‘Terminator: Genysis’ Roundtable Review

TERMINATOR: GENISYS  Directed by Alan Taylor; Written by Laeta Kalogridis, Patrick Lussier; Starring Arnold Schwarzenegger, Jason Clarke, Emilia Clarke, Jai Courtney, J.K. Simmons, Dayo Okeniyi, Matt Smith, Courtney B. Vance, Byung-hun Lee; Rated PG – 13 for “intense sequences of sci-fi violence and gunplay throughout, partial nudity and brief strong language”; Running time 126 minutes; In wide release July 1, 2015.

It’s almost hard to believe the Terminator franchise has been with us for 31 years. Spanning a total of five movies and a short lived TV series, the story of Skynet, hellbent on destroying all of humanity, as well as the heroic exploits of Sarah and John Connor who will stop at nothing to save the human race has spanned generations and has given us some of the best and worst we have seen at the movies. Terminator Genisys looks to tell a new story and add in a few twists, but it’s hard to say if its attempt was successful.

Genisys starts in 2029 on the eve of the destruction of Skynet. John Connor finally has his army in place to destroy its central computer, but he has to send one final strike team to take out the machines’ ultimate weapon. With humanity on the brink of victory, Connor and Kyle Reese learn they are too late and a Terminator was successfully sent to 1984 to alter the timeline and ensure the Machines’ triumph. Reese himself is chosen to go back and protect John’s mother, Sarah Connor, and the movie begins in earnest at what we believe is the start of the first Terminator movie.

But something is different. Reese arrives to find that Sarah is not the naive and fearful waitress he was expecting. Instead, she is already a battle hardened warrior who has been fighting the Machines all her life. Something else has happened to the timeline, and not only has her future been altered, but a Terminator itself, the original T-800, has been her guardian and teacher ever since she was a young child. Utilizing strange visions of his future he saw as he travelled to 1984, Reese must convince them to jump ahead in time with him to 2017 to fight the new and improved version of Skynet — Genisys — before it fully comes online and unleashes Judgement Day.

With that plot out of the way, what did our robots think of these rampaging future robots?

Citizen-bot: *Sigh* I wanted to like this movie a lot more. It ends up with a lot of spectacle and cool action sequences, but it misses some of the key elements of what made previous Terminator outings so good. While other summer blockbusters (Jurassic World) could get away with taking themselves less seriously, there is a lack of joy and heart in this film and a constant challenge to keep up with its wibbly-wobbly timey-wimey stuff that makes it impossible to turn off your brain — because you have to use it just to make the logical leaps of the script and filmmaking. It keeps poking that rational center of your brain by making you think about time travel and paradoxes and how this is all supposed to work together. It would be like if every 15 minutes in Jurassic World, they explained to you again just how hard it is to do DNA resequencing to make dinosaurs in the first place. Shut up, I don’t care about the science anymore– I just want to watch dinosaurs eat people.

Adam McDonald: And I’m on the opposite end of the spectrum here; I thought it was really smart and took advantage of the time travel stuff. Look, time travel movies will always have plot holes and problems — “Back to the Future” and even “Looper” which is my favorite movie in that genre have issues — but “Genisys” used it the right way by taking the “Days of Future Past” route. It pretty much retconned the entire series and was able to do what it wanted because the rules the previous movies and show had set up were wiped out; it didn’t have to worry if it messed with the continuity because it made its own. It could take past tropes and turn them on their heads because it made on the fly without fear of consequence.

Citizen-Bot: There is a lot to love here, though. I actually really enjoyed the first third to half of the movie– up until they went to 2017. This is the essence of what makes the Terminator films so cool and the Terminators cool as villains: they’re essentially just slasher movie villains– immortal, single-minded killing machines coming after our protagonists. And they’re not going to stop. So all of the Kyle Reese and Sarah Connor running from the original T-800 Ahnold AND a liquid metal T-1000 for the first part of the movie is great.

Adam McDonald: But they were able to do the same in 2017, and I won’t explain why because of giant spoiler reasons.

Citizen-Bot: And then old Ahnold, the Guardian Terminator aka “Pops” decides to give us a lesson in time travel and quantum mechanics. And it just doesn’t make a lot of sense. Paging Doc Brown and his chalkboard– we need some help untangling the Terminator franchise’s complicated (and contradictory) mythology. It would’ve helped if, like with Jurassic World, we’d just been told to ignore the other sequels and only care about the first film (and in the case here, the first film and T2, but that’s it).

Adam McDonald: But like I said, that’s pretty much what they did. There were some really cool throwbacks and winks to the previous films, but there were just there for series fans to enjoy as easter eggs.

Citizen-Bot: What’s sad to me was how casually some of that mythology was tossed aside. The “Sarah Connor Chronicles” tv show was amazing. Specifically, it not only dwelt on the relentlessness of the machines who were sent to kill John Connor, but also the relentlessness of time itself. Despite the protestations of “No Fate,” it seemed all they could do is delay Judgement Day, not prevent it. It explored issues of faith, loyalty, fate, apocalypse, love, and whether or not John Connor had become “too close” with the machines he reprogrammed to help fight the war. As relentless as the machines were in their hunting for John Connor, even more unstoppable, relentless an enemy is time itself– and an inescapable fate of a future war against the machines. There’s no such heart or reflection here, instead replaced by spectacle and ‘splosions. In order to reboot the franchise, they needed to wipe the slate clean of most of that. But they could’ve learned a few lessons from it instead of ignoring it completely.

Adam McDonald: The original ending for “T2” took that same route as well. The final scene had them driving down a road with Sarah Connor giving a monologue that the future wasn’t set and they were finally, hopefully, free of fate.

Citizen-Bot: I would’ve liked to have seen more of that, especially compared to the “big happy family” ending we got. Ugh. One thing I do want to praise is the treatment of Sarah Connor and her portayal by Emelia Clarke. Turning the whole mythos on its head by having her rescue Kyle Reese with “Come with me if you want to live” is great. Sarah Connor has never exactly been a damsel, but she comes closest to it in the first film. This flips that completely, and now you have two competent, capable badasses both trying to figure out which one of the two of them is more “in charge” of the other. Not only is Sarah fighting against Judgement Day, she’s also fighting against this idea that somehow she is pre-destined to fall in love with this man Kyle Reese and conceive a child and then he dies. That is perhaps the most interesting piece of the entire film, and it is only barely explored.

Adam McDonald: Yes, yes and yes! Emilia Clarke was perfect as Sarah Connor. I know some people have given her crap for not being as bad ass as Linda Hamilton, but she fit the role perfectly. We didn’t have to see her evolve into a warrior since she had been training her entire life already.

Citizen-Bot: Which brings us to Jai Courtney as Kyle Reese himself. He may as well have just been a wooden post reciting lines. He wasn’t bad, he just wasn’t remarkable, continuing his string of mediocre roles like in Die Hard. At least he wasn’t as insufferable and annoying as in the Insurgent films. And he’s certainly credible as a competent, strong soldier. Except that the original Kyle Reese was scrappy, not yoked. He was smart, not strong. So this just seems. .  out of character? Or maybe that it seems like we’ve majorly evolved what our action heroes should look like in an age of Hemsworths and Tatums. Suddenly Michael Biehn just doesn’t cut it anymore?

Adam McDonald: He was decent as Reese, and this is easily his best performance yet, but that’s not really saying much. He didn’t distract, but there wasn’t much gravitas to his character who should have been this battle-hardened warrior instead of the somewhat milquetoast he portrayed for the first half of the film or so. At least we get to see his butt!

Citizen-Bot: Yeah, but ass aside, not much remarkable here. Also, if you want to see Jai Courtney’s actual best performance, he’s great for the 10 minutes he’s in Russel Crowe’s “The Water Diviner.” But, yeah, this is better than his normal schlock. This I can tolerate. I just wish we had better.

The marketing for this movie also spoiled several major plot points, which I would’ve liked to have seen without being spoiled. Specifically, I’m referring to the major John Connor reveal which was shown in the second trailer. As I think back about this, I spent too much time in the first half of the movie trying to figure out how this plot spoiler was going to fit in. And then it completely ruined what would have been a really cool reveal and a few key moments

Adam McDonald: UGH, I couldn’t agree more! I only saw ONE trailer for this film, and they gave away the biggest reveal of the movie in the middle of it. It was still cool seeing it play out on screen, but it would have been so much more impactful had they simply let everyone experience it they way we should have

Citizen-Bot: Even then, it feels like this movie was written in the following process: everyone gathers around a table with a whiteboard, and then start listing everything they love about Terminator movies, and then they figure out how to cram every last bit of that into the movie. With a nod and a wink, we get an overstuffed, self-referential film with all of the uniqueness of a McDonald’s value meal. 

Adam McDonald: And see, I absolutely loved that! They paid homage to what had come before yet still made it their own. I saw it less of a Happy Meal and more of a trip to a buffet — there’s some good stuff and some bad stuff, but you get to choose what you liked and could go back for more.

 

Citizen-Bot: Overall, this movie is like a Terminator itself: it looks lifelike, but underneath it’s lifeless and soulless. And it won’t stop until it completes its mission: to reboot the franchise in the most inane way possible (ugh, that ending!!!) so that, like a future war factory, we can march more Terminator sequels off the assembly line. I hope that people can go in and enjoy this movie. For fans of the franchise, I think it will be harder than for most. One thing is for sure? Do not bother with 3D. The film is already dark enough, and 3D makes it even harder to see.

6.5/10

 

Adam McDonald: This IS a Terminator movie and the best one since T2. Maybe that’s not saying too much compared to what came before, but they took what they liked and got rid of the stuff that was holding it back or making the series confusing or uninteresting. I thought the time travel and ideas were great and the way they handled fate and the paradoxes that would arise from the characters’ actions were smart as well. I wish they would have explained a few of the plot holes, but as I said earlier, I expect that even in the best of time travel stories. 3D didn’t really add anything, but I would have loved to have seen it in IMAX or a large format theater. If you love Terminator and want something fun and exciting that turns the franchise on its ear, then you will absolutely love this.

8/10

You can also listen to Andy and Adam talk about this movie in their new podcast, Bored as Hell. Check out the newest episode featuring guest host Brooke Heym of Two Feminist Moms, “Bros Before Robos.”