I’ve got four words to describe my experience watching the new Terminator movie and that is, It Did Not Suck. I also did not burst out laughing when John Connor spoke unlike Christian Bales Batmanesque tone did during his opening sequence in Terminator Salvation.
With that stated, this iteration of Terminator aptly titled Terminator Genisys adds yet another wrinkle to the time travel franchise. It starts by taking elements of the first film, sort of acknowledging and expanding on the original 1984 and then poof dimension hopping and introducing us to their own take of the concept of multiverses. It seemed for a moment there that the whole back and forth time traveling and side to side multidimensional stuff threatened to get away from them but they pulled it back and gave us a combination of T1 and T2. T1 in the sense that it felt more like a horror movie and T2 an action packed movie.
“Terminator Genisys” Starts off in the future, where mankind’s last hope and messianic figure John Connor (Jason Clarke) leads the resistance. Riding along this fight is his right hand and trusted confidant Kyle Reese (Jai Courtney). John armed with knowledge from the past, leads his band of resistance against Skynet, following a preordained path that would eventually lead Skynet to take steps to ensure mankind’s last hope never exist thereby ensuring that he does exist (Confused?). Well, in order for John Connor to exist, Skynet has to create a time machine to send the terminator back to 1984 to kill Sarah Connor (Emilia Clarke) which will then be used by John Connor to send Kyle Reese, his father back to save her.
“While I think the movies would do better getting away from all the back and forth time travel and multi-dimensions stuff and stick to linear time travel and more battles between man and machines… this movie was pretty easy to follow if you have seen the other movies. I had zero issues “getting it”. Actually thought it was far better than I was expecting.” This sentiment typifies the feelings of most of the audience member at the June 30th advance preview. Hopefully the remaining two of the intended trilogy will improve on the format and streamline the story.
“Terminator Genisys,” in theatres as of July 1st 2015 and stars “Game of Thrones” actress Emilia Clarke as Sarah Connor, Suicide Squad star Jai Courtney as Kyle Reese and Jason Clarke as John Connor.
I give it a 7 out of 10