Terminator Genisys (Review)

Terminator Genisys (2015)

Action, Adventure, Sci-Fi

Directed By: Alan Taylor

Let's get the obvious out of the way first. Should this movie have ever even been made? Probably not. In one of the worst marketing campaigns ever, was the major plot twist spoiled? Yes and whoever cut those trailers together should be fired. Is the plot a jumbled mess of half cooked story arcs and confusing science fiction? Oh baby, you have no idea. Yet, despite these problems I still found myself fully entertained by the newest installment in the Terminator franchise. It is in no way a good film, but there is enough to have fun with and make you feel that your $13 admission wasn't completely wasted.

I'm not going to even try to break down the ridiculous plot of this movie. They tried to cram way too many different ideas into one film. We basically get a look at just about every timeline from the four previous Terminator films while completely changing everything we know. The film opens in the post-apocalyptic earth just as John Connor (Jason Clarke) is about to execute his master plan to defeat Skynet. They have just sent back the original terminator unit to attempt to destroy John's mom, Sarah (Emilia Clarke). We get to see them make the decision to send Kyle Reese (Jai Courtney) back to protect her, the story we know from the original film. When he gets back to 1984 however, things aren't as John had told them it would be. Someone has thrown a wrench into time and now everything we have known before this is completely changed.

That's about as deep into the story as I will go; after they get back to 1984 the story just goes all over the place. Don't worry if you get confused though, because Sarah Connor will explain everything in brief, incoherent rants about how everything from the past has been changed to set up their new movie. After the first forty five minutes I gave up on trying to keep up with all of the silly "plot twists" as it all just felt like set up for nothing. It seemed like the writers did everything they could to get this movie out of the 80's and into modern times as quickly as possible just so they could make it look better.

The movie wasn’t all bad though, even with an incoherent plot and the twist being spoiled this is still a big budget action movie and in that respect, it succeeds. That success begins and ends with Arnold Schwarzenegger, and the film makers knew it. The opening frame of the film is a black title card reading one single name, Arnold. From there we get an entire intro scene before the rest of the cast has their credits revealed. His return was the only justifying point for even making this movie and they definitely didn't waste his return. It takes the film all of ten minutes to reintroduce his character and thrown him right into the action. We watch him fight a younger CGI version of himself (This alone, is worth the price of admission); interrupting an iconic movie moment any fans of the franchise are sure to pick up on immediately.

From what we saw in the previews I was pretty sure Arnold would just be rehashing old punchlines and recreating our favorite classic scenes, basically just crapping all over everything we love about the franchise. I was pleasantly surprised to see that was not at all the case. Yeah, he utters a few classic one liners but overall his character is completely different than what we had seen out of him in the previous films. His relationship with Emilia Clarke's Sarah Conner works surprisingly well and is one of the only story lines to land in the entire film. Arnold and Emilia were the brightest aspects of the movie by far, it may not have felt like the people making this movie cared but watching them made you feel like at least some people wanted this to be a good movie.

I feel like I have to say something about Jai Courtney as well, seeing as he reprises one of my favorite movie characters of all time. Is he the Kyle Reese we all love from the 1984 classic? Not in any way shape or form. Does Courtney destroy the character and make a fool of him like he has in other films? Not at all. He puts in a fine enough performance and the movie does a good job not to make you feel like his character has to replace the Reese we all know and love. Aside from that though, they waste an incredible supporting cast. Jason Clarke, J.K. Simmons, and Matt Smith are all A-list actors that could have added so much gravity to the film but instead are used to make generic, boring characters. I have to assume Smith had a bunch of scenes left on the cutting room floor as he really only has one, brief, scene in the entire movie.

In the end, we can only take this movie for what it is: a big, dumb, fun, plot-less action movie that was made to make money. If you aren't interested in watching an aged Arnold fight new tech that is far more advanced than him then why even bother buying a ticket? How this franchise has been stretched to five films I will never know, but after this outing and Salvation I think it's time to call it quits on the T-800 or, at the very least, let it lay dormant for a decade or so. I found enough to have fun with and laugh at throughout the two hour flick but that is hardly enough for me to suggest you should pay $10+ to see it. With the way 2015 has gone so far though, it is hard to recommend going to see this over any of the other great films currently in theaters. If you are die-hard fan, see it for Arnold alone, otherwise I say wait for home video. 

As always, thanks for reading and I am Zach Who Watches Movies. You can find me anytime on twitter @ZachWWMovies, smell ya later