Normally, I'm pretty hard on sequels and reboots. They tend to be formulaic, predictable and in some cases, insulting in their condescension to recreate the lightning in the bottle that made the original great. They are overthought, overworked and distilled (read: dumbed down) in a ham-handed attempt to make a hybrid, improved film that is all the good stuff and more; but normally, they turn out to be a hideously deformed mutant that takes on a life of its own, strangling everything that was good and prescious into a pale reflection of what it once was (see Jurassic World for a recent demonstration of this phenomena). I went in expecting the same from the newest entry into The Terminator series, which has been veering off the rails (with a couple interesting side journeys) ever since the second movie in 1989. Thè bad news is that Terminator: Genisys is far from perfect, but the good news is that it is a LOT of fun and a worthy entrant into the series.
Terminator: Genisys starts off in the future where John Connor (Jason Clarke) and Kyle Reese (Jai Courtney) have smashed the world-ending Skynet and now have to deal with historical issues. That is, Reese has to go back in time and save Sarah Connor (Emilia Clarke-no relation to Jason) from the first terminator (Arnold Schwarzenegger-for those of you living under a rock for the last 31 years) sent to kill her in 1984. Without giving away too much, there is some very creative storytelling that explains why another terminator has aged so much. It works perfectly to bring Arnold back in the fold. The time in 1984 is a fanboy's dream, and for me, the most interesting part of the movie. The timeline has skewed and some changes have now happened, so we are not seeing quite the same story. It is a very interesting "What if?" diversion. There is a lot of time travel involved in this movie, and for this timeline, Skynet becomes active when the corporation Cyberdyne (which made Skynet) introduces a new worldwide computer app called Genisys in 2017. It is a revolutionary communications system that will connect everybody and everything online. Reese and Connor have to go to 2017 and stop it. Mayhem ensues.
So, if the movie movie is so great, why did you only give 3.5 stars, Thombat? Well, it's not perfect. But it's close. It manages to retain many little details intact to include characters (even minor ones) and storyline do from the first two movies to keep Genisys interesting and from falling apart. The movie wisely pretends the last two (Rise of the Machines and Salvation) never happened and sticks with the good story of the first two films as its source material. The time jumping schtick is a tad overused and is a little too cute. It's essentially a lazy deus ex machina to fix the finality of the second film to make room for this new one. This creates some minor plot inconsistencies if you think too much about it. But that said, if you can accept an unstoppable killing machine surrounded by skin sent back in time to kill someone to change the future once, why not a few more times?
The biggest issue I have with movies like Jurassic World is that they stray from their original premise to create an inferior copy. It breaks its own rules to go in a new direction. Jurassic Park is not a story about dinosaurs. It is a story of unintended results of tampering with things that shouldn't be tampered with. Jurassic World is a Godzilla movie. Interesting bad guys become good guys, small things become bombastically big, more and more elements have to be added. These are the fundamentals of what I call sequel-itis. Star Trek (Khan, Klingons and Borg become good guys), Star Wars (Boba Fett shows up, Greedo shoots first), Indiana Jones (Salah and Brody come back for no particular reason), Batman movies (more and more villains, sidekicks), James Bond (more gadgets and stupid jokes and outrageous plot situations occur-Diamonds Are Forever, Moonraker, A View To A Kill, Die Another Day) and even the terminator becomes a good guy in T2: Judgement Day. But in Genisys, these issues are very few and the movie goes off in a whole new, interesting direction. Unfortunately, they left it open for a sequel, as well. Genisys would have been a satisfying ending point.
So, one last observation, PARENTS: Just because it is PG-13 does NOT mean you should take your kid to see this, and if you do, you are horrible parents (Yeah, I said it!) and people and growing the next generation of serial killers. Is it any wonder why kids seem to be more and more disconnected from empathy and more violent? A steady diet of this type of film at such an early age will almost guarantee they will be little monsters. I must have seen at least 10-12 families with children as young as 5-9 in the theater. The Terminator is one of those perfectly good R-rated films that has now been dumbed down to a PG-13 rating to get precisely this, more butts in the seats. (Another issue I have with the film.) Parents, please heed the 13 in the rating and don't take your kids to this. It really isn't appropriate for them.
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