Terminator Genisys Six-month review

Let's do a half-year review of the newest entry into the Terminator Franchise, Terminator Genisys.

My original view of this film was higher than it is now. Originally, I said that this was the best film since Terminator 2: Judgment Day. That view is still in place: out of the three that have come after, to me it is still the best. But with time to review it further, there are several flaws in the film that in hindsight should not be overlooked and are detrimental to the film.

The film is written by Laeta Kalogridis and Patrick Lussier, and directed by Alan Taylor, who directed Thor: The Dark World. It centres around an altered timeline brought about when Skynet compromises John Connor, leader of the Resistance. It once agains features Arnold Schwarzenegger as the Terminator, the machine sent back through time to protect Sarah Connor (with Brett Azar as the 1984 Terminator from the first film - a difital effect which to me was done very, very well, and puts Terminator Salvation's paltry effort at including a younger T-800 to shame), and features Emilia Clarke as Sarah Connor, Jai Courtney as Kyle Reese, Jason Clarke as John Connor, and Matt Smith as Skynet.

The film sticks more rigidly to the mythos established by the first two films, ignoring the last two completely. This is in of itself a blessing as those films are awful, awful films (and by the writers' own confessions, they understand nothing of the lore set out in the first two films). However, the film suffers from the assumption that there would be a sequel, so they can leave the explanations until then.

They could have and should have tried to make it longer to try to cater for the explanations the film desparately lacks for certain things such as the Nexus Point idea. The casting is hit-and-miss - I had agreed at the time that Jai Courtney wasn't the right one to play Kyle Reese, but I thought Emilia Clarke did a decent job. Arnold... well, they could in all honesty have not included him, or if they did include him they could have had him play the voice while using Digital Arnold throughout the film. The ending was a bit of a cop-out, with Pops conviniently being knocked into the vat of liquid metal. The film's biggest error was assuming they could leave the explanations to the sequels, the future of which are now uncertain.


Let's be honest here: I think the film was doomed to fail from the start, not because of how it was written, acted or directed, but both because of how the marketing was handled and the jaded views of a loud majority who seem to now hate the series as a whole because of the last two films. It was given very low scores by many reviewers, unfairly in my opinion. James Cameron threw his weight behind it at the time, saying it was, to him, the third film, but whether he maintains that view in the onslaught of criticism or whether he comes in later and says, "Yeah, I didn't mean any of that" is anybody's guess - he has form for doing it with T3 (which he said was a good film at the time but secretly despised).

I'd stand by it being a better movie than T3, partly because I think unlike T3 they at least tried, even if they didn't get it right. However, I think they need to end this line here and start fresh. Ditch Arnold, save for a digital cameo or two, or if you have to, get somebody younger to play the physical Terminator and have young Arnold added in as a digital double, with Schwarzenegger providing the voice. Definitely ditch Jai Courtney unless they want him to be a Terminator.

Original score: low 7/10
New score: low 6/10, skirting high 5/10.