REVIEW: Terminator Genisys

Terminator Genisys

“I’m back,” declares Arnold Schwarzenegger during an action sequence in Terminator Genisys. As a fan of the originals, I really wish he hadn‘t.

Having just watched a double feature of Terminator 1 and 2 at the cinema the weekend before, I still had those much loved classics fresh in my mind, but as soon as I walked out of the theatre from Genisys, there were a lot of memories I wished to erase.

Genisys pursues an alternate timeline from the ’84 classic. The Kyle Reese that John Connor sends back from the future encounters an alternative Sarah Connor already familiar with how to kick Terminator ass. She works alongside an alternative older Arnold Schwarzenegger who was sent back to protect her as a child. Are you still with me so far? Good, because things only continue to get more outrageously complex and unnecessarily convoluted.

So therefore the original Terminator we all know and love has just been sent back to their same timeline. This all seems to be an elaborately engineered plot device in order to see a modern day Arnie fighting against his digitally rendered 1984 self. The fight sequence is genuinely impressive, but that’s just the start of the mind-bending parallel timeline antics.

Well, let’s start with the positives from this latest incarnation, as there are few of them. Firstly, if you ignore the silly plot, what you’re left with is a visually impressive action film with the scenes from the original Terminator being skilfully merged and reshot before being added to the new footage in an almost seamless way. It gives any Terminator fan a little joy to see the references to the original, but these scenes are all too fleeting. All it ultimately does is draw attention to the fact that the original still stands head and shoulders above this incarnation and that, if you’re honest with yourself, you’d rather just watch the original again.

Terminator Genisys

Secondly, Arnie is back! Admittedly, in a sub-par movie, but Arnie can still throw some punches and deliver in the role of the action hero even as he pushes 70. He is doing what he does best in an action heavy role with lots of his trademark quotable one liners thrown in. However, they attempt to recreate the natural chemistry and genuinely humorous relationship in T2 between young John Connor and Arnold Schwarzenegger’s bad Terminator turned good but this time with Sarah Connor’s character (Emilia Clarke) in place of Connor. It doesn’t quite come off.

Lastly, the idea and concept behind the movie isn’t an awful one, but it gets so lost in all the different timelines going on. There is even an attempt to adopt a similar style and tone to the original films, but that doesn’t quite come off either. There’s too much time-hopping which doesn’t allow for a lot of character or emotional development, meaning that any scene where there is no action is awkward and jarring. It doesn’t flow in the same way the action scenes flowed into more character-based dialogues in the first two films.

And now, for the negatives. Even though the positives sounded negative, they actually weren’t by comparison.

The plot is integral to the success of any movie. Where the originals excelled was in keeping their storytelling simple, allowing the concept of man vs machine and the fear of the unstoppable Terminator to take the fore. In Genisys, we are presented with a new breed of machine-human hybrid that fails to be terrifying in any way, but is just for lack of a better word, plain boring. Plus, the time-hopping and alternate versions of characters are enough to make even the most loyal and dedicated Terminator fan dizzy.

As mentioned before, the chemistry between the three leads feels oddly forced even though Emilia Clarke makes a commendable attempt at being badass Sarah Connor, but Linda Hamilton did such a great job in T2 that you can’t help but compare them. Hamilton’s Sarah comes out on top, not only by being more physically active in her role, but also because her performance is far more emotive.

The franchise is tired and this resurrection was definitely better than T3, but the Terminator story has lost sight of what made it successful in the first place. Good old fashioned, simple action sci-fi storytelling with cool set-pieces. Everything about this movie is trying too hard. The originals weren’t trying to be cool, they just were. Please, please don’t come back, Arnie. Let the franchise end here.

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