At the beginning, we’re treated to a lengthy overview of the entire “Terminator” set up, with voice-over from Kyle Reese (Jai Courtney) to provide newbies with background info. We’re informed that the corporation Skynet brought on the apocalypse with computerized machines and John Connor (Jason Clarke) rose out of the ashes as the savior and leader of the human resistance.
At the same time, the movie is peppered with references to the original films — “Terminator” and “Terminator 2: Judgment Day — meaning newbies would get lost right away.
Yet, “Terminator Genisys” isn’t a sequel or a remake; it’s an entirely new, unclassified species. Whatever it is, it’s a convoluted, insignificant mess that basically screams out at you to stop watching it and turn on the original films.
With this film, imagine if the storylines from the first two features were tossed into a blender and mixed up, along with a few other “new” underwritten storylines, and you’ve got the cinematic slurry known as “Terminator Genisys.” The movie is all about alternate timelines and alternate timelines of those alternate timelines, caused by various events in the future. Sequences and plot points from the first two movies are slightly altered. Before the original Terminator can beat up that street punk he’s stopped by an older version of the Terminator (still played by Arnold Schwarzenegger). We’ve got Schwarzenegger-on-Schwarzenegger action.
Also, if you remember from the first film, Reese — Connor’s right-hand man in the fight against the machines — is sent back to 1984 to protect Sarah. But what if instead of being a weak, helpless waitress unaware of the doom yet to come, Sarah was tough and already knew what was going to happen in the future? And what if she knew about the timeline in which she’s a helpless waitress? And what if a Terminator — the older Schwarzenegger robot — came to her aid when she was 9 years old and became a surrogate father whom she calls “Pops”?
Simply put, the movie is too complicated for its own good — there’s too much plot to keep track of. The more you try to piece the story together, the more incoherent and unstable it becomes. And, yet, nothing new really happens in “Terminator Genisys.”
Perhaps I should give “Terminator Genisys” some credit for at least attempting such an ambitious storyline in the first place. However, any ambition is automatically undermined by terrible dialogue, lackluster acting and action that only gets bigger, louder and dumber. Like the storyline, there’s nothing new in the action set pieces — a gunfight here, a melee fight there, a car chase. As the movie trucks on, it becomes a nonstop barrage of meaningless, repetitive action.
As the main characters (originally played by Michael Biehn and Linda Hamilton) Courtney and Clarke are miserable. Both of them overact, with a majority of their scenes playing out like a bad sitcom. They have zero romantic chemistry and zero repartee. Courtney’s attempts at genuine emotion are laughable, while his attempts to make quips are painful. The rest of the acting is unremarkable; the usually solid Jason Clarke is a competent John Connor, and Schwarzenegger is fine — he gets a few funny lines in — but his whole performance is underwhelming.
However, the screenplay by Laeta Kalogridis and Patrick Lussier is the true Achilles’ heel of the picture. All of the central relationships that we’re supposed to be invested in get lost in a flurry of alternate timelines, recycled lines of dialogue and tedious action.
Ultimately, “Terminator Genisys” is a confusing, over-plotted amalgamation of the first two movies, with poor acting and repetitive, exhausting action. By rehashing the same characters and plot points, all the movie does is remind you of the better “Terminator” movies that came before it.
Rated PG - 13 for intense sequences of sci-fi violence and gunplay throughout, partial nudity and brief strong language