Terminator Genisys is the fifth installment of the Terminator series, but instead of being a sequel to the past couple films, its purpose is to reset the timeline of the series. You already know the story. In 2028, John Connor (Jason Clarke) sends Kyle Reese (Jai Courtney) back to 1984 to protect his mother, Sarah Connor (Emilia Clarke), from being killed by a Terminator (Arnold Schwarzenegger), but Reese discovers that the past has been radically altered, and humanity again has the chance to stop Judgement Day from ever happening.
I adore the Terminator series. The first film is among my top five favorite films of all time and the second is absolutely one of the best action films ever made. Although the series has given us the god-awful Terminator: Rise of the Machines and the pretty average Terminator Salvation, I was hopeful for Genisys and its goal of rewriting the future for this franchise. I was very wrong to do so.
If anything, this movie is an example, both on and off screen, of the negative effects of time travel. The film messes with the timeline and the lore... a lot. While I'd be all for taking liberties when it comes to reboots/remakes/resets, I despise the execution of twists and turns that don't serve the story at all. None of the twists or timeline changes in the movie work. They're just there to make the film feel different enough for it not be considered a rehash, but the film ultimately fails at that too because it revisits previous action sequences in the series (chase sequence, attack on police headquarters, facility invasion, etc.), just restructured and reorganized, and even tries to pull off the same one-liners that were delivered all the way back in 1991. The post-Terminator 2 formula this series has been approaching their films (other than Salvation) with has definitely grown old and obsolete.
The time travel in this movie is wonkier than ever as this movie heavily suffers to terrible pacing. All of the previous movies were able to create a straightforward story even when dealing with complicated time travel, while this film is just a mess. It's a series of action scenes that are awkwardly stitched together and it seemingly uses time travel to inform you of which act of the movie you're in.
In its disjointedness, the film loses any substance or thematic weight it could've had (a similar problem I had with the director's last film, Thor: The Dark World). Actually, I'm not even sure it had a story other than the plot of resetting the timeline to the point it barely even feels like a Terminator movie. It really misses the mark with the overarching Terminator themes and also the characters. Emilia Clarke and Jai Courtney are fine in their roles as Sarah Connor and Kyle Reese, respectively, but in the end, it didn't even matter. Sarah Connor is some completely different character that is seemingly a weird mix between T2 Sarah Connor and John Connor, and her chemistry with Kyle Reese is awful enough to make you root against their romance. Throwing in the different updates and changes to other characters, it's hard to remember that this is, in fact, Terminator canon and not just glorified fan-fiction.
It's no secret that the Terminator series has an already messy continuity, but this film messes it ten-fold enough to make me wonder if I'll be back for more. Although the last two films were sub-par (I wrote about it here and here, for further context on this next bit), there was enough to keep me interested in the future of the series.With this film, there just isn't any... at all. It has erased The Terminator and Terminator 2 as its two completely stable footing, and now we're left with this as the foundation of future films, which is far from comforting.
The future isn't written and there is no future but what we make for ourselves, so please just write these movies better or just stop making them at all.
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