Director:Â Alan Taylor
Cast: Arnold Schwarzenegger, Emilia Clarke, Jai Courtney, Jason Clarke, J.K. Simmons, Matt Smith
Running time: 126 mins
Rating: 12A
Release date: July 2nd, 2015
“Old but not obsolete” proclaims Arnold Schwarzenegger, the 67-year-old’s hair might be grey and his skin more rough and wrinkled than we last saw him, but he’s still the same old Arnie. Showing he can still keep up and even put to shame anyone younger than him, he’s the only bright spot in a film that should have been terminated long before it made it the cinema.
Attempting to wipe the slate clean and create a new potential terminator franchise for modern cinema, the series has rebooted itself, making the events of all the other terminator films obsolete. Time travel is a hard enough plot device as it is, especially when used to rectify a franchises missteps. X-MEN: DAYS OF FUTURE PAST used this technique well last year, with that films ending essentially cancelling out the misfire that was X-MEN: THE LAST STAND.
The problem with GENISYS is that even the screenwriters have no idea what is going on; instead of starting over as the film hopes to, the timeline of all the terminator films have become so tangled and convoluted that it’s headache worthy just trying to remember it all. Perhaps this is why the film is so adamant in reminding you every single second what is going on, why it’s happening and who is doing it. It’s like a broken record of exposition constantly repeated by everyone; remember that important scene that happened 15 minutes ago? Here’s a flashback in case you forgot.
While it’s not busy wasting it’s best actor, J.K. Simmons, the acting is as robotic as the terminators. Jai Courtney is a vacuum of charmless one liners and the biggest disappointment is Emilia Clarke. She just isn’t suited for Sarah Connor, her attempts at sounding tough are empty threats and she doesn’t convince as a woman who has had her life to prepare for a war.
The chemistry between the two is non existent as is the chemistry between her and Arnie. It’s an odd mix of a franchise trying to reinvent itself with younger parts but also not realizing what made the originals so memorable. It was refreshing for its time and utilized some truly ahead of its time special effects. Copious amounts of explosions and punching does not make an action sequence, instead it just causes boredom seeing the same indistinguishable fight sequences play out. Then again, any faults of the actors could be whittled down to the script which is an incoherent mess from beginning to end.
It’s a shame then, because there are interesting themes that could have been explored here, the idea that the patterns that have been followed in every other terminator film could be broken, allowing characters who should die, live and vice versa. The characters could cheat the ending that we know of and create something different, if the film had any originality in it to stick to any of the decisions it seems to lay out at the beginning of the film, it might have saved its own future.
