Terminator Genisys opened last week and producers may want to go back in time to try and correct course. The $44M it earned over five days is low for the franchise, and likely has put a dent in plans for a trilogy and companion TV series. There will also probably be a bunch of articles this week about what went wrong, but what it likely boils down to is simple confusion as to the storyline. Is it a Terminator sequel? Some kind of reboot? It was never really made clear during marketing, and according to director Alan Taylor it seems that is what everyone wanted to happen. He tries to untwist the loopy timeline logic to The Daily Beast and the whole thing is just a mess....
“We start in 2029 during the Future War, then go back to… “
“1984, jumping into…”
“2017. So that’s three.”
“My favorite part is using humor to sort of skate over it. It’s a way of saying, ‘You may not get this, but who cares? Keep going!’“But when we start the movie we’re actually pre-Judgment Day, because we’re watching a happy beautiful world that was lost. And then Judgment Day happens. Then we cut ahead to…Post-Judgment Day. So that’s actually two more time frames, just within the prologue. Which brings us up to five. Then when we time travel with Kyle he’s remembering an alternate timeline, which was his 13th birthday in the happy time-verse, which would be 2012 seen in two different ways.And the seventh is when we flash back to the 1970s when Sarah is saved by the Guardian [Arnold Schwarzenegger’s T-800, a.k.a. “Pops”]. That’s my favorite, because that’s my 11-year-old daughter playing the young Sarah Connor.”
Uh, that's great and all. but what's the value in a movie nobody can understand? Taylor actually doesn't seem to care that audiences don't get it. although he insists the screenplay by Laeta Kalogridis and Patrick Lussier makes sense if you really think about it...
“Arnold has one of the most unpronounceable, impenetrable expositional lines in the movie when he says, 'It’s possible to remember two time frames when you enter the quantum field during a nexus moment,’ and nobody has any idea what he’s talking about. But yes, it makes sense. We don’t expect anybody to get it—then Kyle turns to Sarah and says, ‘Can you make him stop talking like that?’ It’s a way to say, you don’t really have to get this. If you want to nerd out, it’s all there, I think it’s coherent. But hopefully we can move on.”
In other words, as long as people can laugh this stuff off and plow ahead none of it will matter. Granted, the Terminator movies have always played a little fast and loose with time travel mechanics, but Terminator Genisys goes beyond all of that. Not only does it twist the continuity of the first two movies while ignoring everything that came after, but it also introduces some wonky alternate timeline stuff, too. Swept up in all of that is the mysterious Skynet character played by Matt Smith, and Kalogridis tries to explain why his actions against John Connor (Jason Clarke) are so important...
“You see in the beginning. [Matt Smith] grabs John. He’s not from this timeline. He’s from an alternate universe, in the multiverse. Another of the many universes that exist. That Skynet is not from that timeline.This Skynet has been to this universe, and this universe, and this universe. That’s why he says, ‘I came a very long way to stop you.’ He’s not from here. So he’s watched it. He’s watched it happen a bunch of different times, and each time he’s seen it there is a different result but the same result.”
And all of this complicated mumbo-jumbo is why audiences may have steered clear. I was able to put most of the nonsensical stuff to the side and enjoy the film for what it was, but obviously others were not.
