Terminator Genisys (2015) Arnold Schwarzenegger, Jason Clarke, Emilia Clarke, Jai Courtney, J.K. Simmons Movie Review

Terminator Genisys (2015)   3/53/53/53/53/5


Emilia Clarke in Terminator Genisys (2015)

Back to the Terminator Future

In the future John Connor (Jason Clarke - Child 44) leads his men on an assault of Skynet only for it to be too late as they have already sent a T-800 back to kill his mother. So he sends Sgt. Kyle Reese (Jai Courtney - Unbroken) back to 1984 to protect his mother, Sarah Connor (Emilia Clarke - Dom Hemingway), who he says has no idea of any of what will happen and so he will need to convince her that he has been sent from the future by her son. But when Reese returns to 1984 everything which John has told him about his mother is wrong and now he finds himself on a completely different mission and having to deal with a T-800 who has been acting as a guardian to Sarah.

I just want to tell you that the two sides of my brain are in a battle right now, part of me does not like "Terminator Genisys" but then part of me found it entertaining and some thing I need to watch again, and trust me that battle going on in my head is doing my head in. Now I am going to say this review of "Terminator Genisys" does contain some spoilers but not all of the spoilers as quite simply there are some things I need to tell you just to review the movie and then there are some things best left for you to find out yourself. But you may just want to watch "Terminator Genisys" and experience it with as little information as possible and then you can have the conflict going on in your head like I do.

Jai Courtney in Terminator Genisys (2015)

Now to be honest I don't know where to really start because after a set up which introduces us to John Connor and how he met Kyle as a young boy we see Kyle transported back in time to 1984 to save Sarah and of course to father John although he doesn't know it. And that is good but then we then get the first curveball as we have the T-800 sent back to the past to kill Sarah but then another one who was sent back when Sarah was a child to protect her and as such Sarah in "Terminator Genisys" is more like a young version of Sarah Connor from "Terminator 2" and we even have a T-1000 sent back to 1984 kill Sarah. As such this movie certainly has you trying to work out the logic of how certain things can be happening until it beats you into submission and you realise it is pointless trying to make sense as time travel means anything goes.

So we have a storyline which at times feels like it was being made up by writers who with each plot idea they thought of they got excited and then came up with another one which got them even more excited until all logic went out the window. But then we get the next battle for your brain as we have Jason Clarke as Rusty Griswold, sorry I mean John Connor but with so many actors having played John it seems like there is no continuity. Now I like Jason Clarke and he does a nice job of playing this version of John Connor but it is a struggle in the early scenes as is having Jai Courtney as Kyle Reese although when the action arrives Courtney certainly delivers it well. As for Emilia Clarke as Sarah Connor well the biggest issue is getting around having a Sarah Connor as a young version of the one in "Terminator 2" but with the attitude of the teenage John Connor from the second movie. As I said it does cause conflict as they all play their parts well as does Arnold Schwarzenegger, but some of it just feels wrong.

Wrong is also what I have to say when it comes to some of the special effects driven action as the big scenes of action such as lorries crashing, robots moving in the battle field and futuristic helicopters crashing all have a sort of video game animation look to them which frankly feels tacky. Yet when you get the more character based effects from the T-800 robot frame to the liquid metal of the T-1000 and those I cannot mention they are stunning. It makes "Terminator Genisys" incredibly hit n miss which just adds to the battle of whether or not "Terminator Genisys" is right or wrong.

What this all boils down to is that there are lots of things in "Terminator Genisys" I didn't like although some of those things ended up winning me around. It does leave me conflicted but I also have to say that as a piece of entertainment it works and is certainly a movie I know I will be watching again even if it is just to try and work out the logic of it all.


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