140 Character Movie Review – #140RVW
Thanks to having the calming, less critical presence of my dad next to me in the theater, I’m going to take it easy on this amnesiac sequel.
Spoiler-free Movie Review of Terminator Genisys:
I already used some 2,000 words to describe the mixed bag that was Jurassic World, so that will save some time; Terminator Genisys is nearly the exact same experience. That may sound over-simplistic, so of course I can’t leave it at just that, but really the two pictures have nearly all of the same strengths and weaknesses.
Terminator Genisys is frankly not needed; no one was asking for more pictures, but they keep making them. The Terminator franchise as a whole has had this problem twice before already.
The Terminator was a near perfect science fiction picture. It probably didn’t need another film, but everyone was excited to see one. Terminator 2: Judgment Day was so good that many people prefer it to the original. (They are wrong, but excusably so.)
Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines was the first picture that no one particularly asked for and the first that really felt tacked on. It’s not a bad film for all that, but it really is extraneous. And if that’s so, Terminator Salvation redefines unwanted. Absolutely the only people who were eager for another Terminator film, much less one without Ahnold were the rights holders. I honestly have almost no memory of the film at all.
It would be accurate to characterize my emotional response to the news of a new Terminator film as malaise. There’s a weariness to the whole affair, a “why is this here” feeling surrounding the film in general. Except…
I love these films. I love the franchise, yes, but more than that I love the style, the genre. I love science fiction and I love big loud summer movies and I love Ahnold. So order me up some more Predator, Aliens and yes, Terminator. I’d rather watch a bad Terminator film than a good police procedural. This last fact is handy, because by most measures, Terminator Genisys is a bad film.
Before I get into too much detail, let me explain quite simply why: the internal logic of the film is dangerously flawed. Terminator Genisys plays too fast and loose with the history and the underlying premise of the franchise to really work. The time travel feels completely off for the first time in the series. It is bad science fiction.
But is it a bad film? I don’t think so, really. I completely enjoyed it and that is, after all, the purpose of these movies. Just like Jurassic World before it, it is highly entertaining and enjoyable, even as it contributes frankly nothing to the franchise or film culture at all. Expect too much and you’ll be disappointed; expect a good time and you’ll have one.
The entire film is very much a mixed bag:
- There are appearances by some truly great actors, but they are there for little reason. J.K. Simmons is an Oscar winner – what is he doing in this tiny role? Also, I wish they had never announced that Matt Smith (the 11th Doctor) was in the film, but not why. His role is a surprise, and I’m going to keep it, but I don’t get why his appearance couldn’t have also been a surprise. I can’t and won’t explain further, but I will say that if you are a Whovian going to the movie just for him, don’t bother.
- The other actors are serviceable, nothing more.
- Emilia Clarke is so good on Game of Thrones and she shows some of that steely-eyed determination here. It isn’t her fault that she can’t fill Sarah Hamilton’s shoes. No one could. Lena Headey was great on the TV show Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles, but she couldn’t make you forget Hamilton. Clarke does a good job, but the material really doesn’t give her much to work with. Jai Courtney is perfectly fine as Kyle Reese, but again, you can’t bring that tall glass of water in here to follow Michael Biehn. (Though Anton Yelchin played him last time and Brian Austin Green got to be the older brother on the TV show, so maybe the role isn’t as indelible as that of Sarah.)
- There are a few neat moments that reference the first and second films, but they actually pulled me out of the picture as I tried to remember which film they were from and whether they still made any sense with this revised story. In some ways the film is almost like a “Greatest Hits” of Terminators, what with all the different versions…
- The idea of revisiting the beginning of the original film is uninspired in concept but well-executed. (I got a particular thrill out of Kyle Reese running through the sporting goods store, complete with the theft of a pair of Nike Vandals. Did you know the production designer actually talked Nike into remaking the shoe for the film?)
- The film contains many truly dreadful CGI effects, but also the single most impressive photo-real digital human I’ve ever seen.
Let me take a moment with this one; it’s not a spoiler (though it should be – they DEFINITELY should have kept this plot point under wraps instead of prominently featuring in the trailer) that early in the picture they recreate a few iconic scenes from the 1984 film, as Ahnold and Reese go back in time. It’s kind of neat and works ok, but the real take-away is just how close we are to believable digital actors.
If you’ve only seen a few stills you probably are calling shenanigans, but believe me, in the theater it works. Ahnold from the 1984 original fights his modern day self, and while it isn’t perfect, it is extremely well-done. In a change from what you might expect, the differences are easier to spot during the action scenes than the slower shots. Enough so that I was frequently unsure whether I was looking at inserted footage from the original, a CG actor, a body double, or some combination. Now, I saw it once, in the theater so if it doesn’t hold up on further viewings or on a different presentation, my bad. It looked damn good on the first viewing…
Here’s the original…
And the new…
Terminator Genisys is something of an oddity in that it really doesn’t make any difference whether the film made any money in the States at all (which is fortunate, because it isn’t really performing well). This is for two reasons, the first of which is due to the increasing importance and reliance on other film markets besides the US. The other has to do with the rights to make a new trilogy. James Cameron famously sold the rights to the franchise to producer Gale Anne Hurd for $1 in order to get the original film made with him as director, but the rights are finally coming back to him in 2019. So the current rights holders (there have been a lot in the past 30 years), siblings Meghan & David Ellison need to make their films and make them now. That means Terminator Genisys and the not yet announced but already greenlit sequels are being churned out as quickly as possible, and that urgency shows on film already. The next time that ends well will be the first time…
Terminator Genisys left me with one new thought as I left the theater: time travel movies are useless. It’s true; while I’ve long derided time travel as a weak plot device, I don’t know that I’ve ever been so disdainful of them. Without spoiling anything, I came away from Terminator Genisys with much the same takeaway as all other time travel stories – “well, that was interesting but meaningless”. Too many time travel stories end in roughly the exact place they started; for all the exciting adventures and challenges, they generally end up putting things roughly back where they came from. Even when the actions of the characters change history, they invariably tie things up so neatly that nothing ever changes too much. It’s just a lot of running around.
Poster:
Trailer:
https://youtu.be/62E4FJTwSuc
Bechdel Test:
Fail
The Representation Test Score: D (3 pts)
(http://therepresentationproject.org/grading-hollywood-the-representation-test/)
| Main Cast | Arnold Schwarzenegger Guardian Jason Clarke John Connor Emilia Clarke Sarah Connor Jai Courtney Kyle Reese |
| Rating | PG-13 |
| Release Date | Wed 01 Jul 2015 UTC |
| Director | Alan Taylor |
| Genres | Action, Adventure, Sci-Fi, Thriller |
| Plot | John Connor sends Kyle Reese back in time to protect Sarah Connor, but when he arrives in 1984, nothing is as he expected it to be. |
| Poster |  |
| Runtime | 126 |
| Tagline | The rules have been reset. |
| Writers | Laeta Kalogridis (written by) &, Patrick Lussier (written by) … |
| Year | 2015 |
