While it may be the best Terminator sequel since T2, Terminator Genisys is still just a retread of old material trying to activate nostalgia for better films while failing to do anything new with the few fresh ideas it does have and as such leaves the viewer cold.

At a crucial moment in the war against the machines when victory is at hand, Skynet sends a Terminator back in time to kill resistance leader John Connor’s (Jason Clarke) mother before he was born. Connor sends his right hand man Kyle Reese (Jai Courtney) back to protect her. All pretty much just like in the original film, but when Reese gets to 1984 he finds that there is a more advanced terminator trying to kill him and Sarah Conner (Emilia Clarke) shows up to save him delivering the ‘Come with me if you want to live’ line Reese originally gave to Connor in the first film. As it turns out, someone sent a T-800 terminator (Arnold Schwarzenegger) back in time to protect Sarah when she was nine and he has been protecting her ever since. With a T-1000 (Byung-Hun Lee) hot on their trail Reese, Connor and ‘Pops’ launch into a plan to travel into the future before Skynet can destroy the world to try to stop Judgment Day from ever happening. Things don’t pan out super well.

 

Right off the bat I have to mention that Terminator 2 is one of my favorite movies of all time and I saw it 24 times in the theater. So I am Terminator fan. Extreme fandom can go either way with a movie like this because either a fan could be so into it that it can do no wrong or alternatively it can do no right. I bring this up because I want to try to steer clear of any particular bias. I went into this with some hope but also skepticism given past failures. I didn’t hate Terminator 3 but Salvation was a misfire. So I was really hoping for the best here but unfortunately the best I can say about it is that I didn’t hate it.

Time travel movies can be pretty tricky in the best of circumstances but when they are steeped in history and continuity some of which is included and some of which is ignored you have a movie that is tangled up worse the back of your average A/V set up. Genisys could start with a blank slate as they are rewriting the original continuity but what it does instead is introduce a multitude of different timelines that are springing forth left and right. By the time the characters go to 2017 the timelines are twisted and tangled worse than ever before. That could be fun if handled properly but rather than going in interesting directions, Genisys settles on a retread of the past films in which the characters are just in on protracted chase scene without doing much new.

The action scenes are not bad and the effects are generally good but the problem is that with nothing interesting going on storywise passable action scenes just feel like even more business as usual. The constant references to the past films then don’t make you feel nostalgic as much as they just make you wish you were watching those better movies.

From a story perspective, the messiness of the time lines starts to wear on you when there isn’t much else going on with the characters. Attempts at handwaving and lamp shade hanging to get past the messiness just serve to highlight the messiness instead of taking the viewers’ minds off of it. Again, if anything meaningful was done with the new dynamics being played with then it would have turned the film around but in general it is just more of the same and is content to retread the same formula.

 

There are some nice moments between Pops and Sarah and indeed Pops and Reese which, if explored more fully, could have turned into something more compelling. Unfortunately we do not get enough of it and we are left with a ‘don’t worry about it and get on board’ attitude. ‘Hey who gives a shit why and how, we need to save the world!’ doesn’t really fly this deep into a series particularly when you are being asked to swallow a major character 180 that the film gave away in the trailers but I will not give away here. I will just say that this turn of events could have been an awesome twist had the movie done something other than use it to give the heroes something new to run from.

I didn’t really have a problem with the performances here but it was kind of weird having iconic parts recast with Arnold still around. Pops is a different sort of Terminator than the one we had in T2 and that is definitely a plus but it made it a little more difficult to accept Courtney and Clarke ( both of them) as their respective characters. Emilia Clarke, in particular, does a great job as Sarah. She manages to invoke the feeling of what Linda Hamilton’s Sarah might have been given earlier intervention and training. Jai Courtney is a respectable Reese but he doesn’t have much to do beyond being incredulous and driven. Jason Clarke is also fine as John Connor but we’ve seen so many versions of Connor at this point it is hard to be invested with a new one.

Conclusion [6.0 out of 10]

Terminator Genisys is not a terrible movie but almost worse it feels boring and unnecessary. I would have loved it if Genisys had come out guns blazing with a solid and fresh take on the series but unfortunately it settled for just more of the same. Very little is more disappointing than squandered material and that is where we are with Terminator Genisys. There is some decent action and effects but not a lot else to recommend. Check it out if you are a completest but you probably don’t want to pay full price.