Massive spoilers here…I really don’t know how to review this without spoiling the whole thing. Then again the trailers did that anyway.
Let’s get something out of the way first. Anytime you mess with time travel, you have to have a suspension of disbelief when it comes to matching things up between timelines. No doubt, you’ll need to do it for Terminator: Genisys (referred from now on as T5).
It would help to have seen Terminator 1 and Terminator 2: Judgment Day before this. Quick synopsis of the Terminator franchise: In 2029 John Connor leads humanity in victory over a computer intelligence program named Skynet. Skynet looked to wipe out all of humanity as it felt humanity was the greatest threat to the world. In a last ditch attempt before losing the war, Skynet sent a T-800 Terminator (cyborg killing machine) into the past, specifically 1984, to kill John’s mother, Sarah, so that John is never born and Skynet defeats the human led Resistance. The Resistance sends Kyle Reese back to protect Sarah and ensure John is born. Interestingly enough, Reese turns out to be John’s father, but that’s a time paradox I won’t get into.
That’s mainly what you need to know here. All of that happens in T1, and T5 we start with a recreation of that day of victory, with John Connor looking to take out that time machine. As Kyle is about to be sent back in time though, he sees John get attacked. This event here leads to the changes in the time period. The assumption I think here is that Skynet has already seen the events of T1, T2 (I think T3 and T4 get wiped out in this scenario but I’m not sure). Nonetheless, the 1984 Kyle Reese goes back into obviously looks the same to the audience as T1 did, but it has one big change: Sarah Connor already knows all of this and is prepared. While time traveling Kyle Reese also received memories that he didn’t know, which I’m not a fan of but I’ll get into it later.
The entire early portion of this film is pretty fun. Skynet had planned another assassination attempt on Sarah Connor when she was a child, but the Resistance already planned for that too and sent a T-800 to protect her (and as it turned out, to raise her too). We also get a lot of reference to the past and the original two films here, as Skynet also sent a T-1000 (who is awesome, again) to intercept Reese. While again, we’re a little screwy with the timelines, I think it’s handled rather well considering how complicated multiple timelines and time travel is.
The film takes a downturn though when Sarah plans on going to 1997 to stop Judgment Day. Reese, through his “memories” convinces Sarah to go to 2017 instead. This is a strange plot point here, as I assume then that T2’s events would still happen in 1997 (or at least J-Day starting then). Reese claims that a program called Genisys leads to the Judgment Day in 2017. The T-800 (“Pops”, which I’ll get into) can’t go though, as apparently you can’t have exposed metal in the time machine and it would take too long to heal.
Here is where the trailer really hurt the film, as there is a great reveal here. Of course there’s tons of confusion about Reese and Sarah when they show up. They get arrested but cops can’t ID Sarah. They ID Kyle, but are just as confused as Kyle Reese is a kid in 2017. Things even get MORE confusing, as John Connor shows up and frees Sarah and Kyle. The trailer ruined this reveal about John Connor being a Terminator, which is a shame because it was pretty well done and would have made a great twist. The rest of the film turns into a by the numbers “blow up this building” plot, which considering the characters, is quite the letdown (Sarah Connor sees her unborn son all grown up? What?). Also, to continually screw with the timeline, 2029 Kyle tells 2017 Kyle about Genisys and Skynet, so that 2029 Kyle can remember it when he’s sent back to 1984. All of that was just so Kyle could convince Sarah to go to 2017 instead of 1997 (why not do both by the way? Is the time machine going anywhere?)
There’s two more points to make. The first of which is that the way to stop Genisys is pretty stupid and goes against pretty much the entire franchise. First let’s talk about what Genisys is. Genisys is a software that links everyone together over the internet. Sound familiar? It’s a brilliant idea because it’s something that audience members today can connect to. I mean I could see Apple or Windows doing this by 2017. So the idea of blowing up the server doesn’t really work for me. You’re telling me that Genisys can’t survive the blowing up of a physical server over the internet? Oh, and while we’re on this, the personification of Skynet was not something I wanted to see. Less is more, right?
The second point is that the film really misses a trick with the very end. As established in T2 and said in this film, everything from Skynet must be destroyed. That’s what made the very ending of T2 so powerful, after the relationship John Connor and the T-800 had established in that film the self-destruction of the T-800 is a great movie moment. Here we get close to that moment, but then a very lame explanation on why the T-800 survived. Nevermind that the T-800 is still around, and Skynet could always reboot itself through it. Very bad choice here. Anyway…
Arnold Schwarzenegger is pretty great as the T-800 throughout the entire film. The relationship with Arnold’s T-800 and Emilia Clarke’s Sarah Connor is pretty good and is definitely a reference to T2’s John and the T-800. I definitely see where critics came from with Clarke being miscast as Connor, and I don’t even necessarily agree, but I think it was done to get that daughter image that we didn’t have an opportunity for in the original films. Still, she’s obviously no Linda Hamilton.
I didn’t like Jason Clarke’s John Connor though. He felt like a poor man’s version of Loki from the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Jai Courtney’s Kyle Reese is also underwhelming and I’d even argue bad. For someone who’s supposed to have been John Connor’s right hand in the war against the machines, he seems to be a complete wreck when he sees that 1984 isn’t what he seemed.
But we all showed up for Arnold anyway, and as I wrote before, he’s great.
There’s just way too many things going on here, and as a result it takes away from moments that potentially could be great. I will say though that this didn’t feel like a straight money grab. It seems clear that there is a lot of effort in T5 and they tried to make the story actually make sense.
Pros:
+Arnold is great.
+Good callback to earlier films.
+Good effort in trying to make sense of what feels like a million different timelines.
+Arnold-Sarah relationship works and is an interesting new take.
+Twist is intriguing; too bad it was spoiled in the trailers.
+There’s another awesome T-1000.
Cons:
-Kyle Reese is underwhelming.
-John Connor is underwhelming.
-Way too much going on takes away from more important plot points.
-Some misplaced comedy.
-Plan to stop Judgment Day is terrible.
-Personification of Skynet.
-Huge plot problem goes against the Terminator fracnhise with the ending.
Can’t deny I had fun with this one though. Was a lot better than I expected and really, considering all of the elements of the film, could have been FAR worse.
Grade: C+