Movie Review: Terminator – Genisys

A Jurassic Park movie is breaking box office records, Mariah Carey is in the tabloids, both a Clinton and a Bush are running for President, and Arnie has fulfilled his promise of being ‘back’ for another Terminator flick.

To quote Martin Short in Father of the Bride, “Welcome to the ‘90s, Mr. Banks.”

Everything old is new again, especially on the big screen, where decades-old franchises are being resuscitated for audiences who were probably foetal when those series’ first debuted. Mad Max: Fury Road holds the title this season, coming 36 years after the first instalment, but director George Miller was smart enough not to excavate the fossilised Mel Gibson for it.

In contrast, Genisys, the fifth entry in the increasingly-tangled Terminator timeline, exists solely to return its signature star to the fold. Though, Arnold Schwarzenegger has aged a lot better than Mel Gibson, at least in terms of cultural cache (even after temporarily walking away for politics and becoming embroiled in a sex scandal).

F. Scott Fitzgerald once claimed there were no second acts in American lives. Apparently, there are four acts in Austrian ones.

Game of Thrones graduate Alan Taylor directs Arnie’s most recent film foray. The verdict: It’s fine. It doesn’t make a lick of sense, but it’s fine. Expecting greatness at this point would be unreasonable. We’ve been trained by two terrible sequels before Genisys to know better, really.

Sharing something in common with E.L. James’ unfortunate 50 Shades sideways spin-off Grey, Genisys begins in parallel with the events of The Terminator, only from the perspective of future soldier Kyle Reese (Jai Courtney).

It opens in the year 2029, when the last remnants of humankind are waging a war against the machines, who were turned self-aware by human folly years earlier. Reese volunteers to go back to the 1980s and protect the mother of resistance-leader John Connor (Jason Clarke), because the machines, those sore losers, keep sending back T-800 cyborgs to terminate her and stop John from ever being born.

The trouble is, the past Reese returns to isn’t the one we remember from The Terminator.

Now, John’s mother, Sarah (Emilia Clarke, no relation to her on-screen son), is an agitated soldier in waiting, not needing saving in the slightest. She’s been prepped for war, thanks to yet another T-800 machine sent back and programmed to protect her. By whom? The filmmakers offer this explanation: \_(ツ)_/¯

Nicknamed Pops (and played by Schwarzenegger), this model looks significantly worse for wear than the ones we’re familiar with. Turns out the machines used human skin on Terminators, which explains his sagging membrane not one bit. More puzzling is the graying of Pops’ shock of hair when Sarah and Kyle meet up with him after jumping forward to 2017 (for reasons not worth getting into). Didn’t anyone recommend some ‘Just for Men’ during his 35-year wait?

Genisys works hard to contort itself to fit the now-totally baffling Terminator mythology, and does not succeed in convincing us that even its makers know what’s going on. Screenwriters Laeta Kalogridis and Patrick Lussier deploy numerous “get out of jail” cards by encouraging us to assume plot holes will get answered in subsequent sequels. If you’re wondering if that makes for a totally satisfying, holistic viewing experience, it does not.

At least SFX technology has reached a point where humans can convincingly fight the Terminators’ iconic exo-skeletons. There's quite a bit of that, if that is indeed what you're looking for. Director Taylor, fresh from Thor: The Dark World, knows his way around an action scene. That is more than we can say of McG’s work on Salvation, which I really must stress, is simply the pits.

Schwarzenegger is cheerfully hammy as Pops, clearly relishing the opportunity to star in something people will see. (His post-Governor roles have not set the world on fire, to put it kindly.) He and Emilia Clarke share a nice energy, playing long-time companions. Clarke’s chemistry with Courtney, however, isn’t as electric. It’s more like… indigestion. Their arguments, supposed to seem like a screwball romance in the making, plays like heartburn.

So, we’ve established by now that Terminator: Genisys, despite committing more sins to the canon than any entry in the series thus far, is watchable. The real question is, should we hold out hope for a direct sequel that’ll see this cast return, a giddy Arnie in tow, or do we need to reboot again, as was required following the execrable Terminator: Salvation?

I say, give Taylor and company another chance. Genisys makes two hours go by without much complaint and could be retroactively bettered if the sequels plug up the plot holes that made this picture totally incomprehensible.

I’m not saying everyone involved should start high-fiving. I’m saying, “Get back to work, soldiers.”

3/5

In cinemas July 2, 2015. Rated M for science fiction violence and infrequent coarse language.