With an increasingly bizarre premise, new stars, and an aged Arnold Schwarzenegger, “Terminator Genisys” positively screams out “forced and tired! We are cashing in, everyone!”
Arnie’s Terminator may as well be on waterskis instead of his signature Harley, bounding over sharks rather than shapeshifting killing machines.
“Terminator Genisys” looks to reboot the whole series, playing with the original timeline to shake up the entire franchise. From what we know about the franchise, we will start in the future, where John Connor is now played by Jason Clarke (“Dawn of the Planet of the Apes”), and is indeed himself a Terminator (but whether or not we are keeping canon from “Terminator Salvation,” where indeed Christian Bale’s John Connor underwent this same transformation, is sketchy at best).
We have a new Kyle Reese (charisma vacuum Jai Courteney) and a new Sarah Connor (Emilia Clark), and a story that now has apparently inserted an additional Terminator visit to the past, only young Sarah Connor was ready for him (WHA!?) and reprogrammed him into a protector father figure she calls “Pops,” who mainly exists as a way to explain why the badass of all badass cyborgs now looks like a grandfather (albeit a very muscular, very Austrian one)
If your head is spinning, you’re not alone. “Genisys” opens with plenty of doubt, and some less-than-stellar early reviews. Hopefully it’s not a train wreck of the highest order. A time-travelling, canon-shifting fender-bender? I can live with that.
