jye4ever
Broke and happy
/\ must infiltrate /\
Terminator Genisys (July 1st, 2015)
- Thread starter ChaserFan
- Start date
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Apparently the new T-John is the ultimate infiltrator.... that is, if he were working his way into a Skybar party and needed to talk his way past the bouncer. Why does he need to be chatty to get past the "front line"?
Anyway, there must be some new, inventive technology on the works -- or some crazy biotech that scientists are just starting to think about -- that would be fun to see in a Terminator movie. I'm sure whatever science it is would work for "infiltration" purposes.
The Clown Prince of Crime
Super Freak
The Penetrator also seems more likely as a future technology knowing how most "new things" are actually used. Sexting and porn.
They joke about sexbots for men... but like the cellphone, I believe it will be women that are the major adopters of sexbot technology.
They joke about sexbots for men... but like the cellphone, I believe it will be women that are the major adopters of sexbot technology.
I came back from watching this film and I really enjoyed it. The girl playing Connor is hawyt and c__k block and creepy smile Arnie were funny IMO
fosing
Super Freak
I just can't see women using sex bots. Toys, machines, gadgets, whatever you want to call them, are never better than the real thing
T-1 is a dildo.
Merle's Right Hand
Freaked Out
- Joined
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I'm shocked that my lowball numbers on box office take for this movie might be way too high.
Why are you weirdos so worried about box office numbers? Unless you work in Hollywood you shouldn't care.
You need to work in Hollywood to want this movie to make enough money to greenlight sequels?
jye4ever
Broke and happy
My sisters job depends on it.
Not a weirdo.
Not a weirdo.
Last edited:
quadcent
Super Freak
there's always SW franchise or Top Gun 2......
Just reading his bio is enough to bring most to their knees.
What a powerhouse of human accomplishments.
Body Building
Business
Entrepreneur
Schooling
Language
Politics
Acting
Children
The only thing he hasn't done was direct a movie.
How many actors can say they have been in 7 near perfect movies.
Even though it is fantastic but once you get as much money as he does. Lots of options and possibilities comes your way. Which most don't get.
It was such a great film though. Nearly burnt out the VHS back then.
"When you were under 25, full of testosterone, and admiring Arnold."
Must be fun to be a child today. Internet hassle, feminine boys/men, crossdressers, sex changes, political correctness and everyone is offended.
I don't think they go on long, long bike rides, climb tall trees, swing from them, jump off them or tall walls, toy guns big and small, water pistols, pretending to be Rambo or such.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KsUgnRnaw7k
"Oh Man. "In the line of fire", "jurassic park", "rising sun", "the fugitive" etc. in one week. Nowadays just **** in cinemas. :/"
Oh, before my browser crashed. DiFabio on blue toned scenes. Into The Abyss: Teal and Orange - Hollywood, Please Stop the Madness
Lol! Skynet. Crazy how quick this crap happens.
Party at kara's house! Two countries turn up.
Just finished it... wasn't good or bad, just sits there. It's better than TS, and about equal with T3. Jai was HORRIBLE as Kyle, and he had zero chemistry with Emilia and he took me out of the film constantly. Arnie was alright.
The actor playing John sucked. He looks like the Mrs. Doubtfire mask without the wig and glasses.
Lol!
jye4ever
Broke and happy
I don't know who this guy at Forbes.com is but he really REALLY gets Genisys. Awesome review:
Review: 'Terminator: Genisys' Is True Heir To Cameron's Films
It’s been a while since I said my reaction to a film left me wondering what movie all the other film critics saw. So I suppose I was due for another “huh?” experience at the theater. If you’ve heard that the latest sci-fi sequel Terminator: Genisys is a poor entry in the five-film-deep series, then if you’re like me you’ll be in for a pleasant surprise when you watch the film. Already playing in some markets overseas, the sequel to James Cameron’s brilliant franchise that established Arnold Schwarzenegger as a true movie star is intended as both a direct sequel to Cameron’s first two movies (the third and fourth were made without his involvement, and didn’t get a very enthusiastic endorsement from the filmmaker) and a reboot of the whole storyline. The hope is that it will help revive interest and turn the series back into the top-tier blockbuster series it used to be.
Jurassic World successfully revived an older franchise by returning to the original chapter and reimagining it, and it’s paid off to the tune of $1.3 billion and counting so far. While nobody expects Terminator: Genisys to launch that kind of breathtaking resurrection, it makes even bolder use of reimagining the original concept in unexpected ways. The question is, will audiences appreciate how much it reworks the old concepts, or will they complain that it either makes too much use of them or doesn’t adhere to them enough (both complaints have crept up in reviews, and the fact of this contradiction speaks somewhat to the point that the film exists entirely within the context of the first two films while upending everything about them).
So far, Terminator: Genisys has banked $17 million worldwide after its initial limited weekday screenings in a few markets plus initial domestic showings. That’s an okay beginning but lower than what the studio was hoping for. So far the Cinemascore from viewers is a B+, which doesn’t sound spectacular but is head and shoulders above the current batch of critical reviews at Rotten Tomatoes that have the film at a ridiculously and undeservedly low 26%. Meaning audiences are enjoying the film much more than critics did, and that means the word of mouth will at least offset some of the negativity emanating from the online aggregate sites.
Arnold Schwarzenegger’s box office draw of late has been an admittedly mixed bag. Outside of the Terminator franchise, he’s had real starring roles in eight wide theatrical releases in the last 15 years, and the combined box office for all eight was merely $378 million off of total combined budgets of around $300 million. What saves his 15 year average is the $433 million take for Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines back in 2003, which by itself more than doubles his total box office draw.
Outside of the Terminator movies, then, Schwarzenegger simply hasn’t been able to reconnect with modern cinematic audiences after his remarkable $2.4 billion 10-picture success during the 1990s era. Although he’s often thought of as an ’80s action star, and while it’s true that he rose to fame in that period and had strong success there, his box office cume for that earlier decade was $630 million from 10 lead performances.
Meaning it’s a good thing the Terminator franchise still has some staying power. Even the much-maligned Terminator: Salvation managed to bring in more than $370 million at the box office, which was close to the numbers Star Trek’s reboot took the same year to much talk of its strong performance. And that was without any actual role for Schwarzenegger (despite a CGI depiction at the climax).
Bringing Arnold and the Terminator back together again was expected to work well as a way to jumpstart the franchise. If the film had opened to the expected $55 million domestic and pulled down a healthy amount more in the foreign markets, it would’ve been able to top Salvation’s numbers and finish more in the neighborhood of Rise of the Machines. I said “if,” because it’s numbers so far now suggest it’s headed for a much more modest $40+ million over it’s first five days of release, including the July 4th holiday weekend. It would take a major surge in viewership on the weekend to rescue the film from the $40 million range and drive it back up toward $50 million as had previously been expected.
Adding to the worry is a lot of competition on the box office calendar, not only from some heavy-hitting holdovers like Jurassic World and Inside Out, but also upcoming major contenders opening every single weekend after it opens – Minions, Ant-Man, Pixels, Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation, and Fantastic Four. So it will need to have a great opening overseas and good word of mouth to give it enough staying power in the first couple of weekends to avoid being drowned out by the onslaught of new films and having its soft domestic opening hamstring its global totals.
The PG-13 rating helps a bit, as it ensures younger fans won’t be shut out by an R-rating. But then again, it means the violence level of the movie was toned down and the profanity was likewise kept in check, which is surely going to upset a certain segment of fans. I’m personally not that concerned about movie ratings, and feel it’s a bit silly for fans to worry much about it — in this day and age, a PG-13 movie can drop F-bombs, show beheadings and lots of murderous destruction, and pretty much has a level of mayhem and violence on par with plenty of R-rated movies of past decades. Either a film is good and entertaining, or it’s not, and a good movie can get plenty out of the limits of PG-13 nowadays.
So it looks as if Terminator: Genisys will have to make due with North American receipts of around $40+ million and a final domestic tally somewhere in the neighborhood of $95-105 million, give or take a couple of million bucks depending on just how bad the weekly declines turn out to be. This leaves the production counting on a large dose of love from international audiences just to help the film perform high enough to have a shot at breaking even. But let’s assume it manages to pull 70% of its total box office from overseas — that would give Genisys a worldwide total of $350 million on the higher end of estimates at this point. Which barely covers the cost of production (since studios get half the box office sales), to say nothing of the marketing expenses. It would still need a solid run on home entertainment to recoup the rest of the expenses.
None of which is anything but pure speculation based off a very small amount of data so far. We all know how unreliable box office predictions have been as of late, and it’s entirely possible that a sizable audience is waiting for the weekend to head out and see Terminator: Genisys. And while I highly doubt that’s going to happen, I wish it would, because despite all the terrible criticisms I’ve heard of the movie and the bad buzz, it’s far better than its reputation. How much better, Read on and find out!
Let me get it right out of the way — Terminator: Genisys is indeed the best sequel in the franchise since T2: Judgment Day. This movie feels far more like the original two films than either of the other sequels did (and for the record, I’m a fan of both of the later sequels too; flaws and all they were good, entertaining movies). This is one of several times this year I went into theaters apprehensive or outright assuming I was going to dislike a movie, only to end up surprised.
This is a thoroughly entertaining movie that has fun callbacks to the original films yet decided to honor them while completely turning them on their heads and taking the series in a completely new direction. To establish that new direction, it had no choice but to also revisit the past in order to rip it apart and build something different. The story pretty obviously ignores the third and fourth films entirely, since the continuity is directly based on the first two films alone and elements of the other two are completely ignored and contradicted because they didn’t fit into the history described in the original Cameron films.
Thus we begin with the story we all know (warning, if you’ve not seen the first two Terminator movies, this paragraph contains major spoilers from those films, so skip to the next paragraph — and then go watch both films ASAP!): In a future where machines have wiped out most of humanity, rebels rise up and defeat Skynet (the computer intelligence that rules the machines), only to discover a Terminator (a robot assassin) was sent back in time to hunt down and destroy Sarah Connor before she can give birth to a son destined to lead the human resistance. A lone soldier travels to the past to protect Sarah, they fall in love, and they conceive the very son the Terminator was sent to prevent ever existing. That’s the story of the original Terminator movie. Then the second film has a more advanced Terminator going back in time to kill the son, while a reprogrammed Terminator is sent back in time to protect the boy. With Sarah Connor’s help, they take actions to prevent the machines from ever destroying humanity.
Throughout Genisys, elements of those previous movies show up, often in their exact same form and sometimes more indirectly, and we see how time travel has created an entirely different chain of events that alter everything, even some of the most important events and concepts of the previous stories. As I said, it’s a bold move and the film should be applauded for taking such risks — not only because of the obvious risk arising from changing beloved stories, but also because it invites comparison to those original stories.
It’s interesting, creative, and extremely entertaining. The first hour of the film is flat-out great, and is everything I’d want from a revival-reboot of the franchise. We get to see the war in the future, complete with energy weapons and large-scale combat between the human army and the machines, which fans have long wished for. We see the events that set everything from the original film in motion, from the end of the war to the discovery of the time machine and the decision about who will travel back in time to protect Sarah.
Then we see replays of the events of the original film, except something has happened to change history, and watching the reversals and unmaking of iconic moments with new iconic moments is pretty thrilling — the entire sequence with a young Schwarzenegger from the original film plays out, but when it’s interrupted it is in spectacular fashion and the sort of “wow” moment the series needed to demonstrate it had found something utterly new to offer fans.
From there, the chaos of figuring out what’s changed, what’s the same, and why it’s happening leads to a series of action set pieces and fun character moments that keep the story moving forward at a brisk pace. And when things take a mind-bending turn at the midpoint, it’s the sort of reversal of expectations and “unlearn everything you’ve learned” twists that proves this is a film that takes the mission of reinvention seriously. Had this secret not been given away in the trailers, it’s the sort of shock that would’ve generate massive buzz among critics and fans, and could’ve significantly helped the film’s box office prospects and its reputation.
Nevertheless, even knowing it’s coming doesn’t dilute the impact on the story and the sense that you don’t know where the hell they’re going with this. Indeed, there are mysteries woven throughout the story that aren’t always answered, since the mystery was meant to carry over into additional sequels as part of a trilogy of new films that have their own unique mythology taking shape. It’s precisely the sort of approach that’s needed to breath new life and relevance into an old franchise, and it’s a shame it’s not being appreciated for how many risks it takes and how much it gets very right.
Admittedly, however, things get a little rocky in the third act, and the ticking clock element isn’t fleshed out enough to show what’s really different about it — it’s not a spoiler to say there is a new technology that’s touted as revolutionary and changing the face of the planet, but it’s basically cloud computing and could’ve easily been upgraded into something more imaginative. There’s also a bit of a lack of inventiveness to some of the action beats in this act, except for a major exception that delivers one of the best action sequences of the entire film, so despite my complaints it’s also true that the film doesn’t become “bad” here and is redeemed by things like that big action moment.
Arnold is Arnold, and as the Terminator he is as amazing as ever. More so, in fact, since he gets an arc here that builds on the concepts explored in T2: Judgment Day. Schwarzenegger has tried several times lately to revive his action hero persona, but this is the first time he’s really succeeded, and it’s because he found a way to approach typical roles in a fresh fashion, bringing more humanity and thoughtfulness than before. It’s a mix of his usual Terminator portrayal, and the restraint and world-weariness he demonstrated in his rightly applauded performance in Maggie (see my review of that film here). Seeing him return, I realized just how much the franchise missed him in the previous outing and how much any successful relaunch was going to depend on his presence.
Emilia Clarke is wonderfully cast as the new Sarah — she has some qualities that remind one of Linda Hamilton, particularly her eyes and shape of her mouth — and she delivers a performance that makes her a worthy successor for the role. She has the precise right mix of toughness and fragility, of someone who has a hard edge because she has to, and she’s strong enough to maintain control and hone that sharp edge, but the toll of carrying the weight of the future on her shoulders and having her destiny preordained wears on her and require her to fight every moment just to keep her sanity and strength up.
Jason Clarke’s John Connor is the fifth actor to take on the role in the last four films (we saw John Connor both young and adult in T2). Clarke follows Christian Bale, who delivered a dramatic incarnation of John as a man who is supposed to have all of the answers but is afraid he won’t live up to the legend and faces a future that’s not what he was told to expect.
Clarke’s iteration is more of the traditional John we heard about in the first two films, and he seems much more like the grown version of the young man we met in T2 — a sense of humor and irony, and an ever-present cynicism that masks a desperate desire to have hope again. You can see him as both charming and demanding, someone whom you can imagine people following into war.
I must say, as much as I liked Bale’s characterization for its nuances and damaged humanity, he never struck me as someone about whom I’d imagine people saying, “I’d die for John Connor.” I think we got something much closer to the idea of John Connor this time, finally, which has its own unique irony, as you’ll see when you watch the film.
Jai Courtney as Kyle Reese is where the casting hits a snag, and it’s a significant one. It is not that Courtney does a poor job — contrary to the hyperbolic negativity I heard about his performance in the film, he does fine with the role as far as his acting talent is concerned. He’s far better here than in the horrible A Good Day To Die Hard, for comparison, which demonstrates the importance of having good material to work with.
The problem with Courtney in this film is simply that Kyle Reese isn’t supposed to be an action hero, but in this film having someone like Courtney — who looks like a traditional muscular, square-jawed action hero — turns him into one.
Part of what made The Terminator so brilliant was the way it mixed and then overturned genre expectations. It had a lead who was essential a traditional female from a horror film transplanted into the action genre; it took a more typically “action hero” sort of character and turned him into the monster/villain; and it had a male hero who was confused and repeatedly injured while doing a poor job as a protector. Kyle wasn’t the sort of guy who runs and jumps and punches his way through an action sequence and comes out looking heroic and successful. He was the guy who does his best and acts rashly sometimes, and who stumbles and drops his weapon, but keeps going despite the fact he’s hurt and made mistakes.
Courtney’s Kyle Reese always looks buff, he only has a few failed moments (during his initial confusion over the changed timeline), and mostly seems like a sometimes witty, smart alecky guy with traditional good looks. This isn’t to say Michael Biehn wasn’t handsome or physically fit or charming, but his Kyle was stoic and hardened by decades of pain and warfare and loneliness. All he knew was his mission, and that focus is what made him right for the duty.
Of course, Terminator: Genisys is rebooting, so it’s fair to say that required some reimagining of the character for new audiences. Except I don’t think it was necessary, and in fact I think it was counter to what the film needed. Someone like Hugh Dancy, Nicholas Hoult, or Jack O’Connell for example would’ve been much more appropriate casting, since modern audiences like their heroes a bit more non-traditional at times, and it works as a nice counterweight to Schwarzenegger’s alternate type of traditional heroic persona.
So it is that one of the film’s primary weaknesses turns out to be that Kyle Reese seems like a completely different character, like a more generic action hero from a 1980s or 1990s average action flick. And since this movie relies so much on the connection to the original two films and Kyle is the primary recurring thread linking back to the original film’s timeline and events, he needed to be consistent with the first film’s portrayal of Kyle. But he isn’t, and that’s a problem.
Luckily everything else mostly works so well, and everyone else fits their roles right, and so there’s never a moment where Kyle Reese’s characterization derails things. Still, while it doesn’t hurt it enough to ruin it, it also doesn’t add as much as it could have and needed to, so it holds the film back from achieving even greater potential. A combination of the right casting here and also keeping the major twist a secret would’ve helped tremendously in terms of critical and audience reactions, I’ve no doubt.
All of that said, the film works far more often than it doesn’t, and while I cannot say it’s on par with the first two films, it’s the best of the last three sequels and the one closest in spirit and style to Cameron’s films. It didn’t skimp on ideas for taking a new approach, it made the story its own and built a new mythology atop the old one, and it successfully revived the story in a way allowing for a whole new examination of where things could go from here.
But just as nostalgic yearning became a tremendous force propelling Jurassic World to box office glory, the flip side of that is a sort of cynical nostalgia that distrusts change and anticipates failure. I’m not saying everyone who disliked Terminator: Genisys did so because of this cynical nostalgia, but I’ve seen it reflected in a great deal of the negativity hurled at the film from the get-go.
There was an early determination that this film wasn’t going to be good and didn’t deserve our support, and that narrative grew stronger and took root, and I think a lot of people let it cloud their perception of the film to various extents. Flaws get overstated, virtues are ignored or dismissed, and instead of just disliking the film people start claiming it’s horrible or the worst of the year. Maybe some viewers really believe this movie was terrible and is worse than anything else that came out so far in 2015, but it’s hard to imagine they saw many films if this one is the worst they’ve seen.
Unless a box office miracle happens, it’s unlikely Terminator: Genisys will spawn further sequels in the next few years. Which is a shame, because I want to see where they were headed with this, and because we could’ve finally had a revival of the franchise that surprised us and found a whole new direction for the war against the machines. If you’re a fan of the franchise, I think you’d find this a satisfying reboot-sequel, and I hope fans get energized to give it a look, so that it hits box office numbers strong enough to justify a sequel.
Review: 'Terminator: Genisys' Is True Heir To Cameron's Films - Forbes
Review: 'Terminator: Genisys' Is True Heir To Cameron's Films
It’s been a while since I said my reaction to a film left me wondering what movie all the other film critics saw. So I suppose I was due for another “huh?” experience at the theater. If you’ve heard that the latest sci-fi sequel Terminator: Genisys is a poor entry in the five-film-deep series, then if you’re like me you’ll be in for a pleasant surprise when you watch the film. Already playing in some markets overseas, the sequel to James Cameron’s brilliant franchise that established Arnold Schwarzenegger as a true movie star is intended as both a direct sequel to Cameron’s first two movies (the third and fourth were made without his involvement, and didn’t get a very enthusiastic endorsement from the filmmaker) and a reboot of the whole storyline. The hope is that it will help revive interest and turn the series back into the top-tier blockbuster series it used to be.
Jurassic World successfully revived an older franchise by returning to the original chapter and reimagining it, and it’s paid off to the tune of $1.3 billion and counting so far. While nobody expects Terminator: Genisys to launch that kind of breathtaking resurrection, it makes even bolder use of reimagining the original concept in unexpected ways. The question is, will audiences appreciate how much it reworks the old concepts, or will they complain that it either makes too much use of them or doesn’t adhere to them enough (both complaints have crept up in reviews, and the fact of this contradiction speaks somewhat to the point that the film exists entirely within the context of the first two films while upending everything about them).
So far, Terminator: Genisys has banked $17 million worldwide after its initial limited weekday screenings in a few markets plus initial domestic showings. That’s an okay beginning but lower than what the studio was hoping for. So far the Cinemascore from viewers is a B+, which doesn’t sound spectacular but is head and shoulders above the current batch of critical reviews at Rotten Tomatoes that have the film at a ridiculously and undeservedly low 26%. Meaning audiences are enjoying the film much more than critics did, and that means the word of mouth will at least offset some of the negativity emanating from the online aggregate sites.
Arnold Schwarzenegger’s box office draw of late has been an admittedly mixed bag. Outside of the Terminator franchise, he’s had real starring roles in eight wide theatrical releases in the last 15 years, and the combined box office for all eight was merely $378 million off of total combined budgets of around $300 million. What saves his 15 year average is the $433 million take for Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines back in 2003, which by itself more than doubles his total box office draw.
Outside of the Terminator movies, then, Schwarzenegger simply hasn’t been able to reconnect with modern cinematic audiences after his remarkable $2.4 billion 10-picture success during the 1990s era. Although he’s often thought of as an ’80s action star, and while it’s true that he rose to fame in that period and had strong success there, his box office cume for that earlier decade was $630 million from 10 lead performances.
Meaning it’s a good thing the Terminator franchise still has some staying power. Even the much-maligned Terminator: Salvation managed to bring in more than $370 million at the box office, which was close to the numbers Star Trek’s reboot took the same year to much talk of its strong performance. And that was without any actual role for Schwarzenegger (despite a CGI depiction at the climax).
Bringing Arnold and the Terminator back together again was expected to work well as a way to jumpstart the franchise. If the film had opened to the expected $55 million domestic and pulled down a healthy amount more in the foreign markets, it would’ve been able to top Salvation’s numbers and finish more in the neighborhood of Rise of the Machines. I said “if,” because it’s numbers so far now suggest it’s headed for a much more modest $40+ million over it’s first five days of release, including the July 4th holiday weekend. It would take a major surge in viewership on the weekend to rescue the film from the $40 million range and drive it back up toward $50 million as had previously been expected.
Adding to the worry is a lot of competition on the box office calendar, not only from some heavy-hitting holdovers like Jurassic World and Inside Out, but also upcoming major contenders opening every single weekend after it opens – Minions, Ant-Man, Pixels, Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation, and Fantastic Four. So it will need to have a great opening overseas and good word of mouth to give it enough staying power in the first couple of weekends to avoid being drowned out by the onslaught of new films and having its soft domestic opening hamstring its global totals.
The PG-13 rating helps a bit, as it ensures younger fans won’t be shut out by an R-rating. But then again, it means the violence level of the movie was toned down and the profanity was likewise kept in check, which is surely going to upset a certain segment of fans. I’m personally not that concerned about movie ratings, and feel it’s a bit silly for fans to worry much about it — in this day and age, a PG-13 movie can drop F-bombs, show beheadings and lots of murderous destruction, and pretty much has a level of mayhem and violence on par with plenty of R-rated movies of past decades. Either a film is good and entertaining, or it’s not, and a good movie can get plenty out of the limits of PG-13 nowadays.
So it looks as if Terminator: Genisys will have to make due with North American receipts of around $40+ million and a final domestic tally somewhere in the neighborhood of $95-105 million, give or take a couple of million bucks depending on just how bad the weekly declines turn out to be. This leaves the production counting on a large dose of love from international audiences just to help the film perform high enough to have a shot at breaking even. But let’s assume it manages to pull 70% of its total box office from overseas — that would give Genisys a worldwide total of $350 million on the higher end of estimates at this point. Which barely covers the cost of production (since studios get half the box office sales), to say nothing of the marketing expenses. It would still need a solid run on home entertainment to recoup the rest of the expenses.
None of which is anything but pure speculation based off a very small amount of data so far. We all know how unreliable box office predictions have been as of late, and it’s entirely possible that a sizable audience is waiting for the weekend to head out and see Terminator: Genisys. And while I highly doubt that’s going to happen, I wish it would, because despite all the terrible criticisms I’ve heard of the movie and the bad buzz, it’s far better than its reputation. How much better, Read on and find out!
Let me get it right out of the way — Terminator: Genisys is indeed the best sequel in the franchise since T2: Judgment Day. This movie feels far more like the original two films than either of the other sequels did (and for the record, I’m a fan of both of the later sequels too; flaws and all they were good, entertaining movies). This is one of several times this year I went into theaters apprehensive or outright assuming I was going to dislike a movie, only to end up surprised.
This is a thoroughly entertaining movie that has fun callbacks to the original films yet decided to honor them while completely turning them on their heads and taking the series in a completely new direction. To establish that new direction, it had no choice but to also revisit the past in order to rip it apart and build something different. The story pretty obviously ignores the third and fourth films entirely, since the continuity is directly based on the first two films alone and elements of the other two are completely ignored and contradicted because they didn’t fit into the history described in the original Cameron films.
Thus we begin with the story we all know (warning, if you’ve not seen the first two Terminator movies, this paragraph contains major spoilers from those films, so skip to the next paragraph — and then go watch both films ASAP!): In a future where machines have wiped out most of humanity, rebels rise up and defeat Skynet (the computer intelligence that rules the machines), only to discover a Terminator (a robot assassin) was sent back in time to hunt down and destroy Sarah Connor before she can give birth to a son destined to lead the human resistance. A lone soldier travels to the past to protect Sarah, they fall in love, and they conceive the very son the Terminator was sent to prevent ever existing. That’s the story of the original Terminator movie. Then the second film has a more advanced Terminator going back in time to kill the son, while a reprogrammed Terminator is sent back in time to protect the boy. With Sarah Connor’s help, they take actions to prevent the machines from ever destroying humanity.
Throughout Genisys, elements of those previous movies show up, often in their exact same form and sometimes more indirectly, and we see how time travel has created an entirely different chain of events that alter everything, even some of the most important events and concepts of the previous stories. As I said, it’s a bold move and the film should be applauded for taking such risks — not only because of the obvious risk arising from changing beloved stories, but also because it invites comparison to those original stories.
It’s interesting, creative, and extremely entertaining. The first hour of the film is flat-out great, and is everything I’d want from a revival-reboot of the franchise. We get to see the war in the future, complete with energy weapons and large-scale combat between the human army and the machines, which fans have long wished for. We see the events that set everything from the original film in motion, from the end of the war to the discovery of the time machine and the decision about who will travel back in time to protect Sarah.
Then we see replays of the events of the original film, except something has happened to change history, and watching the reversals and unmaking of iconic moments with new iconic moments is pretty thrilling — the entire sequence with a young Schwarzenegger from the original film plays out, but when it’s interrupted it is in spectacular fashion and the sort of “wow” moment the series needed to demonstrate it had found something utterly new to offer fans.
From there, the chaos of figuring out what’s changed, what’s the same, and why it’s happening leads to a series of action set pieces and fun character moments that keep the story moving forward at a brisk pace. And when things take a mind-bending turn at the midpoint, it’s the sort of reversal of expectations and “unlearn everything you’ve learned” twists that proves this is a film that takes the mission of reinvention seriously. Had this secret not been given away in the trailers, it’s the sort of shock that would’ve generate massive buzz among critics and fans, and could’ve significantly helped the film’s box office prospects and its reputation.
Nevertheless, even knowing it’s coming doesn’t dilute the impact on the story and the sense that you don’t know where the hell they’re going with this. Indeed, there are mysteries woven throughout the story that aren’t always answered, since the mystery was meant to carry over into additional sequels as part of a trilogy of new films that have their own unique mythology taking shape. It’s precisely the sort of approach that’s needed to breath new life and relevance into an old franchise, and it’s a shame it’s not being appreciated for how many risks it takes and how much it gets very right.
Admittedly, however, things get a little rocky in the third act, and the ticking clock element isn’t fleshed out enough to show what’s really different about it — it’s not a spoiler to say there is a new technology that’s touted as revolutionary and changing the face of the planet, but it’s basically cloud computing and could’ve easily been upgraded into something more imaginative. There’s also a bit of a lack of inventiveness to some of the action beats in this act, except for a major exception that delivers one of the best action sequences of the entire film, so despite my complaints it’s also true that the film doesn’t become “bad” here and is redeemed by things like that big action moment.
Arnold is Arnold, and as the Terminator he is as amazing as ever. More so, in fact, since he gets an arc here that builds on the concepts explored in T2: Judgment Day. Schwarzenegger has tried several times lately to revive his action hero persona, but this is the first time he’s really succeeded, and it’s because he found a way to approach typical roles in a fresh fashion, bringing more humanity and thoughtfulness than before. It’s a mix of his usual Terminator portrayal, and the restraint and world-weariness he demonstrated in his rightly applauded performance in Maggie (see my review of that film here). Seeing him return, I realized just how much the franchise missed him in the previous outing and how much any successful relaunch was going to depend on his presence.
Emilia Clarke is wonderfully cast as the new Sarah — she has some qualities that remind one of Linda Hamilton, particularly her eyes and shape of her mouth — and she delivers a performance that makes her a worthy successor for the role. She has the precise right mix of toughness and fragility, of someone who has a hard edge because she has to, and she’s strong enough to maintain control and hone that sharp edge, but the toll of carrying the weight of the future on her shoulders and having her destiny preordained wears on her and require her to fight every moment just to keep her sanity and strength up.
Jason Clarke’s John Connor is the fifth actor to take on the role in the last four films (we saw John Connor both young and adult in T2). Clarke follows Christian Bale, who delivered a dramatic incarnation of John as a man who is supposed to have all of the answers but is afraid he won’t live up to the legend and faces a future that’s not what he was told to expect.
Clarke’s iteration is more of the traditional John we heard about in the first two films, and he seems much more like the grown version of the young man we met in T2 — a sense of humor and irony, and an ever-present cynicism that masks a desperate desire to have hope again. You can see him as both charming and demanding, someone whom you can imagine people following into war.
I must say, as much as I liked Bale’s characterization for its nuances and damaged humanity, he never struck me as someone about whom I’d imagine people saying, “I’d die for John Connor.” I think we got something much closer to the idea of John Connor this time, finally, which has its own unique irony, as you’ll see when you watch the film.
Jai Courtney as Kyle Reese is where the casting hits a snag, and it’s a significant one. It is not that Courtney does a poor job — contrary to the hyperbolic negativity I heard about his performance in the film, he does fine with the role as far as his acting talent is concerned. He’s far better here than in the horrible A Good Day To Die Hard, for comparison, which demonstrates the importance of having good material to work with.
The problem with Courtney in this film is simply that Kyle Reese isn’t supposed to be an action hero, but in this film having someone like Courtney — who looks like a traditional muscular, square-jawed action hero — turns him into one.
Part of what made The Terminator so brilliant was the way it mixed and then overturned genre expectations. It had a lead who was essential a traditional female from a horror film transplanted into the action genre; it took a more typically “action hero” sort of character and turned him into the monster/villain; and it had a male hero who was confused and repeatedly injured while doing a poor job as a protector. Kyle wasn’t the sort of guy who runs and jumps and punches his way through an action sequence and comes out looking heroic and successful. He was the guy who does his best and acts rashly sometimes, and who stumbles and drops his weapon, but keeps going despite the fact he’s hurt and made mistakes.
Courtney’s Kyle Reese always looks buff, he only has a few failed moments (during his initial confusion over the changed timeline), and mostly seems like a sometimes witty, smart alecky guy with traditional good looks. This isn’t to say Michael Biehn wasn’t handsome or physically fit or charming, but his Kyle was stoic and hardened by decades of pain and warfare and loneliness. All he knew was his mission, and that focus is what made him right for the duty.
Of course, Terminator: Genisys is rebooting, so it’s fair to say that required some reimagining of the character for new audiences. Except I don’t think it was necessary, and in fact I think it was counter to what the film needed. Someone like Hugh Dancy, Nicholas Hoult, or Jack O’Connell for example would’ve been much more appropriate casting, since modern audiences like their heroes a bit more non-traditional at times, and it works as a nice counterweight to Schwarzenegger’s alternate type of traditional heroic persona.
So it is that one of the film’s primary weaknesses turns out to be that Kyle Reese seems like a completely different character, like a more generic action hero from a 1980s or 1990s average action flick. And since this movie relies so much on the connection to the original two films and Kyle is the primary recurring thread linking back to the original film’s timeline and events, he needed to be consistent with the first film’s portrayal of Kyle. But he isn’t, and that’s a problem.
Luckily everything else mostly works so well, and everyone else fits their roles right, and so there’s never a moment where Kyle Reese’s characterization derails things. Still, while it doesn’t hurt it enough to ruin it, it also doesn’t add as much as it could have and needed to, so it holds the film back from achieving even greater potential. A combination of the right casting here and also keeping the major twist a secret would’ve helped tremendously in terms of critical and audience reactions, I’ve no doubt.
All of that said, the film works far more often than it doesn’t, and while I cannot say it’s on par with the first two films, it’s the best of the last three sequels and the one closest in spirit and style to Cameron’s films. It didn’t skimp on ideas for taking a new approach, it made the story its own and built a new mythology atop the old one, and it successfully revived the story in a way allowing for a whole new examination of where things could go from here.
But just as nostalgic yearning became a tremendous force propelling Jurassic World to box office glory, the flip side of that is a sort of cynical nostalgia that distrusts change and anticipates failure. I’m not saying everyone who disliked Terminator: Genisys did so because of this cynical nostalgia, but I’ve seen it reflected in a great deal of the negativity hurled at the film from the get-go.
There was an early determination that this film wasn’t going to be good and didn’t deserve our support, and that narrative grew stronger and took root, and I think a lot of people let it cloud their perception of the film to various extents. Flaws get overstated, virtues are ignored or dismissed, and instead of just disliking the film people start claiming it’s horrible or the worst of the year. Maybe some viewers really believe this movie was terrible and is worse than anything else that came out so far in 2015, but it’s hard to imagine they saw many films if this one is the worst they’ve seen.
Unless a box office miracle happens, it’s unlikely Terminator: Genisys will spawn further sequels in the next few years. Which is a shame, because I want to see where they were headed with this, and because we could’ve finally had a revival of the franchise that surprised us and found a whole new direction for the war against the machines. If you’re a fan of the franchise, I think you’d find this a satisfying reboot-sequel, and I hope fans get energized to give it a look, so that it hits box office numbers strong enough to justify a sequel.
Review: 'Terminator: Genisys' Is True Heir To Cameron's Films - Forbes
Definitely can't agree with that. I found Clarke to be quite good, actually surprisingly good, while Courtney's Reese was the definite weak link.
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