Terminator: Genisys Review
Rebooting the entire Terminator franchise takes huge cajones. I’ll give them that. But this effort falls flat.
They did it. They fucking did it.
Terminator: Genisys rewrote the entire goddamned Terminator franchise in two hours.
And they did it without apology.
It takes balls to write a reboot that removes a movie like Judgement Day from a franchise’s story.
It’s just a shame that Genisys wasn’t strong enough to take its place.
By itself, Terminator: Genisys isn’t a bad movie. It isn’t a great one either.
Outside of the special effects, it’s a large meh fest.
The story follows the Terminator template of all previous entries. The machines try to kill Sarah or John and fail miserably. So, there’s no surprises in the story.
There would have been one huge twist, but they gave that away in a trailer.
The twist being John Connor, leader of the human resistance, was turned into a brand new machine. Half man, half robot and all evil.
Keeping that reveal a secret would have greatly improved Genisys’ standing in the Terminator franchise.
As I mentioned above, the action scenes and special effects are top notch. From Arnold’s young, CGI-ed face to the massive explosion at the movie’s end.
There was something missing in the acting though. When the bullets and explosions stopped, the character’s interactions seem flat.
Emilia Clarke is awesome, but that’s to be expected from the Mother of Dragons. She channels a strong Sarah Connor, reminiscent of Linda Hamilton’s performance in Judgement Day.
Everyone else? Well, meh.
Seriously. At the end of Genisys, I found myself rooting for Skynet to win the fight.
So what do we get from Terminator: Genisys?
We get a movie with good special effects and action scenes. We get a movie that reboots the franchise with a brand new story and opens it back up for more sequels.
Maybe the next Terminator flick will 1) fill in or explain some of the story’s paradoxes and contradictions and 2) remove an aging Arnold as the T-800.
So who should see this? Die hard Terminator fans and people who are looking to beat the heat for two hours.
Who shouldn’t see Genisys?
People who are a stickler for stories that fucking make sense.
