There are several film franchise whose lore have literally been destroyed by their own massive success and financial demand for sequels. For example, try piecing together the logic of the Halloween films, and your head might explode. But one of the best examples of a franchise not only being unable to continue their success with subsequent sequels, but tarnishing the original’s legacy is certainly Terminator.
After attempting to continue the stories of the original with Rise of the Machines and Salvation, Terminator Genisys attempts to go back to the first two films and create everyone’s favorite type of film … the reboot/sequel hybrid. But rather than remind us of the original and capture a certain excited of seeing something we hadn’t before, Genisys feels like a cynical and desperate attempt to keep a franchise going that should have been put away long ago.
Before we discuss Genisys, lets try to figure out how this movie fits into the franchise. The film pretty much starts in the time of Salvation (with a few narrative changes), but Reese is the main character, and meets John Connor (Jason Clarke) as a child. The resistance fighters break through the main base where Terminators were sent back to the future (to try to kill Sarah Connor). As they are breaking in, a Terminator is sent (motion capture performed by Arnold Schwarzenegger) back to 84, so as legend has it, Reese (Jai Courtney) follows to protect Sarah. But her storyline has already been altered, and there’s a new Sarah Connor (Emilia Clarke), because she was raised by a Terminator and been fighting the resistance since she was a girl. So basically, Sarah has the Terminator relationship John had in the second film and became a badass about a decade earlier.
So now that this timeline has happened, apparently, some stuff has completely changed … but not everything. She meets Reese, but they apparently never have a sexual relationship in this time line, but John was somehow still born in this new timeline. And, Reese exists as a child and adult and even sees himself … and adult Reese learned something key from little Reese that adult Reese tells him (I don’t even know how to explain that). The loops in this series are completely nuts. Which would be fine (it might even be kind of fun), if the movie didn’t feel like such a repetitive slog to get through.
The problem is that by going back to the first film and using narrative themes from the second to wipe the last films, this leads to a lot of this movie feeling very old and tired, and comparisons to the earlier films. For example, if you have Schwarzenegger recreating scenes from the first film, you are reminded of the performances and visuals which worked so well in the first film. Emilia Clarke is a fantastic actress, but when compared to Linda Hamilton (in both films), she doesn’t get a chance to show herself as a capable and believable action heroine (not to mention the other retro film this year, Mad Max: Fury Road which delights in showing how physically capable their actors are). With the exception of looking cool with a gun, and she certainly does, I never believe Sarah was capable of doing the action required. It’s great to have female action heroes who are allowed to be feminine, but they also need to be physically capable to suspend disbelieve.
Not that Justin Clarke or Jai Courtney are a great action heroes here either. Courtney has been good in a few films (he’s awesome in Unbroken), but his recent run in franchise films has not been doing his career any favors. Clarke is an interesting actor, and once I realized why he seemed so odd (), which makes his performance kind of interesting … he really seems robotic, even when tricking everyone into thinking he’s a human being. But, that makes me wonder how John Connor is supposedly so good at convincing people to follow him … you would never believe this guy to be trustworthy. He seems more like a cult leader.
This franchise has never been very funny, with the exception of Terminator 2’s boy and his dog theme. That aspect is very present here and most of it works (Arnold is still really good at playing a robot). But the other attempts at humor fail to land and seem like cast-off one-liners from the Iron Man films. But emotionally, the movie doesn’t work at all. The mother-son relationship is frequently unsettling (John talks lovingly about his mother to Reese a few too many times). Reese and Sarah are not a convincing romance or even a briefly passionate couple. And Sarah’s treatment of the Terminator almost like a pet hurts her character more than anything else (she names him pops).
There are lines from the Terminator about wanting Reese to take care of her and protector her, which despite wanting to present him as her father figure, hurts Sarah’s legacy as one of the strongest heroines in action movie history. And even though Arnold probably is the best part of the film, he’s in too much of the movie which seems to want to rewrite the story of Reese and Sarah into a happy love story. But if Arnold has to be in it as much as he is, they should have had the conviction to nail the landing … .
So what you might be asking? What about the movie’s action and visuals? There are a lot of visuals that really do work. The whole liquid metal thing is super cool (enhanced by some great moments of sound design). And every scene with Lee Byung-hun is GREAT! So great in fact, losing him a third into the movie was a huge bummer—especially considering his storyline had very little to do with the rest of the film. Seriously though, more Byung-hun in better movies! However, a lot of the action sequences don’t look all that good, especially compared to how good the second film looked in the 90s. Stunts are filmed too closely so you can’t see enough of the action, and cutting lacks rhythm. And most of the big set pieces with explosions have a digital haze that make them appear cheap.
In a summer with a lot of tentpole action films, this film doesn’t hold up as a contender against Mad Max: Fury Road, Furious 7, Jurassic World, or Avengers: Age of Ultron. Where does the Terminator franchise fit into this current cinematic world? This film seems to see itself as being in the style of Transformers, including using JK Simmons as a Tucci/Turturro type character in thankless “smart-dumb guy roles” and an ending with narration which seems to almost threaten the audience with a promise that this franchise will be back … with even more convoluted sequels.
Lesley Coffin is a New York transplant from the midwest. She is the New York-based writer/podcast editor for Filmoria and film contributor at The Interrobang. When not doing that, she’s writing books on classic Hollywood, including Lew Ayres: Hollywood’s Conscientious Objector and her new book Hitchcock’s Stars: Alfred Hitchcock and the Hollywood Studio System.
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Published: Jul 3, 2015 11:00 am