Reviews Film / Terminator Genisys

I liked all the actors and thought they did a good job with the material, but if everyone else disagrees I won't tell them they're wrong.

And I defer to the Penny Arcade quote that the only difference between "recycling" and "homaging" is whether or not you liked it.

Well that's what opinions are all about!

I should make clear, I don't disagree with recycling/homages in theory. My particular beef with this film is that it seems solely comprised of 'homages' cobbled together rather than attempting anything new and fresh at all.

This is not a flaw exclusive to this film of course but given how revolutionary the first two were in their different ways it is particularly disappointing, for me as a Terminator fan.

I agree with you for the most part, but while Terminator 1 and 2 are by far the best ones and it's doubtful they will be beaten by new films in the franchise, that doesn't necessarily mean Genisys can't be good in it's own right.

Terminator's been doing callbacks since T3 which, while I can agree if you find it not to be a good film, has set the trend of callbacks in the franchise as par for the course.

I don't know, as far as comedy there was one running gag that was funny with Arnie and JK Simmons was funny. And I thought the action was pretty terrible all over, the only things I can remember even just one week after are the things that I was laughing at in the cinema.

Like when Arnie some how jumps through the blades of the helicopter without damaging them and blows up the helicopter which someone manages to fall onto the helipad John Connor wanted to go to anyway ahead of the non-blown up helicopter which was directly above and driving to the same place.

Or when they make a bus jump like two stories into the air and I think it does two spins before landing?

Or scene after scene after scene of people standing still and shooting terminators even though everyone doing the shooting knows it will do absolutely nothing.

Some of the special effects looked like they were out of a videogame, and not a modern one either, like a cutscene in the terrible Terminator Salvation cash-in last generation.

Even the incredibly forgettable Terminator Salvation had a few action scenes that were interesting instead of random stuff happening until it randomly stops.

If we did accept that the action wasn't 'bad', can you actually name a film you've seen in the last couple of years where the action was actually worse? You could go into any film any time of the year and see equally as good action.

The Hunger Games and TMNT movies all have *terrible* action, because, in their attempts to invoke a "documentary" feel, they only succeed in making sure no one can see what the heck is going on. Surely you can agree that in Genisys, they at least put the camera on a bloody tripod, and use shots to establish where the characters are in relation to one another and the setpieces.

But, really, people always harp on shooting up the Terminators. It may not kill them, but it slows them down, and that's generally all they're after.

...Eh, whatever. Taste is subjective. Maybe you're into that kinda thing.

The Hunger Games isn't an action film, it's a mistake people seem to keep making - the point is you're not meant to be enjoying the fighting.

And I could point to twenty as-basic failures that Terminator Genysis makes, but instead how about this, talk about two action scenes in the film that you remember clearly and why you liked them?

You can point to any scene in Terminator Genysis and be unable to answer really basic questions like "What does that character want to do and how are they doing it?" It fails at even basic cause and effect.

Here's yet another ludicrous scene in the film: The two protagonists are in the room with the time machine, they realise they need to be naked to travel so what they do is:

1) Walk out of the time machine room, to the locker room(!) in their super secret base made for just Sarah Connor and the Terminator.

2) Take of their clothes in the locker room

3) Put on night clothes so that they're not naked whilst walking back to the time machine room.

4) Enter the time machine room, take their clothes off again, walk up to the time machine and enter it.

The whole film is like that, every action scene is like that. In the first two Terminator films at any moment you know what the characters want to do in an action sequence, and how difficult it is for them to achieve it. In Genysis you're just waiting for the director to decide the scene has ended and cut to the next action scene.

...Wow. I'm not sure I should respond to that, so much as encourage you to put up your *own* review, then respond to *that*.

I mean, I don't agree. What you describe is, for instance, rather similar to something that I once had to do in a hospital, and they didn't necessarily *have* night clothes to go through with.

But, and this is probably the more important point, why? Why does it matter? If your suspension of disbelief is so ridiculously thin that you're thinking harder about where the characters are getting dressed and why than about the characters and how they're interacting, you hated the film with such a bitter passion that nothing I say will ever convince you otherwise.

...But, to answer your question, I liked Kyle Reese's rematch with the T-800, both for the funny mythology gags where he kept trying to hit it with the metal bar, and because it quickly and efficiently established both participants' goals and had them both working towards them for the duration of the scene, and the scene with "Pops" and the T-5000, both because it demonstrates some creative uses of the machine's shapeshifter powers, and because it gives the original Terminator a simultaneously tragic and triumphant send off. I mean, I appreciate that this is useless, but you asked a question in good faith, and I'm now answering it.

I liked the fights between Kyle and the just revived T-800 + Sarah & Pops vs T-1000. What interested me most was seeing something new that mimetic poly-alloy can do, namely being able to re-activate a T-800. Not only that, but we get to see a new method to destroying a T-1000, that being acid. Bad movie or no, we've never seen either of these before in a new Terminator film. That and Connor being a new Terminator completely.