Review of Terminator Genisys (2015) by Gamed2Long — 10 Jul 2015

I don't get it. The professional reviewers have rated this film quite unfavorably. But its not bad. Its no T2. Its no T1. But in my opinion its better than T3 and whatever that last one was called.

Emilia Clarke is a good enough Sarah Conner. She's given better performances before, and probably will again. I doubt she'll win an award for this role. But its good enough. Arnie is back. He may be incapable of doing most of the things his younger self did in previous films, but through movie magic he too plays his role good enough. He doesn't show his age quite so bad as Harrison Ford of late. The actor playing Kyle Reece is intended as kind of a blank slate, so that is done well.

The biggest failing of this film is that the story, and visuals have lost a lot of the grit. The CG is a bit too smooth at times, and the gravity of situations is often missing because of it. The bad guy wasn't quite real enough. With a good old T101, a blow to the head stunned, gunfire to the torso or head caused minor damage. It was clear what merited a "kill." This new guy though. At one point he was quite wrath like. Was anything they did having any affect on him at all?

Also. The school bus crash looked wrong. Though it was rendered like a bus, no bus would go flying like that. Not even with wires and rigging.

Overall, for me this ranks about an average action flick. Which is weak for a Terminator movie, but better than what we've been getting lately at least.