Honestly, I was never that big into the Terminator franchise, but I always like that it had a really dark 90's sci-fi edge to it with some a high stakes war story background woven into a personal story about family and humanity as clever low budget film of its time. With Terminator Salvation, we all thought the franchise died for good and I wasn't all too sad. But now it seems Paramount Pictures wants to take another shot at reinvigorating the franchise with even more convoluted timelines and plot threads in Terminator Days of Future Past.....no, uhh, I mean Genesis....no, uhh GENISYS, yeah that's how you spell it...
This is a fractured timeline story much like the aforementioned X-men outing, just more convoluted and I really do not want to explain this spaghetti of a plot, but at the end of the day its main purpose is to change the status quo of the whole franchise using complicated time-travel, that again convolutes more than it actually resolves, and brings it to a point where any further sequels would begin to feel episodic. Though, it starts very promising in the beginning with a solid sequence in the apocalypse of 2029 but it quickly bogs down as it starts to set-up too many sub-plots for itself to keep track and eventually throwing most of it up in the air. There are definitely some real clever angles in the story, with opportunities for character drama and social commentary concept-wise but much of the story does not integrate into a whole. Not to mention that it feels like a retread of the basic plots of the previous movies and it proved that the marketing failure of a spoilt plot-twist from the trailers was indeed a huge dent in terms of story impact, because the underlying implications of that twist certainly would have been a big blow to the whole point of the story and challenge the whole point of these movies.
At this point I would like mention the director Alan Taylor, who you might know from Game of Thrones and more recently, Thor: The Dark World. From Thor I realised that he was definitely more focused on action than story. Though that is the case here as well, he juggles between the two far better. My only gripe is that he should have paid more attention to all the story-threads more because it isn't motivating the action all too well and it emotional detaches you. And that just becomes doubly disappointing since the action is quite good in itself, not T-2 levels (of course) but good nonetheless. There is also some really neat fan services to which Taylor meticulously recreated from the original movies, but it just doesn't have that weight to it that it should have. Also I just don't know if it's me or Genisys looks too colourful for a Terminator since the previous movies had more of a muted colour palette for the most part.
Anyway let us move on to the characters and performances since those are the stronger parts of Genisys. Jason Clarke as John Connor I went with it, he really came across as a strong leader with a sense of humour although it wouldn't argue if you said that he doesn't look like the dark war-torn John Connor from T-2. Linda Hamilton and Micheal Biehn both owned Sarah Connor and Kyle Reese respectively, however Emilia Clark's portrayal felt really respectful to the character and her predecessor right down to her physicality. Jai Courntey as Reese just did not cut it for me since the difference between him and Biehn is just...sad and he could not pull off a chemistry with Clarke, even though the love story between Sarah and Kyle seems to work in the story.
On the other hand Clarke's chemistry with Arnold Schwarzenegger is brilliant, serving as a father figure to Sarah, which made a nice dynamic and some nice comic and emotional moments. In fact everything about our old T-800 is brilliant in this movie, he played him spot-on, his character had a lot of heart to him yet he also spews one-liners and just being plain cool as usual. There is also a neat angle over here with an ageing terminator model and that he is an 'old relic from a deleted timeline' sort of like robot mid-life crisis which is a nice justification to accomodate his real age. He definitely serves as the emotional centre and levity of the movie contributed by Arnold's performance and some good character writing.
I was also intriguingly surprised to see J.K Simmons and eager to see his part, he's a cop and though underused his character actually has a neat back-story and Simmons used all the given screen time well. Matt Smith also has a huge role as he basically plays, well Skynet himself. And he too works very well as a menacing evolving system determined to ensure its own survival and dominance.
The effects are okay here where the special effects on young Arnold are very good(certainly better than Salvation) yet there are also some 'CGI' that do feel 'CGI' especially the T-1000 that still looks like its from 1997. And I'm forgetting but I think that they did used more CGI than practical and frankly they should stop it since the Terminator franchise really prides itself on the use of both computer and practical effects in unison. And the audience has got bored with overused computer effects.
There is an undeniable stench of corporate around this movie, though it is good to see Terminator back in the first decent sequel attempt after a long while. Though if I had my way, I would really try to find a way to not do a time-travel story again and look for more story potential rather than making a 'greatest hits version', remixed. The biggest gripe I had with this movie was that I had no take-away from this, it was like not even mixed just 'okay'. The movie didn't make me feel like it accomplished something since we have seen the same 'destroy skynet before it awakes' plot for 2 movies prior and this makes the third time, its really getting old. But again its not bad and it has apparently got James Cameron's seal of approval, and if you are a Terminator fan, you will not be that disappointed since it definitely has its moments its just that those most of the moments run dry in the first half or come few and far between and that it mostly comes from the inherent nostalgia (for the most part) rather than its own merits.
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