Like its main characters, Terminator: Genisys wants so desperately to use the series’ time-traveling narrative device to fix the past. Hoping to wash their hands clean of its past two meddling sequels, 2003’s Rise of the Machines and 2009’s Salvation, director Alan Taylor creates a product just as repetitively boring as before, yet also more convoluted than ever. It wants to recreate what made James Cameron’s first two movies so good, all while becoming its own, new franchise. But this fifth installment sadly turns into an overcalculated bore, without the humanity that made this robot franchise so initially charming.
Latched inside this sequel is a potentially good — perhaps even brilliant — continuation using our ever-present Apple products to respond to the themes brought on in the original ‘80s movies. But the potential is never earned, for Genisys insistence to rely on what we’ve already seen and remembered in the series hinders it from creating anything inventive or fresh. And the good ideas it brings to the forefront are so sloppy and clumsily handled that they lack the spark or pulse they’ve could have brought inside in better hands.
Under Laeta Kalogridis & Patrick Lussier’s screenplay, Genisys finds the Skynet war in full effect in an apocalyptic L.A. 2029. John Connor (Jason Clarke) leads the resistance for humanity, asserting their upper hand in the war and leading the humans to use the time traveling device to save humanity. To do the job, John sends the boy he raised into manhood throughout the war, Kyle Reese (Jai Courtney), to go to 1984 to protect his mother Sarah (Emilia Clarke) from any T-800s Skynet sends her way to kill her. In the process of going back in time, however, Kyle ends up a stranger from a different universe.
That’s because time changed as he sent himself through the portal, leading him into a world where Sarah is not only aware of what the future holds, but fighting whatever comes at full force alongside her robotic T-800 guardian (Arnold Schwarzenegger), whom she calls “Pops” with affection. He’s a reprogrammed machine with aging skin (explaining how they could get the now-older actor back into the leather jacket) sent to protect Sarah from back when she was nine. He’s kept the job ever since, and has done a hell of a job in the position. With the prophecy still set between both her and Kyle — once the latter is totally in the dark on — they go through various points in time to take down Skynet for good, even if it’s run by a figure very familiar to everyone involved.
From there, things get pretty complicated, and expectedly a little messy. Even though Genisys must walk over various eggshells to make this retcon work, there’s no real reason for Taylor’s movie to be as boggled down with exposition and facts as it becomes. Being the lighthearted summer movie it is, someone should’ve taken a page from Looper and cheekily avoided the mechanics of its time travel in favor of good character development, fine action and stylistic flourishes. But in order to justify removing key moments from the sequels, the sci-fi sequel pattens itself down with characters overstating every situation and addressing every time passage and detail as they see fit.
It drags the movie down more than it saves it, because the logistics still don’t make much sense. Making up its own rules and reasoning at every possible moment, Genisys becomes all the more aggravating in its tediousness. Worse yet, when it finally decides to embrace its stupidity in full blockbuster goofiness, it repeats all the action beats and stunts done before. What once was cool — like a Terminator v. Terminator fight between T-800s young and old near the beginning— grows annoying bland when done three or more times afterwards, and although the set pieces are interesting, its inability to escalate the action makes each moment emotionally sterile.
Taylor’s direction can often be proficient — clever even, should he know what he’s doing. He’s smart enough to focus on the movie's scale and give it a sense of humor throughout, just as he did in his likewise mediocre Thor: The Dark World. But the jokes often fall flat due to poor pacing and awkward delivery, and the scale is muted when the stakes are too dilated to be coherent. The characters don’t make an impact because Courtney’s a wet blanket, Clarke plays Sarah too soft and everyone else isn’t really given much to do — particularly supporting actors J.K. Simmons, Matt Smith and Byung-hun Lee. Plus, Sarah and Kyle’s relationship never gains the chemistry it needs to resonate for a second. The only thing keep this sequel compact is Schwarzenegger.
Knowing the character making him an icon inside-and-out, the Australian actor feels more comfortable in this performance than he’s felt in years — and it shows, despite playing a socially awkward former killing machine. He’s the only one cracking jokes with earned chuckles, and gives the bloodless, overly brooding action film the levity it needs. He’s a ray of sunshine in a gloomy sky, and unfortunately he’s constantly thrown in the background to let the younger, boring actors be in control.
Despite all the criticism, Genisys is not a Judgment Day disaster, but it's definitely not the salvation the series needed either. For as often as the movie has Pops remind us that he’s “old, but not obsolete,” Taylor’s movie never understands why the original series is familiar yet still filled with life today. They say imitation is the sincerest form of flattery — perhaps why Cameron himself is so taken by this movie — but with this sequel, such affections only result in a soulless, loud, charmless video game of a film, with wonky special effects and pulseless suspense. There’s no doubt the Terminator will be back on screen one day, but hopefully Hollywood warrants his return the next time around.
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