Review of Terminator Genisys (2015) by Allan C — 25 Aug 2016

I really did enjoy this fifth installment of the Terminator franchise, which took a page out of the Star Trek reboot franchise and changed the timeline in order to keep the film within the same universe, but in effect makes makes it a reboot where all the rules chance and a new series can go in any direction it wants.

This film starts in the future with Kyle Reese being sent back to 1984 to save Sarah Connor, where the filmmakers do an incredibly fun job of recreating the opening of the original film, although when the the timeline is changes, the original sequence of events all change.

The 1980s fanboy geek in me was giddy with excitement during these scenes. The film's other greatest asset is Emilia Clarke as Sarah Connor. I'm not a Game of Thrones watcher, so I'm really not familiar with her, but she is terrific, bringing both an intense toughness to the role, but also a smart emotional core.

It's also a lot of fun to see Arnold reprise his role as a greying terminator (James Cameron reportedly came up with the explanation that he would age because it's living tissue, which would age, over a metal alloy).

However, the film looses some of it's appeal with too many over the top bombastic action sequences, ALA Michael Bay. In the original film, there were some very gritty car chases and brutally efficient action sequences, but the action here wasn't as suspenseful or as tough as Cameron's films.

I was also annoyed during one scene where an evil computer projects itself as a holographic child, which was an unfortunate nod or rip off of the very popular but very weak Resident Evil films. This film really did have potential to be very good, with a solid cast and a solid story set-up, but loses it's way not especially exciting of action.