{"id":991,"date":"2015-07-05T14:34:04","date_gmt":"2015-07-05T18:34:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/kingyak.com\/home\/?p=991"},"modified":"2015-07-05T15:26:22","modified_gmt":"2015-07-05T19:26:22","slug":"review-terminator-genisys-its-complicated","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/kingyak.com\/home\/review-terminator-genisys-its-complicated\/","title":{"rendered":"Review: Terminator Genisys (It&#8217;s Complicated)"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>There are some movies that you don\u2019t necessarily want to see, but you have to see. This is especially true of sequels. I saw the third Batman movie mostly out of curiosity. I saw the third Hobbit movie because not seeing it would be like quitting a race in view of the finish line. With the Terminator franchise, the reasons I keep coming back are more akin to the reasons a person stays in a bad relationship. I\u2019ve got a feeling a lot of people my age understand exactly what I\u2019m talking about, but I don\u2019t think like I can really review the new movie without first explaining the history between my generation and the Terminator movies.<\/p>\n<p><iframe style=\"width:120px;height:240px;\" marginwidth=\"0\" align=\"right\" marginheight=\"0\" scrolling=\"no\" frameborder=\"0\" src=\"\/\/ws-na.amazon-adsystem.com\/widgets\/q?ServiceVersion=20070822&#038;OneJS=1&#038;Operation=GetAdHtml&#038;MarketPlace=US&#038;source=ss&#038;ref=ss_til&#038;ad_type=product_link&#038;tracking_id=gaoheagum-20&#038;marketplace=amazon&#038;region=US&#038;placement=B00153ZC8Q&#038;asins=B00153ZC8Q&#038;linkId=HIQU7PZZPN7QERJD&#038;show_border=true&#038;link_opens_in_new_window=true\"><br \/>\n<\/iframe>Most of us didn\u2019t see the first Terminator movie in the theaters. We saw it a few years later when our families got VCRs. The first movie introduced some new (to us) sci-fi ideas, but we didn\u2019t really appreciate them at the time. For us, it was a Schwarzenegger movie; we were watching because we wanted to see Arnold kill a bunch of people and always select \u201cFuck you, asshole\u201d from the little menu that came up on the inside of his sunglasses. We liked Terminator. It was like a girl in class we wanted to feel up. But let\u2019s be honest: there were a lot of girls in class we wanted to feel up, so it was nothing special. We also liked Commando, and it might very well be the Platonic ideal of the bad action movie, so obviously my generation\u2019s judgment during the mid to late 80s can\u2019t be trusted. Maybe it was hormonal.<\/p>\n<p><iframe style=\"width:120px;height:240px;\" marginwidth=\"0\" marginheight=\"0\" align=\"left\" scrolling=\"no\" frameborder=\"0\" src=\"\/\/ws-na.amazon-adsystem.com\/widgets\/q?ServiceVersion=20070822&#038;OneJS=1&#038;Operation=GetAdHtml&#038;MarketPlace=US&#038;source=ss&#038;ref=ss_til&#038;ad_type=product_link&#038;tracking_id=gaoheagum-20&#038;marketplace=amazon&#038;region=US&#038;placement=B0037NVM2C&#038;asins=B0037NVM2C&#038;linkId=I5UVK2QULZ6BR4WY&#038;show_border=true&#038;link_opens_in_new_window=true\"><br \/>\n<\/iframe>The second Terminator movie, Judgement Day, came out in 1991. Most of us had cars at this point, and the commercials looked cool as hell, so we saw this one one the big screen. This was our first real date with the franchise, and it went well. There was a liquid metal guy. There was music by Guns N\u2019 Roses. (For you youngsters who don\u2019t get the significance of that, there were a few years in the late 80s and early 90s when&#8211;and I\u2019m not fucking with you here&#8211;Guns N\u2019 Roses was the most popular band in the world. Have I mentioned that my generation\u2019s judgement is a little questionable?) The second movie also introduced us to Sarah Connor. Sure, Linda Hamilton was in the first movie, but she was just some chick with big 80s hair. In the second movie, she was SARAH GODDAMN CONNOR, shotgun-wielding badass (the Sarah Connor appeal was definitely hormonal). By the time we left the theater, we were pretty sure she was The One. That \u201cshe\u201d can refer to either the Terminator series or Linda Hamilton in the second movie. It works either way.<\/p>\n<p>I think what really sealed the deal was something that at the time usually got lumped in with movie\u2019s amazing special effects: We actually got a glimpse of the world after the apocalypse, and it looked amazing (in a dark, post-apocalyptic hellscape-y kind of way). Even more than Linda Hamilton\u2019s wife beater, those few scenes are what hooked us on the series, because they promised us that, sooner or later, we\u2019d get to see the movie about John Connor and his rag-tag band of humans taking on the evil robot overlords in that world. The first movie had told us about the future, but in Judgement day we got to see it, and we wanted to see more.<\/p>\n<p><iframe style=\"width:120px;height:240px;\" marginwidth=\"0\" marginheight=\"0\" align=\"right\" scrolling=\"no\" frameborder=\"0\" src=\"\/\/ws-na.amazon-adsystem.com\/widgets\/q?ServiceVersion=20070822&#038;OneJS=1&#038;Operation=GetAdHtml&#038;MarketPlace=US&#038;source=ss&#038;ref=ss_til&#038;ad_type=product_link&#038;tracking_id=gaoheagum-20&#038;marketplace=amazon&#038;region=US&#038;placement=B001AT4Y84&#038;asins=B001AT4Y84&#038;linkId=PLXZSVJZOWDBT5MZ&#038;show_border=true&#038;link_opens_in_new_window=true\"><br \/>\n<\/iframe>The Terminator franchise went to a different college than us, and the long distance thing just didn\u2019t work out. Eventually Judgement Day was just a fond memory. Then, 12 year later, guess who moves in next door? Of course we ended up going on an awkward date called Rise of the Machines. It felt like filler and didn\u2019t really add anything to the story or move the plot along in any significant way. Still, it ended in a way that suggested that maybe the next movie would be the one we\u2019d been waiting for, so maybe it was just a reminder to get us primed for the real sequel to Judgement Day. We just hoped we wouldn\u2019t have to wait another decade and change.<\/p>\n<p><iframe style=\"width:130px;height:240px;\" marginwidth=\"0\" marginheight=\"0\" align=\"left\" scrolling=\"no\" frameborder=\"0\" src=\"\/\/ws-na.amazon-adsystem.com\/widgets\/q?ServiceVersion=20070822&#038;OneJS=1&#038;Operation=GetAdHtml&#038;MarketPlace=US&#038;source=ss&#038;ref=ss_til&#038;ad_type=product_link&#038;tracking_id=gaoheagum-20&#038;marketplace=amazon&#038;region=US&#038;placement=B0012HEB32&#038;asins=B0012HEB32&#038;linkId=GAZYJQX3VCJ7Z5IS&#038;show_border=true&#038;link_opens_in_new_window=true\"><br \/>\n<\/iframe>A few years later we got The Sarah Connor Chronicles. The series took place sometime between the second and third movies. I only saw the first season, and much like Judgement Day it didn\u2019t really seem to add anything new or advance the plot, but it was much better received than the third movie. I\u2019ve got a feeling that the reason for that is right there in the name: Sarah Connor. The truth is that John Connor isn\u2019t really that interesting; he\u2019s just another Chosen One like we\u2019ve seen in a million other movies. The Chosen One\u2019s Mom, on the other hand, is a different kind of character, especially when she\u2019s a total badass. Also, Summer Glau beats the shit out of people a in way that\u2019s uniquely visually pleasing. I credit her dance background.<\/p>\n<p><iframe style=\"width:120px;height:240px;\" marginwidth=\"0\" marginheight=\"0\" align=\"right\" scrolling=\"no\" frameborder=\"0\" src=\"\/\/ws-na.amazon-adsystem.com\/widgets\/q?ServiceVersion=20070822&#038;OneJS=1&#038;Operation=GetAdHtml&#038;MarketPlace=US&#038;source=ss&#038;ref=ss_til&#038;ad_type=product_link&#038;tracking_id=gaoheagum-20&#038;marketplace=amazon&#038;region=US&#038;placement=B002RVCD0U&#038;asins=B002RVCD0U&#038;linkId=XDADFCEUWCTMTPTM&#038;show_border=true&#038;link_opens_in_new_window=true\"><br \/>\n<\/iframe>In 2009, the Terminator franchise told us they were ready to do this thing for real this time with Salvation. We had our misgivings&#8211;Christian Bale was using the Batman voice, there was an uncanny valley effect with the young Arnold CGI, and it just kind of felt wrong&#8211;but after six years of awkward drunken hook-ups we kind of felt we owed the franchise one more chance. It wasn\u2019t terrible (though it did have a few issues), but it wasn\u2019t what we\u2019d hoped for. It didn\u2019t lead to a big fight and ugly break-up. We just agreed it wasn&#8217;t working out and decided to go our separate ways.<\/p>\n<p>When Genisys was announced we were still Facebook friends with Terminator and thought it was cool that she was moving back to town. Maybe we\u2019d see her around (on Netflix), but it wasn\u2019t like we were going to help her move or anything. Then came the Brokeback moment. For me, it was when I found out Emilia Clarke was playing Sarah Connor. Everything about the movie seemed like more of the same stuff I was tired of, but I had to give Khalessi as Sarah Connor a chance even though I knew it was doomed from the start.<\/p>\n<p>As I sat in the theater waiting for Genisys to start, I tried to figure out where Salvation went wrong. The problem was, I couldn\u2019t remember much about Salvation. I think I remember the plotline being more convoluted than the others, but I can barely even remember any specific scenes or even special effects to try to reconstruct what the movie was about. That means there weren\u2019t even any special effects striking enough to jog my memory, which is a big problem with a movie that was first introduced to us by James Cameron saying \u201cLook at these special effects!\u201d The thing about Judgement Day is that it really did have a level of special effects we hadn\u2019t seen before, so we were primed for a John Connor movie with amazing special effects. By the time the technology to make the kind of movie Salvation needed to be became affordable, we\u2019d kind of reached peak special effects There was really no way the FX department could have given us the kind of mind-blowing special effects that we\u2019d spent 20 years anticipating. It had all already been done in other movies.<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignright size-medium wp-image-992\" src=\"https:\/\/kingyak.com\/home\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/07\/Genisys-223x300.jpg\" alt=\"Genisys\" width=\"223\" height=\"300\" srcset=\"https:\/\/kingyak.com\/home\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/07\/Genisys-223x300.jpg 223w, https:\/\/kingyak.com\/home\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/07\/Genisys-760x1024.jpg 760w, https:\/\/kingyak.com\/home\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/07\/Genisys.jpg 1273w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 223px) 100vw, 223px\" \/>During one of the early scenes of Genisys, I realized the other problem: John Connor. If you can\u2019t blow us away with effects, you\u2019ve got to do it with character and story. As I\u2019ve already mentioned, John Connor is just a generic Chosen One. During the scene in question, Connor was reminding everyone of his Chosen status in a way that seemed a little dickish. Part of it may have been the actor playing him. While at least he doesn\u2019t talk like Batman, he looks more like he should be playing \u201cpower-mad Bennigan\u2019s manager\u201d than \u201cpost-apocalyptic resistance leader.\u201d Anyway, as John Connor reminded everyone of how special he is, I couldn\u2019t help but ask myself, \u201cWhy?\u201d Harry Potter is the Boy Who Lived and The Force is strong in Luke Skywalker, but what the hell\u2019s so special about John Connor? A couple of times they say he\u2019s the only one who will lead people to stand up against the robot overlords, but that seems like bullshit. Even if you expand the job description to \u201cwilling AND QUALIFIED to stand up to the robots\u201d to eliminate the \u201cPatriot\u201d\/prepper types who\u2019d just shoot themselves in the foot, statistically there would have to be at least a few other people capable of leading the resistance. The only thing really special about Connor is that he\u2019s been hanging out with Terminators and learning future history since he was a teenager, but given the number of people and cyborgs that have been sent into the past, couldn\u2019t some of them prepare other people to lead in case Connor didn\u2019t make it? Why didn\u2019t they do that?<\/p>\n<p>That\u2019s when it hit me. Why is John Connor the savior of humanity? Because his mother did a lot of work preparing for him to take on the role, including at least some things (like stashing weapons and finding allies and preparing safe houses) that helped make way for the resistance movement that John would lead. How did Sarah Connor know that her son was the savior of humanity? Because people sent back in time by John Connor told her so. One of those time travellers was also his father, so trying to determine the \u201coriginal\u201d timeline that led to Kyle Reese being sent back to get it on with big-hair Linda Hamilton is a great big wad of paradoxes. But with all the time travel that happens after Reese is sent back, Connor is dedicating a lot of manpower and resources to making sure that he\u2019s the leader of the resistance while also seemingly building his own mythology as the Chosen One. The stuff between Judgement Day and Salvation just gives us more examples of Connor screwing with the timeline to maintain his status, making him seem more like a megalomaniacal cult leader than humanity\u2019s last hope.<\/p>\n<p>Long story short, I think the Terminator Movie We Wanted was an impossible dream from the start. I don\u2019t think Cameron realized it at the time, though, so don\u2019t hate him for it. Hate him for having 3 Avatar sequels in the works, and for fooling several casting agents into thinking that Sam \u201cjust as uncharismatic as Luke Evans, but without the vaguely Orlando Bloom-like looks\u201d Worthington deserved leading roles.<\/p>\n<p>Over 1600 words in, I\u2019m finally going to start the actual review of Terminator Genisys. There will be some spoilers, so if you\u2019re still holding onto the hope that you can make this thing with the Terminator franchise last, you might want to see the movie before reading the rest.<\/p>\n<p>Genisys starts off with a voiceover and scenes of a kid who turns out to be a young (much younger than the guy who plays Checkov in the new Star Trek movies) Kyle Reese being saved from a Terminator by John Connor, which I suppose is to let us know that the timeline has changed in case we missed all the trailers. Then they fast forward to the \u201cpresent day\u201d not-as-cool-as-we\u2019ve-been-hoping-for-since-a-couple-months-before-Nirvana-released-Nevermind future, where the cult of Connor is about to go on the latest mission that will take out Skynet for good this time, really we swear. While most of the resistance takes out the main objective, J. Con and the inner circle are going after Skynet\u2019s secret weapon. It turns out to be one of the time travel thingies, and of course they get there too late. Skynet has already sent a Terminator back to 1984 to take out Sarah Connor. John Connor has to send somebody back to stop it. <\/p>\n<p>Several people volunteer, but who will Connor send? Oh, that\u2019s right, 1984 is when the first movie happened, so he has to send back Kyle Reese. Otherwise he won\u2019t be born. He prepares Reese to meet the Sarah from the first movie, but obviously that\u2019s not going to happen since if it did the next scene would be the first scene of the original movie and the movie would have to end since a closed time loop has just been created. Also, we\u2019ve seen the trailers. Anyway, right before Reese disappears into the past, he sees John get attacked and maybe killed.<\/p>\n<p>Almost as soon as Reese arrives in the past, he gets chased by a T-1000 dressed as a cop. It\u2019s not Robert Patrick (because he\u2019s old now), but he moves like Robert Patrick and nearly all the T-1000 effects from Judgement Day get used sooner or later except the head-split. The T-1000 is obviously out of place, because T-1000 special effects weren\u2019t possible in 1984, but just in case you were still expecting big-hair Linda, we cut to the scene where the Terminator steals the clothes from Bill Paxton and two other punks. Of course it\u2019s not Bill Paxton, but the guy playing him does somehow manage to remind you that in the original movie he was played by Bill Paxton with blue hair. But then, another anomaly! An old (but not quite actual Arnold old) Terminator takes out the newly-arrived young Arnold Terminator before he can steal Bill Paxton\u2019s clothes, ending the 1984 Terminator movie before it really starts.<\/p>\n<p>Reese manages to get arrested, but when the T-1000 shows up and starts doing liquid metal things, the cop agrees to take off the handcuffs because Holy Fuck There\u2019s A Liquid Metal Guy. That cop grows up to be JK Simmons, the guy with crazy stories about time-travelling robots. As is so often the case with JK Simmons characters, he is delightful (but doesn\u2019t get nearly enough screen time). About that time, an ambulance busts in and the door opens. It\u2019s Khaleesi! I mean Sarah Connor, who tells Reese, \u201cCome with me if you want to live.\u201d Because, let\u2019s face it, she has to. No matter how many times the line\u2019s been used, leaving it out would have made things weird.<\/p>\n<p>Speaking of making things weird, it turns out that Sarah\u2019s parents were killed by Terminators when she was 9 and she was raised by \u201cPops,\u201d the old Terminator who saved Not Bill Paxton\u2019s pants. All that shit Reese was going to tell her that was going to blow her mind? She already knows it. Also, unlike Reese, she knows that she\u2019s going to fall in love with him, he\u2019s going to put a baby in her, and then he\u2019s going to die, which has to be a little awkward. Anyway, she and Pops, who is apparently some kind of Terminator scientific genius, have built their own time travel thingie and are planning to take it to 1997 so they can stop Skynet before it happens.<\/p>\n<p>But wait! As he was travelling back in time, Reese had weird visions of an alternate timeline where Skynet didn\u2019t come online until 2017. He uses secret timeline vision knowledge to convince Sarah that what he saw was the real timeline, so they decide to go to 2017 instead. I assume that\u2019s to get around the problem with convincing younger audiences to suspend their disbelief when you tell them that the post-apocalyptic future started when \u201cAte My Balls\u201d web pages were still a thing. They don\u2019t do much to explain it in terms of the story, but I guess you can pretend that Sarah and Pops managed to slow down Skynet by 20 years or something. Since Pops got the skin on his hand burned off by acid taking out the T-1000, he can\u2019t time travel with them and has to just wait around 20 years, because so far the make-up and post-production people have been spending a lot more time than usual making Schwarzenegger look younger than he really is.<\/p>\n<p>To answer the questions a lot of you are asking right now: (1) Yes, time travel still requires getting naked; (2) No, it\u2019s only implied nakedness. You\u2019ll have to watch Game of Thrones if you want to see New Sarah Connor boobs.<\/p>\n<p>In 2017, Skynet is pretty much Apple\/Google, and is about to launch the much-anticipated super-app that will connect all your everythings and make life wonderful (and also set the stage for the takeover of the world by an army of evil robots). But holy crap! Look who else is in 2017! It\u2019s John Connor! Turns out he didn\u2019t die when he was attacked back in the lame future.<\/p>\n<p>Well, sort of, and this is actually where my \u201cJohn Connor is kind of a bad guy who\u2019s risking the good of humanity to feed his own Messiah complex\u201d theory actually makes the movie kind of work, though I don\u2019t think it was intentional. John\u2019s actually been turned into a new kind of Terminator (which pretty much does the same things the T-1000 does but with a different skin) made out of nanites or some shit. Now he\u2019s on Skynet\u2019s side. So he\u2019s the bad guy.<\/p>\n<p>From there on out, it\u2019s the movie we\u2019ve seen a few times before: the heroes run from the Big Bad Terminator and eventually blow something up. That\u2019s kind of the problem. Despite changing the whole timeline and going back to the \u201cbadass Sarah Connor in the past\u201d formula that\u2019s consistently worked best, there\u2019s really nothing new here. We\u2019ve seen everything before, and in a few places the callbacks are as tortured and awkward as the Affleck scene in Jay &amp; Silent Bob Strike Back. Except for a couple of very small accent slips, Clarke does a good job as Sarah, but she\u2019s just good. She doesn\u2019t really add much to the character or recapture the Linda Hamilton magic.<\/p>\n<p>The one thing that separates this one from the others is that there\u2019s no blatant set-up for another movie, so (at least until they try to drag us all back in again) there\u2019s a sense of closure. Since Genisys is considerably less disappointing than Salvation, at least this is a better place to end our relationship with the franchise. Maybe now we can put this all behind us, try to remember the good times, and move on with our lives.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>There are some movies that you don\u2019t necessarily want to see, but you have to see. This is especially true of sequels. I saw the third Batman movie mostly out of curiosity. I saw the third Hobbit movie because not seeing it would be like quitting a race in view of the finish line. With [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":992,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28,37],"tags":[29,36],"class_list":["post-991","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-pop-culture","category-reviews","tag-movies","tag-sci-fi"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/kingyak.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/991","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/kingyak.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/kingyak.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kingyak.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kingyak.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=991"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/kingyak.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/991\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1014,"href":"https:\/\/kingyak.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/991\/revisions\/1014"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kingyak.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/992"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/kingyak.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=991"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kingyak.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=991"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kingyak.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=991"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}