Terminator Genisys

"I'm old, not obsolete"

The same thing could be said for the Terminator franchise these days. This summer brings us the latest model, Terminator Genisys, which tries to add some fresh blood to the proceedings while also being a soft reboot of what came before. Of course, the problem with messing with what came before can come across as a slap across the face to loyal fans who stuck with the series through the good times (The Terminator, Terminator 2) and the bad (Terminator Salvation). 

The film starts at the beginning with the original mission that resulted in Kyle Reese (played by Jai Courtney) being sent back to 1984 to protect Sarah Connor (played by Emilia Clarke) from a Terminator by her son John Connor (played by Jason Clarke). While in the process of being sent back, Reese sees John being attacked and then is flooded with a series of new memories from when he was a child he doesn't remember. He lands in 1984 and much like the original film, he finds himself scrambling to elude the police. Except this time, he also has a T-1000 (played by Byung-hun Lee) on his tail as well. He is saved at the last minute by Sarah who not only knows who Kyle is but also all about the Terminators. To say he is disoriented by this new information would be an understatement.  

It turns out another Terminator was sent back even further into Sarah's past to take her out at that point, but was stopped by a good terminator sent back to stop it and rescue her. This new Terminator has stuck with her through childhood and she has even affectionately named it Pops. Since the Terminators are covered by living human tissue, the Terminators age as well, which is admittingly a pretty clever way to explain Schwarzenegger's age in this one. While they were waiting for both Kyle and the original Terminator to show up, Sarah and Pops passed the time building their own time machine. All they needed was the advanced chip from the original T-800 and the machine is now complete. Sarah wants to jump ahead to August 29th, 1997, the date Judgement Day is supposed to occur. Except the new memories Kyle has makes him realize Judgement Day has been delayed to 2017 and is tied to the release of a new computer operating system called Genisys that is designed to tie all computers together. Kyle convinces Sarah and Pops to trust him and they jump ahead to 2017 in an attempt to stop Judgement Day once and for all. 

Terminator Genisys was actually a pretty decent entry in the series once I got over the fact that the film was overwriting everything that came before it and it also completely ignores the fourth film, for better or worse. Probably mostly better. Schwarzenegger remains pretty much the best thing about the film and Emilia Clarke slips into the shoes left by Linda Hamilton with ease. JK Simmons also pops up for a couple scenes, which he steals with ease, as a cop who witnessed Kyle Reese fighting the T-1000 back in 1984. Sadly, his character functions more as a plot device to get our characters out of scrapes with the law than anything else. Still he's a hoot in the couple scenes he has and I found myself wishing they had given him more to do. As for Jai Courtney? Well, I'm going to need a separate paragraph for that diatribe all dedicated to the legacy of one Kyle Reese. 

Kyle Reese is one of my all time favorite characters in the Terminator Series. Hell he may even be my favorite, tied with Sarah Connor. The reason for this rests solely on the shoulders of Michael Biehn's performance as Kyle in the first film. He was a beaten down, tired, worn soldier who had been through hell. Rail thin and suffering from some serious PTSD. All he had to keep him going was his love for Sarah Connor, developed from a picture of her that he had given to him by John Connor. Biehn's portrayal of Kyle brought so much humanity to the role, making his character one of the most beloved in the franchise. Kyle was tired, scared and alone when he first arrived in 1984, a world completely foreign to him, someone who was born after Judgement Day. Likewise, Anton Yelchin brought similar characteristics to his performance in Terminator Salvation, although Reese was much younger in that film, just beginning to join the resistance at that point. All of this made him infinitely more relatable as a character. Then in this film, we have Jai Courtney filling the same role except Courtney has none of the talent to pull off the character and subsequently fails to convince as someone who has been through a lengthy war and seen the horrors of war on numerous occasions. Courtney brings nothing of that to the role, coming off as his usual bland self that he is in most films. At least he's tolerable here, unlike in A Good Day to Die Hard, where I just flat out hated his character in that one. 

Still, Terminator Genisys isn't a complete wash. It does craft a fairly entertaining story with plenty of twists and turns (at least if you haven't seen the trailers, which give away damn near the entire movie). It's not as good as the first two films, but then again I'm not sure any ever will be as good. It is better than Terminator Salvation at least, so it occupies that middle ground with the third film. It's pretty entertaining and you get the feeling they were trying to craft a decent new entry in the series. At the same time, the series is starting to show it's age. It's not quite obsolete but, much like Pops, it's getting there.