Terminator: Genisys Movie Review

Warning: Some general spoilers from beginning of movie ahead

Wasn't sure what my blog should really entail, until I watched Terminator: Genisys. I had figured a review, from someone who was raised so awesomely that he was watching the Terminator series from the beginnings of his childhood and every night to fall asleep to, would be both credible and interesting. So here we go:

Terminator: Genisys

Let me preface this first by saying that I fucking HATE time-travel movies. There will always be plotholes no matter what, and if you've seen even more than 1 Terminator movie, you know the series isn't really an exception. But as convoluted and seemingly unnecessarily time-travel ridden as Terminator: Genisys is, I have to give credit where it's due. They handled the MULTIPLE instances of time-travel  in the movie quite well. It's fairly cohesive and slightly reminiscent of Back to the Future II, which I'll touch more on soon. However, you will have to pay attention if you don't want to get lost, because it does get complex. Which again, is fine, if it's done well.

So, the movie starts out as expected, first featuring scenes in the future set during the War of the Machines (2029). Everything so far is going according to the Terminator timeline. Kyle Reece is sent back by John Connor, leader of the Resistance, to protect his mother Sarah Connor from the Terminator in 1984. 

Enter 1984, and personally one of my favorite parts of the movie. This is because the scenes from Terminator 1 are recreated, and it looks pretty badass. Speaking of bad ass, they made a pretty good decision in cropping out young Arnold's ass this time, something they seemed to have struggled with in the past. Anyway, this is what I meant by the similarities with Back to the Future II, because this film revisits scenes from a previous movie. And I love that.

Back on track, young CGI Arnold approaches the thugs from the first film, and just before things start to get hectic ("Nice night for a walk?"), a clearly aged T-800 (Arnold today) kicks the everloving shit out of it.

(Just a comment on how they handled Arnold Schwarzenegger's aging, without giving too much away: It's simple, it's entertaining, and in my opinion, it's the best way they could have done it.) 

Kyle Reece is in 1984 at this point too, going through the scenes of the first movie, until a motherfuckin' T-1000 appears?! WHAT? This is the point where you might as well abandon all your preconceptions on what will happen in this movie, because you have no idea. By the way, Jai Courtney plays one phenominal T-1000. He definitely does Robert Patrick justice.

So the odds are definitely stacked against Kyle at this point, until Sarah Connor arrives, played by my girlfriend Emilia Clarke. She absolutely kills it as Sarah Connor throughout the whole movie. It's not just the Game of Thrones fan in me speaking when I say that Emilia was definitely the best choice for Sarah Connor. 

Also, I'm going to try to be a little light on spoilers from here on out. Even attempting to explain what's going on for the remainder of the film, and what happens next, would just give away far too much, and the trailers themselves seem to have done enough of that. In fact, that's the one beef I have with this movie:

The marketing. Holy shit was the marketing for this movie the worst I've ever seen. Let me show you something:

Every time I watch it I wish it weren't real.

I thought this was fan-made, meant to be a joke or something. Nope, this was actually supposed to get people hyped for the movie. How atrocious. I physically cringed when I watched this, it's that painful. WHAT WERE THEY THINKING? How did this EVER get past paper? So many people must have had to approve this piece of shit, which is the real tragedy. Every single one of them deserve to be fired.

And while we're firing people, how about we fire the one's responsible who gave away THE MAJOR TWIST in the fucking TRAILER! I would have been so much more surprised and pleased with this movie if I hadn't watched the newest trailers for this movie. I'd link them here but I'd only be doing you a disservice. Even director Alan Taylor thought this was such a dumbshit thing to do.

Garbage marketing aside, the movie itself has very few flaws. The CGI of the T-1000 is classic, unchanged (for the good), and has a nostalgic feel to it. Throughout the film there are countless nods to fans of the franchise, which is one of the best things that any sequel/prequel/reboot can ever do to honor both fans and the precursor films. 

The only thing that bothered me with the film itself, inevitably, was the CGI. I recently rewatched Terminator, and goddamn, the animatronic T-800 at the end was some hardcore shit. There was a real sense of terror going on on-screen. As shitty as the walking and Arnold head may have looked for it's time, the REAL robot is by far the scariest Terminator to be shown on screen yet. There's just no way CGI could ever replace that, try as they might, over and over again. I know it's easier, and less time consuming to just CGI everything, but holy shit look at Hollywood budgets nowadays. If I had half the budget of Terminator: Genisys to work with, you bet your balls the first thing I'd do is build me some badass motherfucking robots. But I digress, at least the CGI of the T-1000 was acceptable. I heard some gripe about how it was unimproved since T2 in 1991, but personally I like that, as it brings me back to when I first watched it. 

To conclude, I give Terminator: Genisys a solid 8.8/10. I think it's undoubtedly the best Terminator movie released since T2, but I know that's not saying much given the mediocrity of T3 and the unholy piece of shit that was Salvation. So I guess in other words it's the first Terminator that can actually hold a candle to T2. To any Terminator fan, I cannot recommend this movie enough. 

P.S. I'm aware that this review was all over the place. My excuse is I'm going to use it as a guide for writing better reviews in the future. So deal with it, bitchezzzzzzzz