By Geno McGahee
It all began in 1984 with THE TERMINATOR. The classic time-travel monster movie was different and gritty and launched the career of Arnold Schwarzenegger. In 1991, T2:JUDGMENT DAY was a major hit and a tremendous follow up to the original. TERMINATOR 3: RISE OF THE MACHINES was released in 2003 to mixed reviews. It was good, but it wasn’t on the same level as the other two and featured a new hot chick terminator that many thought was a gimmick to sell the movie. The film gets bad press, but it’s actually a decent flick. The embarrassingly bad TERMINATOR SALVATION came out in 2009 and seemed to be the last breath of this series, but when Arnold returned to film he decided to revisit some of his classics including TERMINATOR.
TERMINATOR GENISYS is a very unique film that immediately earns an A for effort. This was a focused effort with the attempt to make this film stand out like the first two. We begin with the future and the fight between humans and the machines that took over. The human resistance, led by John Connor (Jason Clarke), is making the fatal strike against Skynet, but they don’t go out without a fight. They send the T-800 to the past…to the year 1984, which is when this film gets so interesting. If you’re a fan of the first two, you’ll find the return to 84 very fun.
Connor knows he has to stop that Terminator from killing his mother, Sarah (Emilia Clarke), and sends Kyle Reese (Jai Courtney) back to stop the Terminator. When he gets there, some unexpected things happen. The T-800 goes to get some clothing from the street punks as he did in the original, but another Terminator (Schwarzenegger) storms over and kills it. It was very cool to see the 84 Terminator take on the older Terminator and it shows just how far CGI has come…even from 2003. In RISE OF THE MACHINES, the fight scenes resembled video game fights. Here, they look very convincing.
Sarah Connor and “Pops”, the good Terminator, have teamed up to save the future and have been awaiting the arrival of both the T-800 and Reese. Reese is in for a shock when he runs into a department store and meets up with a T-1000, the liquid metal terminator from T2. When Sarah Connor crashes through the store with an armored vehicle, he begins to see that something very strange is happening. Multiple time travels from both sides have impacted the past.
Schwarzenegger rediscovers the character and the comedic timing that he has. He proved very funny in this role and maintained the character of the cyborg very well. He has become the guardian to Sarah Connor and keeps asking for her and Kyle to “mate” for the future.
The mission is the same in this. Reese and Connor need to stop Skynet and they must travel to 2017 and stop the Genisys program, which connects everything at your fingerprints. The social commentary is spot on as everyone walks by in their own world, on their phone and tablet. In another twist, John Connor, has appeared in 2017 as a half robot and is pushing for Skynet to end humanity and has many of the strengths of the T-1000.
Sarah, Reese and Pops must race against time, fighting the police and the evil John Connor to stop judgment day once and for all. It leads to an explosive action-packed last third of this film that really brings it home and concludes in a satisfactory way.
TERMINATOR GENISYS is a big winner with great performances across the board. I really liked Emilia Clarke in the role of Sarah Connor. She was funny and tough and was a believable replacement for Linda Hamilton. The rest can be said for this great cast. This is just a really cool film and if you’re a fan of the first two, you will appreciate this one a great deal. I highly recommend it.
Rating: 8/10
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