In present day, the machines of Skynet have taken over control of the Earth after using our own nuclear warheads to destroy most of the planet. Those that have survived formed a resistance against the machines, all lead by John Connor (Jason Clarke). When the war is almost over, John sends Kyle Reese (Jai Courtney) back in time to save Sara Connor (Emilia Clarke) from a Terminator sent back to kill her. When Kyle arrives, Sara is safe with her T-800 Guardian (Arnold Schwarzenegger). Together, they must all fight to stop Skynet from ever being launched (again?).
This cheesy photo says all you need to know.
Terminator Genisys is an absolute embarrassment to the franchise and finds itself the most idiotic of the last three films, which is saying something. I’m not always sure what the green-lighting process is in Hollywood, but I can only imagine what the pitch for this film was. Without any clear villain and time travel across multiple different parallel universes in which events in the four previous films are negated, Genisys gets caught up in a convoluted attempt to seem fresh, while still holding on to Arnold and the beloved original Terminator. All the explosions and action in this film couldn’t save it from imploding.
Leading the fight are two of the most boring, uninteresting lead characters in the franchise (even more so than Sam Worthington in Terminator Salvation). Jai Courtney, a.k.a. cinema poison, continuously finds himself starring in big budget films and he continues to lower my expectations whenever I see him. Aside from his looks, he offers nothing but poor line delivery and misguided bursts of odd emotion. Perhaps even worse is Emilia Clarke, which is unfortunate because she’s exceptional on Game of Thrones. Here, she’s attempting to play the tough Sarah Conner we know and love and it just does not work. When the two are supposed to have a connection, it comes off as stale small talk which is neither cute, nor enjoyable. Kyle Reese and Sarah Connor are very defined, very essential characters to making any Terminator movie work and there is nothing good to say about these incarnations. Jason Clarke is just a puppet character turned from good to insane as most manipulated good guys go, but even he isn’t that good.
As should this one…
In somewhat of a defense of their acting however, a lot of the responsibility of this film falls on Alan Taylor, the film’s director. You may also know him from the underwhelming and forgettable Thor: The Dark World. It’s no secret I’m not a fan of either Thor movie, but this film makes The Dark World look like an Oscar contender. Taylor’s lack of cohesive storytelling and actor direction makes this already dismal film even more unbearable. The set pieces are nice to look at, but then everyone starts talking mumbo jumbo about multiple timelines and discussing who was sent back to do what, leading to audience and character confusion. We’re never really sure why the characters do what they do, or how they know what do, seeing as they’re always complaining about their place in time. Taylor must have slept through the dallies, as it’s hard to miss just how ridiculous the progression of this film is.
Storywise, I know not where to begin with this film. I took a friend to the screening who had never seen a Terminator movie and she was just as confused as I was, never knowing if the film wanted us to take it seriously, or would it rather have us laugh at Arnold trying to blend in to today’s society. There’s a mugshot scene that plays to the theme from Bad Boys and it’s cringeworthy. As if multiple timelines weren’t bad enough, this film feels the need to inject misplaced humor everywhere in the film and establishes The Terminator as Sarah Connor’s father figure since she was 9. How did that happen? Well, someone from the future wanted to kill an even younger Sarah, so they had to send Arnold back again, but this time even further. But then people also need to be sent to 1997 and then 2017 to stop Skynet from starting. Rather than give themselves time, they must of course show up with less than a day to save the world. I’m surprised I saw the post-credit setup for another film, as my eyes were rolling every direction.
A scary sight indeed.
To his credit, Arnold does pull of his usual Terminator shtick and his lack of emotion when surrounded by emotional characters does make a better impression than everything else in this film. He sure has aged, but they try to play along with it and do an alright job until it comes to makeup and CGI. For a blockbuster in 2015, the effects are laughably bad and even the practical effects look cheesy. There are explosions galore, but I’m not sure anyone in this film understands how modern physics, science, or helicopters work (apparently you can have them fall off the sides of buildings and they’ll magically use that momentum to fly at the last minute). There’s also a future timeline where Genisys is an operating system which combines all your information across every board into one OS and it’s got billboards everywhere counting down to the release. Now, we know that a monopolistic company which wants to put all our info in one place has to be bad, but in the future no one seems to think that hundreds of billboards for this thing is a bad idea. Also, doctors in hospitals rave about the tech while on phone calls while they just so happen to be treating patients.
Terminator Genisys is not a good movie on any level. If you’ve read this far, I commend you and hope that my frustration has been made aware. Seeing movies is one of, if not my favorite thing to do and I don’t even mind seeing as many bad movies as I do because that feeling of being in a theater is amazing. I sat next to a good friend and fellow critic and we had the worse time with this film. We’d turn to one another, exchange a glance, and then laugh at how absurdly awful this film was. Nothing about the acting, directing, and writing of this film makes any sense and part of me wants back that time I lost. My advice would be to just watch the first and second Terminator’s and just pretend as if these don’t exist. You’d honestly be better off seeing something that takes itself and the audience more seriously.
