With audiences growing far more wary of, and sometimes downright
venomous towards remakes, studios have been searching for new ways to
reinvigorate recognizable brands. The answer has been something comic book fans
have been all too familiar with for some time: the retcon. Or put another way,
the reimagining. You don't have to totally start over, just ignore or delete
enough stuff to basically start from a difference place. It's a tricky thing to
pull off without alienating your entire fan base. X-Men: Days of Future Past managed to use alternate timelines to
build an entirely new history for its heroic mutants. But what about something
like James Cameron's Terminator;
a cold metal sci-fi classic that basically forged our understanding of time
travel in modern genre movies? Terminator
Genisys, the fifth movie in the vaunted franchise, attempts to embrace and
completely devastate everything we know and love about James Cameron's
time-bending story, and as one might expect the results are a bit scattershot.
Rest assured Terminator Genisys is a heck of lot better than the
maligned Terminator Salvation,
and a fair bit more like a true Cameron Terminator movie. Despite the narrative
pretzel it twists into, the film has all of the recognizable nuts and bolts,
literally in the case of Arnold Schwarzenegger's T-800, who was notably absent
from 'Salvation' except for a lousy CGI version. This time around the
hard-to-kill cyborg is considered a "guardian" rather than a
terminator, sent back in time to protect the life of Sarah Connor, played now
by Game of Thrones'
Emilia Clarke, sporting her "Mother of Dragons" attitude. So how does
something like that work? The story begins as we expect. Future rebel badass
John Connor (Jason Clarke) leads a human resistance against Skynet and its army
of killer machines. When Skynet realizes it will lose, it sends a terminator to
1984 to kill Sarah while she's weak. So John calls upon his pal Kyle Reese (Jai
Courtney) to go back in time to protect Sarah from harm. Oh, and let's not
forget that John also needs his buddy to sleep with his mom so he can be born
in the first place. Don't forget that little detail; it makes for some awkward
sitcom shenanigans later on. 
Things take a turn when Kyle arrives in
1984 only to discover that Sarah doesn't really need his help. She's already
one tough soldier; she's gone full-blown Linda Hamilton (minus the biceps) and
has been protected by the Arnold T-800 since she was a child, nicknaming him
"Pops". How? Why? And is that wrinkled skin and graying hair on the
Terminator? What? The explanations are convoluted, bog down the story, and
frankly are a little ridiculous, but fortunately this film doesn't slow down
enough for you to analyze whether it makes sense. There's always a new
Terminator to fight (there are a few, including one that has been spoiled by
desperate marketing), a new bus to flip, another helicopter chase through the
city, and the CGI-heavy action looks great courtesy of director Alan Taylor. He
keeps the pace moving faster than a T-1000 can shapeshift forms; those who
simply want to watch robots fight and stuff get blown up will leave very happy.
Not to say he's quite on Cameron's level when it comes to blending digital and
real-world effects but the film looks impressive.
But there's also no denying that the
screenplay is often too eager to shock us, piling on one unnecessary twist
after the next to make the story more confusing than it really needs to be. All
of this serves as needless distraction because the bones of the story are
straight forward. Jump to a specific place in time and blow something up.
Pretty simple. While all of the key characters we expect are present and
accounted for, one thing that the film can't replicate is the unique familial
dynamic established between Sarah and the T-800. 'Genisys' tries but Clarke and
Schwarzenegger don't have the chemistry to establish the kind of relationship
that made Cameron's movies so emotional. We gave a damn when the T-800 was
willing to sacrifice his life for the Connors' future. That "thumbs
up" really meant something! But here the callbacks are too self-aware, too
telegraphed; like the screenwriters had the "I'll be back" moment
thought out months in advance and couldn't wait to drop it on us. They also
couldn't wait to hit us with some really misplaced humor. While there's nothing
wrong with a bit of levity to lighten the end-of-the-world circumstances, but
most of it centers on Reese's need to mate with Sarah, while "Pops"
judges him harshly like Robert De Niro in Meet
the Parents. It's weird, and not in a good way. There are other strange
comedic diversions, including an appearance by JK Simmons as a robot-obsessed
cop. That said; Schwarzenegger brings a few moments of genuine tenderness,
while Emilia Clarke does a decent job of filling Hamilton's shoes. Courtney
thrives at the physical stuff; tell him to fire a gun at something shiny and he
can do it, but he's not much for the deeper side of acting yet.
In what must feel like the tagline for
Schwarzenegger's latter career, the T-800 constantly asserts, “I am old,
not obsolete." At 25 years, Cameron's Terminator is an "old" franchise no
matter how many times they try to revive it. But Terminator Genisys, despite it
not always making a ton of sense, is still the best and most relevant Terminator film since 'Judgement Day',
and that means it will never be considered obsolete.
Rating: 3 out of 5
