Warning: This review contains spoilers.
Directed by: Alan Taylor
Starring: Arnold Schwarzenegger, Emilia Clarke, Jai Courtney, Jason Clarke, JK Simmons
The Terminator (1984) worked very well as a high-tech horror film. Schwarzenegger played the title role of an unflappable and unstoppable robot that stalked a terrified woman around Los Angeles who will be the mother of the resistance leader in a future war between machine and man. She was aided by a human named Kyle Reese, who also traveled back in time to attempt to stop The Terminator. Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991) was a visual feast and seemingly tidied up all of the loose ends so the future war would never happen. It was the logical end to the story, but Hollywood rarely fails to quit while it's ahead.
Terminator 3: Rise Of The Machines (2003) was decent, albeit unnecessary. Terminator: Salvation (2009) threw Christian Bale into the mix and was wholly unsatisfying. I was sick of terminators, Skynet, John Connor, and the whole franchise. When Terminator: Genisys was announced, I was hardly stoked for it. However, the film's plot involved not just time travel, but alternate timelines, which at least perked my interest enough to see it. The film is well-made technically, but the alternate timelines are never explained satisfactorily, leading to more questions than answers and hampering my enjoyment of it.
To briefly describe the plot, Kyle Resse (Courtney) is sent back in time to save Sarah Connor (Emilia Clarke) from a terminator to ensure she gives birth someday to John Connor (Jason Clarke) and thus saves the human race from extinction at the hands of Skynet. This is the same plot as the original Terminator, but with a twist. When Reese arrives, Sarah is already fighting the war against terminators with the help of the original T-800 (Schwarzenegger), who saved her life as a child and is her father figure. She affectionately calls him Pops. Because he is covered in living tissue, he can age, which explains why he looks like today's Schwarzenegger and not the Schwarzenegger from 30 years ago. However, his machine parts do not grow older. This at least is a plausible explanation. Why there are alternate timelines is not adequately explained.
Some questions I had were:
* Assuming Skynet sent a Terminator back to Sarah's childhood home to kill her, who sent Pops to save her? (I'm basing this question on the plot twist that John Connor was converted to a baddie)
* Once Skynet wipes out humankind, what does it plan to do? There isn't much life on the planet left to conquer since they've destroyed nearly everything in a nuclear holocaust.
* How could Reese and Sarah not know they were being set up by John Connor when they travel to 2017 San Francisco (which is the new time for Skynet to launch its attack according to the alternate timeline)? They did not have sex yet, so Sarah could not have given birth to him in time for him to be a grown man by 2029 and thus travel back 12 years to visit them as a grown man. If you didn't see the original Terminator, you may be unaware that Reese is the father of John Connor. Oops, sorry.
* How exactly did the timeline split into an alternate timeline? The writers here should consult Back To The Future II to figure out how to properly create one.
* How many bullets and shotgun shells will Sarah, Kyle, and Pops waste before they realize that bullets and shotgun shells won't stop a Terminator?
* When John Connor offers Kyle and Sarah a chance to join him, doesn't he realize that Skynet has destroyed everything and the planet is pretty much uninhabitable? It's not an attractive offer.
Questions aside, this is all stuff we've seen before. Terminator: Genisys feels more like a Terminator Greatest Hits package. There is very little a Terminator can do to improve its indestructibility after the T-1000 shape shifts and assumes the identity of whatever it touches. Thus, watching Arnold and the T-1000 battle it out reminds me of when it was done better in Terminator 2. It was fresher then and more exciting. Now it's a retread.
If Skynet is so smart, how does it keep sending back the T-1000 and T-800s when it knows they will ultimately fail? Why can't they fix the glitches that make them vulnerable? Because it is sci-fi that deals with time travel and computers, the Terminator series is inherently silly and we accept that to a degree. Arnold mixes in self-parody and humor as only he can. The rest of the cast simply supplies straight lines.
I think we have seen all that can be done with this material. Skynet has been destroyed at least twice now and continues to rebuild and pose a threat to humanity. It is now becoming repetitive. I've heard two speeches now about how the future is now full of hope and promise. It was the closing speech delivered by Linda Hamilton in Terminator 2. Can we just leave well enough alone now?
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