Review of Terminator Genisys (2015) by Milo I — 04 Dec 2016

Creative and surprisingly high quality reinvention of the story universe that defined Action movies for me as a kid born in the tail end of the 80s.

The scriptwriting is honestly the best part: puns, pretty good banter, not to much Science garble, mostly plot and character development. Some of the acting quality decays as you get further into the movie, and a few of the twists are foreshadowed a little heavily to my eyes, but the first half is extremely enjoyable. Those not so familiar with the Terminator tropes may actually enjoy it more than longtime fans.

Arnold, by the way, was a surprise star performance. He's actually mastered his granite face and is able to transmit a lot with very subtle shifts in features, which just happens to play perfectly and believably into his character this time around.

Which, by the way, was not originally written for him, but rather for someone else, though he became the obvious choice at first casting...

Anyway it's a good watch. Perhaps most commendable is the very creative use of movie and specifically terminator-movie physics in a few instances. Unlike a lot of films that kind of operate with their own rules, with this one you really get the impression that a bunch of nerds like me sat around and thought and talked at length and in depth about what would be possible given those rules that would allow for interesting and creative choices, solutions, mannerisms and habits. All that adds up to just make it "feel right" in the way Terminator 2 (my personal favorite) did and that the interceding films really, really didn't. Which is to say that after hooking up with this movie, I am finally over Christian Bale's most disappointing film, which was a true insult to such an iconic franchise.

Watch it! If you're even looking at Terminator movies right now there is an 80% chance that you need to just stop browsing and pick something to put on... choose this one, and you will not be sorry.