Terminator Genisys
Skynet, an artificial intelligence software system, was created to make life easier. Instead of improving streaming speed, Skynet became self-aware and a powerful enemy of the human race. Hacking into every computer system in the world, Skynet built an army of infiltration androids (called Terminators), launched missiles and wiped out three billion people.
By 2029, humanity has a savior. John Connor (Jason Clarke: Child 44) is a fierce warrior who seems to know exactly what Skynet will do before the machine does it. On the eve of losing the war to the humans, Skynet takes desperate action: It sends one of its Terminators (Arnold Schwarzenegger: Maggie) back in time to 1984, the year John’s mother, Sarah Connor (Emilia Clarke: Game of Thrones), gives birth to him.
To stop the prenatal assassination, John sends back his most trusted soldier, Kyle Reese (Jai Courtney: The Water Diviner). Kyle imagines Sarah to be a helpless woman terrorized by a killer machine. What he finds is a warrior who takes out Terminators in the blink of an eye and has more weapons training than a Navy SEAL.
It turns out Kyle and the Terminator aren’t the only time travelers. After the 1984 attempt fails, Skynet sends a Terminator back to the 1970s to kill Sarah as a child. The attempt, which kills Sarah’s parents, is thwarted by a friendly Terminator (also Schwarzenegger) who then raises Sarah in preparation for her 1984 meeting with Kyle. Those two crazy kids share a night that creates John Connor.
Now, the timeline has splintered. Kyle and Sarah must attempt to change the future using time travel, explosives and their rapidly aging Terminator.
Sound confusing and convoluted? It is.
Try not to think too hard about the multiple timelines; the writers clearly haven’t. From its misspelled title to its horrible plot, Terminator Genisys is an exercise in audience patience.
Director Alan Taylor (Thor: The Dark World) hammers what should be the final nail into the coffin of the Terminator franchise with this stupid, messy film. He apes the style of James Cameron’s first film, but the callbacks to the original underscore just how awful this movie is. Action sequences are bloodless, loud and confusing cacophonies of sound and CGI animation. Explosions are big, but without any connection to plot they’re little more than an expensive distraction.
Writers Late Kalogridis and Patrick Lussier do the bare minimum, relying on the audience’s memory of the previous films and lazy exposition on the nature of time travel to move the plot along. With never a reason for what happens, characters look as confused as the audience is.
With a terrible script and a director with no vision, it’s easy to understand why the performances are so uniformly bad. Clarke and Courtney are set up to for an antagonistic romance, but they fail to find the right chemistry. Instead of sexual tension, we have two people who don’t seem to like each other very much. Clarke also has trouble being tough. She flinches when she fires guns, screams in a baby voice and pouts at both man and machine when things don’t go her way. Only Arnold, who was born to play the robotic character that made him famous, is having any fun. He still delivers one-liners with aplomb and manages to look deadly at an age that qualifies him for Social Security.
Poorly written, badly acted and utterly confusing, Terminator Genisys is the reason sequels get such a bad rap.