Terminator Genisys
Starring Arnold Schwarzenegger, Emilia Clarke
Directed by Alan Taylor
The good news about the new Terminator movie – Arnold can still pull it off. The bad news about the new Terminator movie – it’s an unnecessary and sometimes incoherent mess. Genisys represents the fifth installment in the franchise (Arnie was notably absent from the joyless and forgettable Salvation) and messes with the narrative timelines so much it’s hard to keep track of what year it is or just what the hell is going on most of the time.
The story starts off simple enough and, by now, most of us know the saga; in the middle of Armageddon, military leader of the human resistance John Conner (Jason Clarke) sends Kyle Reese (Jai Courtney) back in time to 1984 in order to protect his mother Sarah Connor (Game of Thrones’ Emilia Clarke) from death at the hands of a deadly cyborg, thus preventing the destruction of the world at the hands of the newly sentient machines.
But, this is a reboot and there has to be twists. Lo and behold, Reese has actually been sent back to an alternate past where Schwarzenegger has protected Sarah Connor since she was a girl. The plot device flies in the face of the established canon and gives the filmmaker’s an opportunity to justify why a killer robot actually looks like a senior citizen. The rest of the movie coasts unremarkably on Jai Courtney’s lack of charisma and a repetitive structure that provides little ingenuity.
He’s definitely back but even Arnie can’t save this muddled mess.
