Terminator Genisys

Title: Terminator Genisys

Director: Alan Taylor

Released: 2015

Starring: Arnold Schwarzenegger, Jason Clarke, Emilia Clarke, Jai Courtney, J.K. Simmons, Dayo Okeniyi, Matt Smith, Courtney B. Vance, Lee Byung-hun

Plot: When Kyle Reese (Courtney) is sent back in time to 1984 to protect Sarah Connor (Clarke) only to find himself on an alternative timeline were Sarah is already a capable warrior and even has her own terminator “pops” (Schwarzenegger) while the threat of Skynet remains ever more present than before.

Review: Since the release of the phenomenal “Terminator 2: Judgement Day” the Terminator franchise has found itself for the most part floundering and in dire need of some kind of direction to drive the franchise forward. True these attempts have meant that we got to see Judgement day happen (Rise of the machines) as well as a disappointing attempt to set an entry in the post apocalyptic future (Terminator Salvation) whose scripts from its troubled development promised more than we ultimately got, but then what can you expect when you allow McG to direct the movie.

Now rather than doing the logical choice of just driving a dump truck of cash to James Cameron’s house and beg him to return to the franchise instead this time Alan Taylor steps up to direct who is best known for directing TV with his most noteworthy film credit being “Thor: The Dark World” which now the fans of the Marvel cinematic universe have gotten over the initial shine of getting comic book movies and proclaiming their love for everything the studio puts out regularly rank it as one of the worst films to come from the studio. So hardly the most reassuring credential going into this film, but hey Arnold was returning so that’s a postive….right?

Knowing what the fans had made of this entry ahead of time my expectation was kind of at a low, especially when the trailer had hardly done anything to grab my attention. Of course it was a big suprise when 40 mins into the film I found myself really enjoying myself as we got to see the final battle against Skynet being won and Kyle being set back in time, all things we’d heard about in the previous films and only now were getting to see actually happen. Even when we get into the alternative 1984 and see an older version of Arnold’s terminator battling his clone I was digging the homage, especially when so much care was being taken to replicate the scenes from the original film. And then we time travel again to 2017 and things started to become unglued.

For some reason once we take that leap forward the film really starts to fall apart and almost feels like the first half was directed by someone else and that Taylor was brought in by the studio to finish the film as its almost jarring how suddenly the quality of the film drops and all we’ve done is make one jump in time.

One of the biggest issues comes with the latest Terminator development which this time sees John Connor being replaced by a nanobot Terminator the T-3000 which might have worked a lot better as a plot device had the trailers not given away this major twist and as such it ends up coming off flat and devoid of any kind of emotional response that might have been there. As a villain though he brings nothing new to the table outside of having some slightly different abilities and when the end game is to blow up Cyberdyne again you can’t help but feel alittle frustrated to see the franchise still going in circles.

On the plus side Arnold is still as fantastic as ever in his iconic Terminator role even bringing a few new elements to the role this time as this time he plays Sarah Connor’s guardian Pops, perfectly working in the fact that he is much older than the last time he played the role, as its revealed that the flesh covering his robot exoskeleton can age, a concept which came from James Cameron when the producers approached him about rebooting the franchise. This is further added to by Pops showing signs of old age as his joints start to seize and give out and it really adds to the character while proving to be the one thing to justify all this timeline hopping madness.

The action is fun as always with Arnie showing that despite his age he can still throw down with the best of them as we get plenty of terminator on terminator violence with Pops saving the pair from a variety of terminator models including a new version of the T-1000 played here by Lee Byung-hun who even mixes things up slightly by including the ability to throw metal spears which makes for a nice touch especially when so much of his scenes feels like we are watching a rehash of Terminator 2 which also rang true during the helicopter chase. The T-3000 meanwhile gets old quick especially not having any real powers compared to the previous terminators we have seen. Yes he’s good as the unstoppable presence, but compared to Byung-hun he just falls flat when you compare the two.

The other issue here is that Emilia Clarke and Jai Courtney have zero chemistry together which is already supposed to be akward from the start seeing how they are destined to be together which certain parties know from the start with Pops amusingly asking Sarah if they’ve “bred” or not. But looking at this pair you can see them never getting together, while the introduction of the adult John Connor on their timeline just comes off confused and akward with a stupid plot idea only seeming the worse as this pair attempt to interact with their adult child.

Its frustrating as this film certainly has its moments with the first 40 minutes really being promising. It’s just a shame that it all falls apart from there. While it might be an improvement over parts Rise of the Machines and Salvation this really could have done with a stronger script let alone not feeling like it was borrowing from the second film so much. As such approach with caution.

Elwood's Essentials #17 - The Terminator

Title: The Terminator

Director: James Cameron

Released: 1984

Starring: Arnold Schwarzenegger, Michael Biehn, Linda Hamilton, Paul Winfield, Lance Henriksen, Earl Boen, Bess Motta, Rick Rossovich, Dick Miller, Franco Columbu, Bill Paxton

Plot: A cyborg assassin known as a Terminator (Schwarzenegger) travels back in time to 1984 to kill Sarah Connor (Hamilton) the future mother of the human resistance in 2029 before he is born. At the same time Kyle Reese (Biehn) a solider from the future has also travelled back in time to protect her.

Review: Who’d have thought that the director of “Piranha 2: The Spawning” would go on to be the director of some of the most iconic and visually inventive cinema of all time. A graduate of the Roger Corman film school were he started as a miniature model maker before briefly being given the Piranha 2 gig taking over from original director Miller Drake before he too was fired topping off what had proven to be a nightmare debut for Cameron who topped off the experience by getting food poisoning.

It was while battling this illness that Cameron had a nightmare about an invincible robot assassin sent to kill him from the future which formed the basis for this film while also drawing inspiration from “The Outer Limits” episodes “Soldier” and “Demon With A Glass Hand”. Cameron also traded recordings with his friend Bill Wisher who helped him turn his draft into a finished script. This original script featured two Terminators and also introduced the idea of the liquid metal Terminator which had to be scrapped when he realised that the technology at the time wouldn’t realise his ideas leaving it for the sequel were he would introduce the now iconic T-1000.

With this film Cameron gives us two distinctive worlds as he opens in the post-apocalyptic Los Angeles of 2029 were humans have been driven to brink of extinction by the robot uprising brought about by the AI defence network Skynet. Its an iconic world vision of the future that Cameron gives us as towering machines rumble over fields of human skulls. Even though this vision of the future is limited it’s still unquestionably effective and perfectly establishes this alternative future. From here we are taken back to 1984 Los Angeles which though Cameron’s lens is shown in a grimy and neon lit style which makes for the perfect battleground for this game of cat and mouse to unfold on.

Returning to this film as an older film watcher it was now that I could finally appreciate this film beyond its set pieces, which certainly helped keep its sequel in heavy rotation during my film watching youth. This original film is a much difference beast than its action orientated sequels as here Cameron’s focus is purely on building atmosphere and tension to create a film which is as equal parts a cat and mouse thriller as it is a slasher only this time the killer is a seemingly unstoppable killing machine.

The casting is another key aspect of why this film works despite the fact that Schwarzenegger was to be cast as Kyle Reese only to talk himself into the Terminator role following a lunch meeting with Cameron, though the Terminator role could easily have gone to both Lance Henriksen or OJ Simpson who were both in the running for the role with the latter being dismissed as they felt no one would buy him as a killer. No doubt neither of them wouldn’t have made the role as iconic as it was in Schwarzenegger’s hands which itself is largely down to the amount of work he put into developing the character to truly sell the idea of him being an unstoppable killing machine and its hard to say if it was this role or Conan which was the bigger star making role for him.

Schwarzenegger as the Terminator is such a dominating presence throughout though Cameron does for the most part keep his personality cold and calculating its never to the point here that he stands out by giving machine like responses as he is shown talking with Dick Miller’s pawn shop clerk whose lack of response for why he’s buying such a shopping list of guns is more questionable than the responses that Schwarzenegger is giving. Even his iconic “I’ll be back” is a perfectly acceptable response to what he is being told by the police station clerk, only here its added to by the fact that its followed up by the Terminator driving a car through the front of the police station.

Unquestionably its a gritty sci-fi thriller that Cameron crafts here with both the Terminator and Kyle being introduced as they land nude in the present day before having to find the resources with the Terminator coldly killing a group of Punks while Kyle is shown having to break into a clothing store while evading the police in a wonderfully tense sequence and Cameron really doesn’t establish the motivation of Kyle’s character until his first confrontation with the Terminator during the now iconic tech-noir club sequence, until this point he is just shown running around the city with a modified shotgun while the Terminator works his way (or should that be kills his way) through the Sarah Connors in the phone book which is such a great touch that the machines only have a name and a location rather than an actual idea of what she looks like.

The relationship between Sarah and Kyle is an interesting one as for the most part she is unsure if Kyle is who he says he is and not just some delusional nutcase as everyone keeps telling her. The reasons for them getting together however are slightly convoluted and even now the idea of the Sarah’s future son giving Kyle her picture and essentially match making his own parents just never sat right with me even though its kind of an essential aspect to the story. This aside having a human soldier as the sole defence against the Terminator really adds a tense aspect to the plot, especially when we see the Terminator easily despatching everyone he comes into contact with. Its equally a ballsy move on Cameron’s part to *spoiler alert* kill off Kyle and leave Sarah to have the final showdown. Obviously for Sarah it perfectly sets up her character evolution from being the damsel in distress as we get to see in the next film even though having a Terminator take on the protector role does remove some of the edge that the human vulnerability of Kyle brings to the film.

The action scenes throughout are still fantastic to watch even after multiple viewings be it the police station massacre of Kyle and Sarah being chased by the Terminator, Cameron really knows how to hold the audiences attention and really craft genuinely exciting action scenes. Of course the appearance of the exo-skeleton Terminator at the finale does loose some of its effectiveness due to being such an iconic image for the franchise while its movements Stan Winston has quite nailed in this film. That being said it still makes for a fantastic finale and a wonderful creation.

While this film might be overshadowed by its sequel, the subtle charm of this film and slow build tension makes it none the less of an essential watch while also the film which marked Cameron out as talent to watch as he would unquestionably prove with the films which followed in its wake.