Rating of
1/4
One Giant Mess!
Unknown - wrote on 07/04/15
'Terminator: Genisys' cleans house on the mythology of the series and hits reset. I was hesitant going into this movie for that reason. I still kept an open mind because there are many cool things you can do with time travel plots. The possibilities are endless. Well, this movie has and endless amount of IMpossible situations. The new alternate timeline is one GIANT mess! Things start out decent for the first thirty (or so) minutes. It begins in the future, where we see the events that lead to Kyle Reese being sent back to 1984 to protect Sarah Conner (the first Terminator movie). Once there, things become drastically different. Some hallmarks from the first two 'Terminator' films are showcased in a nostalgic effort. Unnecessary, but not terrible. Then the plot just spins out of control. The rest of the movie is nothing but a series of contradictory twists that keep piling up. None of it makes sense! Scene-to-scene, we are treated to a fast succession of flashy synthetic FX followed by confusing rapid explanations of what we just witnessed. There's so much action and plot happening, but I didn't care about any of it for one second. The characters are sorely underdeveloped and the actors playing them are just passable. Jason Clarke and Jai Courtney are particularly mis-cast. Schwarzenegger is the only one who is having any fun. He's the most entertaining thing in the movie. One or two chases come close to actually resembling the earlier films. Even those moments are encompassed by the heavy use of glossy CG. The overkill of CG action is numbing. The whole experience was a stupid waste of time. Easily the worst 'Terminator' movie thus far.
