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TERMINATOR: GENISYS (2015) MOVIE NEWS & REVIEW

terminator: genisys (2015) movie

Genre | Science Fiction

Classification | M

Running time | 126 minutes

Released | 1 July 2015

cast

Arnold Schwarzenegger ... Guardian
Jason Clarke ... John Connor
Emilia Clarke ... Sarah Connor
Jai Courtney ... Kyle Reese
J.K. Simmons ... O'Brien
Dayo Okeniyi ... Danny Dyson
Matt Smith ... Alex
Courtney B. Vance ... Miles Dyson
Byung-Hun Lee ... Cop / T-1000
Michael Gladis ... Lt. Matias

director

Alan Taylor

writer

Laeta Kalogridis ... (written by) &
Patrick Lussier ... (written by)

James Cameron ... (based on characters created by) &
Gale Anne Hurd ... (based on characters created by)

cinematographer

Kramer Morgenthau

music

Lorne Balfe

film editor

Roger Barton

box office result

Worldwide $440,603,537

Australia $10,436,059

North America $89,760,956

the best dialogue

Sarah Connor: I've been trying to teach him to blend in.
Guardian: Hello Kyle Reese. It is nice to meet you.
[the T-800 "smiles"]
Kyle Reese: Are you kidding me?
Sarah Connor: I know it needs work.

[first lines]
Kyle Reese: [narrating] Before they died, my parents told me stories about how the world once was; what it was like long before I was born; before the war with the machines. They remembered a green world, vast and beautiful, filled with laughter and hope for the future. It's a world I never knew. By the time I was born, all this was gone.
Kyle Reese: "Skynet," a computer program designed to automate missile defense. It was supposed to protect us, but that's not what happened. August 29th, 1997, Skynet woke up. It decided all of humanity was a threat to its existence.
[scenes of mass destruction]
Kyle Reese: It used our own bombs against us. Three billion people died of nuclear fire.
Kyle Reese: Survivors called it Judgement Day. People lived like rats in shadows, hiding, starving, or worse, captured and put into camps for extermination. I was born after Judgement Day, into a broken world ruled by the machines. The worst were infiltration units that posed as humans. We called them Terminators.
John Connor: [finding young Kyle in subterranean tunnels] Are there others down here?
Kyle Reese: And then one man found me. His name was John Connor, and he changed everything. John showed us how to fight back; how to rise up. He freed prisoners. He taught us how to slash the machines to scrap. People whisper about John and wonder how he can know the things he does. They use words like prophet. But John's more. We're here because tonight, he's going to lead us to crush Skynet for good.

[T-1000 Cop rams into their vehicle and starts shooting]
Kyle Reese: Get down!
Guardian: We've been re-acquired.
Sarah Connor: Uh, yeah, no shit!

TERMINATOR: GENISYS (2015) MOVIE IMAGES

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TERMINATOR: GENISYS (2015) STORY SYNOPSIS

When John Connor (Jason Clarke), leader of the human resistance against Skynet, sends Kyle Reese (Jai Courtney) back to 1984 to protect his mother, Sarah (Emilia Clarke), from a Terminator assassin, an unexpected turn of events creates an altered timeline. Instead of a scared waitress, Sarah is a skilled fighter and has a Terminator guardian (Arnold Schwarzenegger) by her side. Faced with unlikely allies and dangerous new enemies, Reese sets out on an unexpected new mission: reset the future.

TERMINATOR: GENISYS (2015) MOVIE REVIEW

Reviewed by Mark Geraghty | Review date 30 June 2015
Pop Movee Rating ⭐⭐⭐

TERMINATOR: GENISYS is a Terminator film for a kinder, gentler, more-franchise friendly world, taking the best set-pieces from the first and second films and giving them a 21st Century CGI make-over. Fans of the series may be disappointed that Genisys has not gone back to the series origins and provided a hard-core action thriller, but Skydance (the film’s financier) and Paramount (the film’s distributor) have far too much money invested to allow this new Terminator film to be marginalized in the 18+ audience category. Like THOR: THE DARK WORLD, Director Alan Taylor has punched out another competent action film that has enough in it to keep viewers intrigued by what’s going on without giving them the whole story, as Genisys clearly sets itself as the first film in a multi-movie arc that needs to be completed before the Terminator franchise rights revert to James Cameron in 2019.

In another re-imagining of the final battle with Skynet, Terminator Genisys opens with an extended series of scenes between Kyle Reese (Jai Courtney) and John Connor (Jason Clarke). After thirty-one years, viewers get to see the bond between these two characters acted out on-screen, with Connor knowingly sending his father to his death at the hands of the Terminator in the past. As Reese is flung back in time, the first big surprise of Genisys is revealed and it's one that viewers may have already anticipated given the outcry over how much has been revealed in the film’s trailers. Coming to a rather wince-inducing thud in 1984, Laeta Kalogridis and Patrick Lussier’s screenplay takes a few minutes to pay homage the original film with its recreation of the Griffith Park Observatory scene and the downtown LA discount department store scene that saw the arrival of the original Terminator unit (Arnold Schwarzenegger) and Kyle Reese (Michael Biehn). The twist is, this time, it’s Sarah Connor (Emilia Clarke) and an older version of Schwarzenegger’s iconic Terminator who, firstly, stop the original Terminator unit and, secondly, rescue Courtney’s version of Reese from a T-1000 (played by Korean actor Byung-hun Lee) that has managed to find its way back to 1984. It’s at this point that Terminator Genisys starts to set its own course.

The story moves forward with a number of set-pieces, each one more elaborate than the next, and cleverly jumps the film forward in time by using the in-built knowledge of Schwarzenegger’s older “Pops” Terminator unit to bring the film into a more contemporary setting. There’s also the question posed throughout the movie as to where “Pops” actually came from… Both Reese and John Connor, who appears to Sarah and John when they arrive in 2017, ask the question, but there’s no satisfactory answer as this is one of the big teases of the new proposed trilogy of Terminator movies kicking off with Genisys. Unfortunately, one of the movie’s biggest “reveals” - John Connor’s transformation into a Terminator – has been well and truly spoiled by the saturation marketing that has gone on in the lead-up to the film’s release. That’s not to say they’re aren’t others, as familiar faces, settings and events unfold in different ways throughout the course of the 126 minute running time that definitely make this new Terminator entry the best of the series since the credits rolled on Terminator: Judgement Day all the way back in 1991.

The performances are all solid with the exception of Emilia Clarke. THE GAME OF THRONES actress seems miscast as Sarah Connor. She looks far too young and not hard enough to be convincing in the role and struggles to keep up with the physicality of the role. In contrast, Jai Courtney is in tip-top shape and his physical presence allows him to impose himself on the action and even make Schwarzenegger take a back seat in a number of scenes. As for the ‘Austrian Oak’, he embodies the Terminator so well, it’s like catching up with an old friend. Everyone knows he’s older, but it’s Arnold and the script serves him reasonably well, demanding less physical involvement from him until right at the very end of the film. In return, Schwarzenegger gets all the best lines in the film and helps to provide some broad humour that helps to lighten the tension when required, playing most of his humour of Courtney's discomfort as the would-be father to future of humanity's saviour and its implications in relation to Sarah, whom the T-800 has protected since she was a little girl.

TERMINATOR: GENISYS is neither the breakthrough film of 1984 nor the groundbreaking effort of 1991, but Alan Taylor's contribution to the franchise helps to make it more accessible than either the 2003 or 2008 entries, both of which were relatively downbeat, dour affairs. The film is a clear attempt to enliven the series, delivering science fiction escapism that tries to strike the difficult balance between engaging with the existing fan base and, simultaneously, broadening the appeal of the franchise to movie-goers around the globe. The film does not completely succeed in its mission, but it provides more-than-enough entertainment and intrigue to warrant the optimism of, at least, a follow-up story to see whether the current crop of Terminator film-makers can one-up their freshman effort with a more sophisticated sophomore outing; just like James Cameron did with his TERMINATOR 2: JUDGEMENT DAY sequel all the way back in 1991.