'Terminator Genisys' Brings No More Depth to This Worn Out Franchise
Back in 1984, Arnold Schwarzenegger uttered the words, “I’ll be back” in the first Terminator movie. Little did he know, thirty-one years later he’d still be playing the same character and saying those three little words in 2015.
Tired Out Franchise
As to be expected, there are huge set pieces, more of the molten-metal special effects and even a few of the signature Arnie one-liners that we all enjoyed so much in Terminator 2: Judgment Day. Emilia Clarke plays Sarah, and the cast also includes the newly crowned Oscar winner, JK Simmons, but unfortunately, they fail bringing any more depth to this fairly worn out franchise.
The machines have sent a Terminator back in time to before the war to kill Sarah Connor. Her son John (Jason Clarke) sends Sgt. Kyle Reese (Jai Courtney) back to 1984 to protect her, and the rest of humanity, and keep the future intact. When Reese arrives, he meets the bad-guy-broke-good Terminator/Guardian (Schwarzenegger) and learns that they all have been preparing for his arrival. Then John Connor shows up in that past, much to his mothers delight — but there’s a little something different about John.
Terminator Genisys suffers from its poorly handled marketing. Prior to its release, director Alan Taylor criticised the promotional materials used to hype up the movie. The plot line is a time-hopping journey which features twists and turns. An inevitably was to be expected that some of those elements would be teased in trailers and spots. Yet, huge plot points were totally revealed, and in a world where spoilers are pre-warned, the marketeers dropped a clanger.
No doubting Taylor directed such sequences with the intention of no one knowing beforehand, and it’s this knowledge of the outcome, that severely damages Terminator Genisys. Although Terminator has a solid fan base that has made the franchise a lot of money over its 30+ year existence, marketeers clearly wanted to send out a strong message that this tent-pole had something new, and it was heading into new territory. Unfortunately, I couldn’t see any new territory throughout its two-hour run-time, except for regurgitated scenes and plot devices.
Plays Out Like a Greatest Hits
If there is one pleasurable experience from Terminator Genisys, it comes when Taylor and his team recreate with great care and detail scenes from James Cameron’s original. It features the moment when Schwarzenegger’s character arrives at Griffith Observatory naked and confronts a gang of punks. Without lifting the entire scene from Cameron’s original, Taylor morphs the scene into a Terminator-on-Terminator showdown, with the current self fighting his younger self.
For all its good intentions, Terminator Genisys is cumbersome. It attempts to relate closely with its earlier predecessors, The Terminator (1984) and Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991), forgetting entirely that Terminator: Rise of the Machines () and Terminator Salvation (2009) even exist. Admittedly, seeing Schwarzenneger re-visit his younger self was a nostalgic treat, yet Genisys continued to fall flat in many aspects: story and originality. Hollywood is currently going through a rough time. It doesn’t believe in taking risks anymore, yet is prepared to re-hash a gluttony of reboots and sequels of characters and movies that already have pre-existing fan bases — then rake in the profits and repeat the process. Terminator Genisys is a child of this ideology.
At the start, you’re happy to see these familiar characters, but as it progresses, it plays out like a greatest hits. There is no room for manoeuvre within the confines of this story or set of characters anymore. It has totally played out its run, and played it out to death.
