Terminator Genisys
Dir: Alan Taylor
2015
***
My heart sank somewhat when I heard of Skydance's bid for the Terminator rights. Skydance have continually produced unimaginative remakes or reboots of many an old favorite including the Mission Impossible and G.I. Joes films, the latest Jack Ryan offering and, worst of all, Star Trek into Darkness. Top Gun 2 is next on their list. Surely they couldn't make a worse film than Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines or Terminator Salvation though could they? Well, no, it's no worse but it isn't that much better either. I have absolutely no problem with them changing the timeline, in fact I believe it needed to be done for the overall story to progress and for the first third of the film I was thrilled to see some clever time-travel sci-fi ideas being explored. The big twist was leaked in the film's trailer a while before its release, I'm glad to say this didn't really spoil anything for me and as the film progressed it became the least of its problems. Just as the sci-fi/time-travel gets good, the mindless action gets in the way somewhat but with no real stand-out scene the the original two films had. I like director Alan Taylor, I think he got some unfair criticism for Thor: The Dark World, but his direction here leaves a lot to be desired. The camera jumps far too much during action sequences and the darker shots are too dark for the viewer to see what is going on. I was sat at a good distance from the screen and I have 20/20 vision but I couldn't keep up with the visuals and it made my head hurt. If that wasn't enough, the story soon got so convoluted and bizarrely cheesy that I wondered if I'd passed out and missed a whole chunk of the film and that I'd failed to release it had been a spoof from the very beginning. The science of the first Terminator didn't make any sense but Genisys takes it to another level. What is revisited from previous films doesn't seem to fit (apart from the scene with the three punks - the best bit of the whole film) and the attempts at humour fall silently flat. I don't even want to talk about the last 10 minutes of the film, I'm hoping that maybe they can change it in the next time-travel heavy chapter. I'm not sure why, but I am actually looking forward to seeing what they do next. There have been many a reboot/sequel that I've seen and hated of recent years, Star Trek into Darkness and Jurassic World being two prime examples and I have very little interest in the future of either franchise. I do however, look forward to see what the next two chapters of the this Terminator trilogy will bring because, as much as I was disappointed, I was still entertained throughout and the slate is now clean for them to do anything they like. A few ideas have been left open and a few key characters look like they may return (J.K. Simmons' in particular) which I am strangely optimistic about. Maybe I'm glutton for punishment, maybe I'm deluded (I think that's probably it) I'm certainly being generous giving it 3 stars, but I have hope and faith that what was wrong with the franchise is now behind us. Please let it be true.