He’s back, whether he’s wanted or not.
With the war against the machines coming to a close, the
loop begun in James Cameron’s 1984 film has been completed and human resistance
soldier Kyle Reese (Jai Courtney) is sent back in time by humanity’s savior
John Connor (Jason Clarke) to protect his mother Sarah Connor (Emilia Clarke).
What he ultimately finds upon his arrival however, defies his expectations; a
battle hardened Sarah raised by an aged Terminator unit (Arnold Schwarzenegger). Together the group find themselves in a battle against Skynet
to prevent the apocalypse once and for all.
The number 21 is central to a lot of factors in this film.
It’s the number of years since the original film, the number of years
separating the film’s “modern” events from “Terminator 2” and the number of minutes
that the movie holds together before it just completely falls apart.
The attention to detail put into the apocalyptic future and
even the initial scenes of traveling back to the year 1981 are easily the
highlight of the film. Briskly paced with stupendous production design, the
film is ironically at its best when its retreading the exact same beats as the
original films.
Once the actual plot of the film kicks off, so do all of the
problems en masse, not the least of which is the casting of the film.
Sarah Connor and Kyle Reese’s infamous brief and tragic
romance is stripped of all meaning before the hackneyed writing of the film can
even be analyzed thanks to the total inability of the film’s leads to stir any
emotion out of me beyond cringe resulting irritation. Courtney’s inability to
portray emotion beyond “action film intensity” sabotages nearly every moment of
tenderness his character is granted and Emilia Clarke, despite apparently being
the same character portrayed by Linda Hamilton 21 years ago, looks and acts more
like a modern day high school senior than a fully grown and capable adult
woman.
She wouldn’t be believable in her role if it were meant to
be the innocent waitressing civilian Sarah Connor from the original film which
makes every effort to sell her as a hyper competent world wearied badass downright
laughable.
With the actors fighting their own handicaps, their
chemistry with one another becomes nonexistent, leaving the film to be carried
by the talent of its other stars, such as Clarke, Matt Smith, JK Simmons, and
of course, Schwarzenegger himself, who finally looks natural onscreen rather
than the overreaching attempts at taking back his career that he has made in
the last 2 or 3 years. While they all perform excellently with the material
provided, they unfortunately remain too out of focus to cover up the problems
with the film on a conceptual level.
The other half of that level’s equation being that this
script plays out like a piece of a teenager’s half baked second rate drivel of
a “Terminator” fanfiction.
Paramount would probably like you to believe that any plot holes
present in the film will be dealt with and properly explained away by the
sequels in their intended “trilogy.” I’m not buying that because ignoring the
holes in this script that aren’t addressed as points of the story, quite
frankly, there’s just no justification that can exist to vindicate such a needlessly
convoluted setup to a film this flimsy on any sort of meat.
The highest praise that I can possibly give “Terminator Genisys”
is that it might be passable as a dumb action flick but against stiff
competition this season alone like “Age of Ultron” and “Jurassic World” and
even better blockbusters that have executed the premise more strongly like “X-Men:
Days of Future Past,” this film’s only purpose for existing would seem to be proving
how much of a zombie of a franchise “Terminator” has become.
4 overplayed James Cameron references out of 10
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