With Terminator: Genisys, Paramount has taken a page from their new Star Trek franchise and attempted to reboot a series of movies while pretending it's a sequel instead. Although all of the events in this film contradict all of the previous films' timelines, by including Schwarzenegger and revisiting the opening scenes of the original Terminator film, the filmmakers have attempted to claim that this is a legitimate continuation of the original story. It feels like a pathetic bid to stretch the franchise out a little bit more and rehash everything that was already done before and better in the first two James Cameron directed films in order to lure in audiences by putting the word Terminator in the title.
The film begins as a recreation of the original film only told from the point of view of Kyle Reese, the resistance fighter from the future who is sent back in time to protect Sarah Conner, the mother of John Conner, the man who leads humanities' fight against the machines who have taken over the world in the future. When he travels back to 1984 however, he learns that things have changed in the past. Sarah Conner isn't the helpless student/waitress with no knowledge of her destiny that he expected to find, but has instead been raised by a Terminator who was sent back in time to 1973 by persons unknown. This aging Terminator (Schwarzenegger) and Sarah have already killed the Terminator (a CGI created young Schwarzenegger) that Reese was sent back to kill. And now they plan to travel to the future to stop Skynet, the machine that takes over the world, from ever being built (but which was destroyed already in Terminator 2, but never mind).
There's a famous line from Doctor Who (okay, famous amongst Doctor Who fans) where the Doctor tries to explain time travel like this, "People assume that time is a strict progression of cause to effect, but *actually* from a non-linear, non-subjective viewpoint - it's more like a big ball of wibbly wobbly... time-y wimey... stuff." That's pretty much how the makers of this film have decided to treat time travel, as a big ball of wibbily wobbly timey wimey stuff, because the timelines and events of this film contradict themselves and the events of all the previous films in the franchise. Characters in the film have knowledge of the past, the future, pasts that never happened, futures that will never happen, and pasts that will have happened in the future, without explanation. Events in the past (from a future perspective, but actually the present in the film, but the future from the audience's perspective) are changed constantly with seemingly no ripple effect to the further future. With all that in mind, you'll be far better off not even trying to make logical sense of the timeline.
During the time Reese and Sarah are in 1984, the story manages to be intriguing. The best scene in the entire movie is the recreation of the Terminator's arrival at Griffith Observatory where he meets and battles an older version of himself. Seeing Schwarzenegger vs. Schwarzenegger is the highlight of the film. If the movie could have pulled a Back to the Future 2 and actually had these new versions interacting with other events in the first film than the whole movie might have been entertaining. Unfortunately, Paramount doesn't own the rights to the first film and so was unable to reuse any of the actual footage from the original.
The cast is remarkable only for being unremarkable. Emilia Clarke is cute and likable, but she's no Linda Hamilton. She's a little too cute to be believable as the battle hardened Sarah Conner. Jai Courtney is bland as Kyle Reese, seeming to be hired more for his abs than his acting. Together they make a good looking couple, but with no real chemistry. Jason Clarke seems miscast as John Conner. He lacks the charisma needed for the part. He's supposed to be the inspirational leader of all mankind, but I just didn't see it. Schwarzenegger is Schwarzenegger and his mere presence provides some fun, but he never gets any particularly defining or iconic moments. Former Doctor Who himself, Matt Smith, plays the personification of Skynet, but is never given much of a chance to develop despite being the only halfway original contribution to the franchise, although a post-credits sequence hints that he might if a sequel is made.
There is plenty of action of course, but it feels very much by the numbers. It hits all the tickboxes of a Terminator film, trotting out well known lines, such as "I'll be back." and "Come with me if you want to live." and features the liquid metal Terminator in the form of a policeman. And of course there are the requisite car chases and explosions, all of them done with a gigantic budget, and so look quite good. However, there's no emotional connection to any of the events happening on the screen and so the action is reduced to mere eye candy. And the references to earlier films just remind the audience of how much better those earlier films were.
Hollywood needs to learn that just because you can make a sequel it doesn't mean that you should, although I suppose if it hasn't learned that by now it never will. This franchise should have been terminated a long time ago.
