Terminator Genisys (Alan Taylor)

[Henry Gale]

IMDb / Wiki

[Morris Schæffer]

Seeing the 1984 original on the big screen tonight followed by this new one. I'm kinda excited.

[Irish]

Let's make book -- odds on this being worse or much worse than Term 3 and Term Salvation?

[Henry Gale]

Better than Salvation (I guess, since my memory of it is on the hollow side), if only because it tries to at least tell a complete story and finally delivers a version of the closing of Kyle Reese's time loop from his perspective in the future (in the first ten minutes even!), but that's as low a bar as it sounds and the rest of it is just convoluted, sigh-worthy, lazily directed and soooo boringly plotted.

Can we just agree to call it quits and wrap up this brand for the forseeable future? Or at the very least move on from the Cameron/Schwarzenegger-based mythology and canon of it? It's becoming clear that only Cameron himself knew how to find the right stories to tell in his universe and its narrow, finely-tuned elements. There were exactly two of them, and they were told 31 and 24 years ago.

The attempts that Genisys (I hate that this is a word I have to type too, it's not just you) makes to build an alternate timeline and build a fresh storytelling landscape with new potential thematic and stylistic endeavours is noble and interesting in theory, but in practice, it's so beholden to imitating the surface-level identity of Cameron's and none of the narrative audacious or cinematic inventiveness. There are sequences in those past movies, particularly the original, that for me just find cinematic bliss by basking in its moments and find singular voices in their composition and construction that I can watch them over and over and always find myself caught up in them, holding my breath like I'd never seen them before. Here we have a hopeful-blockbuster that simultaneously wants to be a low budget, rough-edged '80s thriller and a groundbreaking '90s action spectacle classic, but finds itself existing in the year 2015 with a budget of $170 million doing less assured retreads of both while only modernizing itself by mixing in with any other number of bland-looking, pulse-less PG-13 summer tentpoles with glossy CG, vanilla chases and fights, and a complete lack of stakes that feel new and tangible. There is only innovation to the franchise is the new copyright date on it.

It has no idea how to handle its characters or bring out performances worthy of the iconic fictional names attached to them, to the point that it's easy to forget Schwarzenegger is a key player most of the time he's off-screen, or even that Jason Clarke has been an exciting and impressive on-screen presence in other movies. Emilia Clarke is mainly just brooding in unconvincing and detrimentally self-serious ways, especially when she finds herself in the middle of action confrontations a full foot shorter than everyone else involved, with a more demure and precious aura about her too. J.K. Simmons manages to be a lot of fun and deliver the only comic relief that lands, which of course this means he's given maybe 10 minutes of screen-time. And most importantly, the conspiracy of Jai Courtney trying to convince me he's an actually big actor who has appears in films I have seen continues here. His Kyle Reese feels like the meathead jock who'd try to emasculate and threaten to beat up Michael Biehn's version in a school locker room, getting off by doing it in front of everyone, and then crudely bragging about what sexual things he'll do to Sarah Connor while he walked away, high-fiving his crew (of indiscernible Jai Courtney clones of sorts).

There's a scene (and yes, you've seen it a million times before in other movies) where Courtney's Kyle Reese walks in to rejoin Sarah Connor after a fight with a terminator, and then another Reese walks in! Which could only mean Byung-Hun Lee's shape-shifting T-1000 took his form! Both claim they are the real Reese! But which one is?!!?! Who knows! They're both lifeless! (Just shoot 'em both..)

Having to go to the bathroom from the halfway to two-thirds point of its runtime allowed me to really zero in on it and realize just how much I wanted it to move along in even superficially emotionally involving or visually enticing ways to distract me from my bladder. I wanted to feel it, I wished I could find myself caring about it moment to moment, and connect to any excitement of Arnold as a T-800 again; anything! But it just chugs along, without any beats that should surprise anyone that's seen a big Hollywood actioner from the last 10-ish years. It really reminded me so much more of T3 and not the first two, as it ceased to be in complete cover-version mode of Cameron's groundwork after a certain point. Though at least T3 had some memorable, grounded action setpieces.

And for those wondering if those more recent trailers revealed too much? Yup, they absolutely did. That key development and the events it sets into motion begin to happen after the first hour, and the road to the reveal feels so inert knowing where it's already headed, and the whole plotline/character choice only ever culminates in one mildly breathtaking image (involving an MRI machine as a magnet). I don't know why I'm being cagey about it since it's on the friggin' poster and every TV spot at this point, but it's just so lame to already have out there, I'm trying to help even one person that didn't learn of the twist to find something unexpected.

There's also a montage of the main characters being arrested set to the tune of "Bad Boys" by Inner Circle. (Like that show!) This movie was made this year.

At least we'll always have the original two films, particularly the beautiful self-containment of the first, and luckily the installments since have become less and less memorable to worry about them overtaking that deservedly cemented legacy.

** / 4.0

[Irish]

There's a scene (and yes, you've seen it a million times before in other movies) where Courtney's Kyle Reese walks in to rejoin Sarah Connor after a fight with a terminator, and then another Reese walks in! Which could only mean Byung-Hun Lee's shape-shifting T-1000 took his form! Both claim they are the real Reese! But which one is?!!?! Who knows! They're both lifeless! (Just shoot 'em both..)

:lol: You rock, Henry.

[[ETM]]

Genisys (I hate that this is a word I have to type too, it's not just you)

They are actually calling this "Terminator: Genesis" here in Serbia, I kid you not.

[Dukefrukem]

I love Henry's write ups.

[number8]

Alan Taylor is pretty pissed that the John Connor twist is revealed in the marketing.

I certainly directed those scenes with the intention that no one would know. One of my favorite moments – and I think Jason Clarke did a great job with it – is when he walks into the hospital in 2017 and everything from there until the turn, you’re supposed to think, Oh man, this is great.

[Henry Gale]

Haha, thanks guys.

Definitely had better a time writing about the movie and reading other responses to it since than experiencing it itself. (Save for the few jokes that certain scenes just dangled in front of me and my friends that we had to go for. And realizing at least two local critics I recognized were laughing at bits I found particularly silly.) It was a nice day/night out though. And we didn't have to pay for it. Shame about the movie.

Speaking of which, don't see it!

Alan Taylor is pretty pissed that the John Connor twist is revealed in the marketing.

Sigh. I know he butted heads with Marvel and Feige during post-production of his Thor too, with him and Eccleston explaining just how much of that character in particular was completely left out of the final cut (even shooting the prologue scene with Tim Miller as director instead of Taylor). He claims he had much more control on Genisys, marketing aside, but it's also considerably worse.

He's either gotta go back to flourishing in his directorial comfort-zone of TV, or move away from big tentpole movies that have this many ways to come up with a final product of such little stylistic and emotional identity that also happen to waste great Doctors in villain roles in the meantime. (Here, he gets to horribly under-use Matt Smith!)

[Morris Schæffer]

People sometimes claim that bad sequels indirectly degrade the superior originals, and I always disagree, but this one comes dangerously close to managing it. The reckless abandon with which this one rewrites the past, and passes it off as clever, is pretty enfuriating. I found it way too complicated, as if they were straining to take the franchise places it hadn't yet been to. The mucking with the timeline here makes the same stuff in Star Trek look like Ingmar Bergman, such is the brilliant subtlety evident in Abrams' Reboot.

seeing The Terminator before this one may not have been a good idea, but what a joy this movie remains. Goosebumps seeing it on the big screen. It's so amazing that around the 65 minute mark this becomes a love story, one that genuinely works, far more than dedicated movies of this nature.

I hate what John Connor has become.

[EvilShoe]

So Henry, what's the deal with Matt Smith being in this? Is he Skynet or something?

[Morris Schæffer]

So Henry, what's the deal with Matt Smith being in this? Is he Skynet or something?

In a sense, yes. As near as I could tell, he pops up multiple times at the end as a sort of hologram, similar to the little girl in the first Resident Evil movie.

[EvilShoe]

In a sense, yes. As near as I could tell, he pops up multiple times at the end as a sort of hologram, similar to the little girl in the first Resident Evil movie.

Oh wow, movies are still doing that?

[Irish]

The mucking with the timeline here makes the same stuff in Star Trek look like Ingmar Bergman, such is the brilliant subtlety evident in Abrams' Reboot.

Niiiiiiice. As far as I'm concerned, the movie may suck, but at least Match Cut got some great posts out of it.

[Dead & Messed Up]

I think the worst part of all this is knowing that Cameron lied to me. That's a piece of me I can't get back.

[Henry Gale]

Oh wow, movies are still doing that?

Yeah it's bizarre. Morris covered most of it, but I wrote this as a comment to someone also asking in the Dissolve's spoiler section if he was playing Skynet, and disappointed that he maybe wasn't:

Oh he is. It's just barely Smith.

We see him in two different visits to the same scene, and then the rest of the time his character is a creepy young boy ("Genisys") that eventually only appears as a scramble-y blue 3D/CG light projection (which the characters shoot the sources of at least a dozen times to the point that it's mildly hilarious) that periodically decides to ramp up its age the point that has Smith's voice and appearance.

It's not even enjoyably ridiculous. It's just dull.

They also seem to be laying groundwork for him to come back as the key villain in the rest of this trilogy that very likely will not happen (spoiler: end credit tag shows a big glowing red ball of.. technology(?) in the rubble of the finale and the hologram projects in front of it!), but as it is, yeah, poor Smith. Hope he got paid nicely for it at least, similar to how a lot of Fassbender's stuff in Jonah Hex reportedly got cut but he still found himself with a significant payday because he was signed up as a key supporting character and to be a central player for its sequels (ahem). The fact that this movie is making me remember the existence of Jonah Hex and Green Lantern (with its credit cliffhangers that'll never come into play).... It all just gets worse in my mind.

To sum it up, my sister is a huge Doctor Who fan, so as if she wasn't already disappointed with this movie enough, the wasting of Smith was simply too much to forgive.

[megladon8]

When does this movie take place? Is it the 1990s? Or did they just say "fuck it...now Sarah Connor was born in '91!"?

[Henry Gale]

When does this movie take place? Is it the 1990s? Or did they just say "fuck it...now Sarah Connor was born in '91!"?

It's.. complicated. Which basically means it doesn't actually make sense when you think about it in retrospect.

Kyle Reese arrives in 1984. Connor and pre-'84 father / "Pops" T-800 built a similar time travel machine to the one that sends them all back from the future. They needed to wait until '84 for the original T-800 / CG Arnold re-creationfrom Cameron's timeline to arrive so they could use the technology from a chip in his "brain" to power the machine (they can't use Pops' because he'd die). Connor and Reese travel to 2017 but Pops can't because he has exposed metal, the machine can only send flesh-covered entities, yadda yadda.

Pops meets them in 2017, with longer, grayer hair. And it all makes even less sense because it now completely negates John Connor's original birthdate (Jason Clarke would be playing a 12-year-old), despite the fact that he now joins them at this point in the timeline. Yeah. [EDIT: I realize here they might've told us he joins the timeline many years earlier, likely many years since he is there to help create Genisys, but, that's the only real leeway I can give. His only real conversations with Connor and Reese are when we still think he's human.]

I'll let the Dissolve commenter Jet Jaguar from that same thread I mentioned take its many issues -- many of which I didn't even consider, because of course the logic of the movie didn't and I basically gave up -- from here:

Why would Skynet send a T-800 to 1984 if it already sent a T-1000 back to 1967? Why was Kyle Reese not aware that a reprogrammed T-800 was sent back to 1967, thus negating the usefulness of his existence? How does robo-John Connor exist if his mom and dad were time traveled to 2017, thus never giving birth to him and making him at the oldest 10 or 11 during the robot war? Since Sarah Conner never gives birth to John Connor by time traveling to 2017, doesn't this essentially complete Skynet's original mission? If Arnold kills the T-800 at the start of the movie and does not dispose of its remains in lava, its parts would still be reverse engineered to create Skynet, right? Since they time travel past Terminator 2, and since John Connor was never born, wouldn't Judgement Day happen as planned in 1997, this meaning that 2017 would be smack in the middle of the robot war?

Woah nelly.

If this movie was even fun I'd be able to let these things slide, but it's kind of embarrassing how little it holds up to even the thinnest time travel logic.

[Lazlo]

The rep system says I have to spread rep around before I can give more to you, Henry, but you deserve tons of it for these posts. You're right on the money about everything.

The movie's relentlessly complicated in the dumbest possible ways. But to me it's chief sin is its boring, slow, and wayy too long. Like you say, if it was at all fun all the nonsense could be ignored (see Jurassic World). But Genisys is so so goddamn bland that you can't help but dwell on how little sense it makes.

Also, did I miss who sent Pops back to Sarah's childhood? They talked about those files being deleted and it had an air of mystery about it that was never paid off. Not sure what would have been a satisfying or interesting reveal, but I thought there was potential for there to be something cool there.

[Skitch]

Dammit I hate it when my gut is right.

[Morris Schæffer]

One thing's for sure, we're all gonna appreciate Terminator 3 a helluva lot more from now on.

[[ETM]]

It ruined everything in the first place so no.

[transmogrifier]

I like Terminator 3.

[Morris Schæffer]

It ruined everything in the first place so no.

I don't think it did, at least not narratively and thematically so I don't know what you're blabbing out.

[Skitch]

I like Terminator 3.

Me too.