no sense.

Listen, I’m not going to spend anymore time trying to figure out why the events of the movie are taking place, because I don’t need to. It’s bad writing and a bad idea overall. When you have to start resorting to alternate timelines, it’s usually a sign that you’ve ran out of good ideas. Exceptions to this rule are movies like Back to the Future II, but that movie actually does something interesting with the alternate timeline concept, where in Genisys it’s just used as a plot device to try and ignore any continuity issues so that they could rely on nostalgic moments from the original movies while simultaneously dismissing them from ever happening.

Basically, the movie feels like it’s throwing everything it can at the screen and seeing if any of it sticks. It’s trying to do a bunch of different stuff in the hopes that some of it might work, but in the end it just becomes a convoluted mess. The sad thing is that the movie does occasionally have some interesting ideas, but rather than develop them fully it just messes it up. The best example I can give of this is that the movie completely ruined one of its biggest twists in the trailers and posters for the movie. Even if you’ve never seen a trailer for the movie, the cover of the movie and its posters show that John Connor, humanity’s last hope, is now a Terminator in this movie. Normally this would be a huge spoiler for me to talk about, but the movie spoiled this great twist way before the movie ever came out. It’s a shame because I would have loved to have been surprised by this.

It may sound like I’m focusing too much on the plot, but honestly it just ruined the rest of the movie for me. I couldn’t enjoy the action scenes because I was irritated. It’s not that the action is anything special either, but it’s not bad. They actually have some good use of CGI here too, especially in making a younger Arnold Schwarzenegger. And all around, it is nice to have Schwarzenegger back after his absence in Salvation. He feels like he’s in the background a bit too much here, but a little Arnold is better than no Arnold. Emilia Clarke also isn’t too bad in the role of Sarah Connor. She’s no Linda Hamilton for sure, but as a huge Game of Thrones fan I was happy to see her in the role. On the other hand, Jason Clarke feels a bit miscast as John Connor, but luckily he’s a decent actor, so he pulls it off slightly. The huge miscast is Jai Courtney as Kyle Reese though. I have no idea how Jai Courtney is still getting work. He keeps being put in these huge movies (like a major role in Die Hard 5!) and always winds up being completely forgettable. I don’t know why he keeps being put in movies because he’s not good at it at all.

Simply put, Terminator Genisys is just a bad movie. I think it’s a joke that it even exists, but more importantly I think it’s an insult to the previous movies by trying to erase the events of them from existence in favor of a new, inferior timeline. The sad thing is that if this wasn’t a Terminator movie, I might have liked it more. It’s just that as a fan of the Terminator series this was a big disappointment. It does have some redeeming qualities, and so I think if it wasn’t a Terminator movie I could have gotten some cheap entertainment value out of it as a big, dumb, explosion-filled popcorn action flick. But that’s not what Terminator is. Terminator is a smart, sci-fi action franchise that complements its action set pieces with interesting ideas and concepts, which Genisys missed the point of.

2/5