I saw Genisys a week ago, so my memory of the film is not quite where I would like it to be. So this will be a shorter review then normal. The story is rooted deeply in the Terminator lore, and is centered around the Time Travel aspect of it. It starts in the future and we see John Connor and Kyle Reese winning the way against Cyberdyne. Reese has not yet gone back in time and protected Sarah Connor yet, so fans of the past films should see where this is going. John things they can end the war with one last move and they do come close, but sadly they were unable to stop the machines from sending a Terminator back in time. We get a pretty cool scene where the original Terminator is sent back after Sarah, and then John sends Reese back to help her. It is the set up for the first movie from 30 years ago and seeing it play out from the other side was great. That is where things start to go south though. When Kyle gets back to the past nothing is as he thought it would be. Turns out another Terminator was sent back earlier to save Sarah. She is now a trained soldier and is running with a older version of Arnold's Terminator. We get a cool scene where the younger the older version fight each other as well. The rest of the movie is about Genisys, which is a program that turns into Cyberdyne. The good guys take a page from the robots books and use time machine of their own to travel to try and kill the program before it can be complete.
If that sounds a little complicated, well it gets worse in the actual film. They pace it well though and give you plenty of time to keep up with what is going on. The various time jumps allow them to further muck about with the time line and bring together characters from the various movies all into one setting. It sounds like poor fan fiction on paper, but it actually works pretty well in the final product. If you are a fan of the franchise you will enjoy seeing all the various interactions and how the different time line plays out. Also seeing the humans use the same plan the machines have for years now made me happy. I liked seeing the creation of Cyberdyne, and I enjoyed the small details they placed into the film such as re-occurring characters from one time skip to the next. They even explained why Arnold's character seemed to age even if he was a robot. Maybe that was in the other films, but I didn't remember it.
Now for the negatives, the acting was oddly poor. Arnold was great, he plays the robotic character so well. He injects humor into it, and I loved when he would try to act human. Emilia Clarke is well known for Game of Thrones. I don't honestly remember if she was great in that, she never really seemed to have much to do. Most of her moments were memorable for what everybody else was doing. That being said she did alright here, though her performance was nothing special. Jai Courtney played Kyle Reese. I think I was supposed to like his character, but I just couldn't bring myself to care about him. Jai never really brought much to the screen and I have no interest in seeing him again after this role. Jason Clarke was delightful as John Connor, and I enjoyed seeing another chapter in his story because of that. With Reese and Sarah being the two leads though, having neither of them step up did hurt the final product. I don't really feel either of them were likable, and the only reason I can sort of give Emilia Clarke a pass is because she is the Mother of Dragons. I liked her because I liked the actress before this movie.
The action was decent, and we had a few good memorable moments. There was a helicopter chase that was pretty cool, and I loved how they ended up taking the other Helicopter out. The movie had many Terminator vs Terminator moments, and who doesn't love that? Seeing the destruction was enjoyable and I enjoyed watching the heroes struggle from one encounter to the next. Once the movie gets going, it rarely took a break.
If you are a fan, see the movie. It is not the greatest Terminator, but it is decent. You will enjoy the little details and seeing how the first movie really started. You will like seeing the way they bring everything together, and how they end up changing things as time moves forward. Arnold was great in this, even if he sadly had to carry the movie. But don't let that keep you from seeing it, between him and the action you should find something enjoy.
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