Krishna
What the hell is this movie? Even if you wanted to sit down and totally destroy the amazing reputation that the Terminator series built up, at least in the first two movies, you cannot do a better job than to produce this movie.
It is cliche from the beginning to the end, non stop. It is like watching a sample of all the previous movies in clips to remind us of what they were like and on top of it, provide ridiculous ‘improvisations’ which make you go ‘what the heck just happened?’ and shake your head.
For one thing, Sara calling Terminator ‘Pops’ (the good one – don’t get me started on the evil ones) is a bit irritating, at least to me. The wisecracking that goes on throughout seems like a cut and paste from the first movie.
Let us talk about the story. John O’Conner sends his best friend Kyle Reese back to the past since he realizes that Skynet has sent a robot to kill Sarah Conner. We have already seen this exact scenario in an earlier Terminator. Then there is a cop T1000 that comes to kill them. Seen in Terminator 2 Judgement Day. He does a few tricks which exactly seems like a copy from the earlier film. He mistakes Guardian, the ‘good’ terminator that stands guard for Sarah as the evil one until he learns better. Seen that, they have done that earlier.
Oh, then Reese reaches the past (1984) he meets a cop who turns out to be T1000 who was waiting for him but he manages to escape. Car chases and robots relentlessly trying to kill Sarah – seen that done that.
And confusingly, Skynet also seems to have sent T800 the Guardian look-alike, to kill Sarah. He goes naked, meets three punks and demands their clothes. This is a recyle from the first movie. By this time, you start thinking ‘Are they going to show anything new?’. Then they do, and you realize that you were better off watching the rehash – much better off.
Clue? When Reese goes to the past, he says a Skynet automaton disguised as a robot try and capture John Conner. He is in the time tunnel and could not go to help him but there were a ton of other resistance fighters around them so he assumes all is well. Keep that in the back of your mind.
They with great difficulty manage to kill T 1000 with the help of the Guardian by dissolving it in acid.
Now there is some blather about the timeline being altered because of all the copycat things they did now and somehow (??) figure that 2017 is when the action will happen. (This movie was made in 2015 and that seems to be the only logic in choosing 2017)
They learn of Genisys, an operating system that is going to morph into Skynet soon. (There are very close resemblances to a holographic Google, funnily enough).
Then comes John Conner, who is now ‘evil’ and is even more powerful than even T1000. Now he is T3000 : go figure. Of course, the higher the number the more powerful the robot. He can morph, never die and do incredible feats, but finally meets the same end as T1000 in Terminator 2 – another copycat ending.
There is a lot more blather but by making this a copy of earlier films and then deviating totally illogically from the storyline, they made this probably the worst Terminator to date. Even Terminator 3, which ‘invented’ a girl killer machine instead of a man machine is better in comparison.
2/ 10
– – Krishna (March 2020)