There are a lot of people saying that Terminator fans will hate this. Well I'm a Terminator fan and I didn't hate it. If you have rose-tinted glasses fused to your face and are firmly against change then you're going to hate it. Something I absolutely despise about fandoms are how personally they take anything new that they slightly disagree with. They often act as if a new entry will somehow sully previous works. Granted, Genisys essentially serves to wipe out the entire events of the series and start fresh, but the original films exists, and Genisys both exist and be ignored if one should choose to.
As I said, I didn't hate Genisys, but I certainly didn't love it. It's a film in which - behind the scenes- it had a lot of interesting ideas, and clearly was made by a team that adored the original 1984 film, but ultimately was let down by poor story telling and pacing.
I'm going to start with what I did like:
The opening sequence, which serves as a prologue to The Terminator, in so much as detailing how John Connor's Tech-Com team captured Skynet's time machine and sent Kyle Reese back to 1984. It's a really cool sequence as not only does it make it clear that this is the original version of the Future War, post Judgement Day 1997, but a lot of attention has been given to the costume and prop design, as well as the lighting to make it gel well with what we've seen in The Terminator, T2 and T3.
Similarly, I absolutely adored the attention to detail that came when the original Terminator and Kyle Reese travelled to 1984. Obviously at this point there were no divergences (although it's not entirely clear whether Kyle saw Skynet attack John in the original timeline), so everything played out exactly the same, shot-for-shot, line-for-line, as it did in the original movie. The film-makers couldn't legally reuse any footage from The Terminator, so a CGI young Arnold was used to surprisingly convincing effect. This scene, as well as Kyle's arrival seemed more like fan service than anything else, but I commend the film-makers for doing in such a way that it didn't feel forced.
A minor quibble about the attention to detail up to this point though; We see the picture of Sarah just before Reese steps into the time machine, but The Terminator shows that the photo was destroyed in a fire at some point prior to this scene. Also, when the T-800 arrives at 1984, the truck behind him is different -although you probably won't notice unless you put the scenes side by side- and the punks have different hairstyles/hair colours.
The T-1000 was also really fun to see again in Genisys, although he's offed relatively early in the film. It's a shame because the concept of the T-1000 has a lot of versatility as opposed to the standard Endoskeleton. The scene where he reactivates the original T-800 was pretty cool, although it's left unclear as to whether suddenly T-1000's can control other Terminators like the TX in T3, or if he simply repaired the T-800 enough for it to be able to reactivate itself.
The idea that John Connor had been Terminatored... Terminatorized? Termutated? Been turned into a Terminator was a good idea. Future John Connor never really had much of a role beyond being the savior of humanity, and considering he had defeated Skynet there really wasn't much more to do with him. John's character arc has always been much more about the journey than the finished article, so I really didn't have a problem with him becoming the big-bad. Having said that, it's a shame that the man we've known since even before he was born ends up getting terminated essentially not once, but twice in this film.
The Guardian (or Pops as he's called by Sarah) was a fantastic character that takes what the T-800 learned about humanity and continues to run with it. It is certainly unusual to say that Arnold Schwarzenegger gave the best, most heartfelt performance in a film, but it really is true. Seeing him trying to deal with his robotic body starting to fail him, as well as a true fatherly love for "his" Sarah was touching.
Matt Smith's role was kept secret up until release. Really, why they thought that was worth keeping secret as opposed to "John Connor has been turned into a Terminator and has gone back in time too" is beyond me, and although he had an important role, he didn't get much screen-time, which is a shame, because he had the potential to be an interesting "face" of Skynet. Having said that, the mid-credits scene does leave room for him to be able to return.
A lot of people had a problem with casting Emilia Clarke as Sarah Connor, and their reasons really make me mad. They say that she isn't as tough, or as convincing as Linda Hamilton in Terminator 2, but what they fail to realize is that she isn't supposed to be Sarah Connor from T2. Sarah in T2 spent years since 1984 running around, shacking up with guys to learn combat skills, and then got locked up in a mental institute where she spent her days doing Charles Bronson style prison workouts. Genisys' Sarah Connor on the other hand was a teenager who from what we can tell spent her days, without much human contact, with a socially impaired robot for a father. OF COURSE THEY'RE DIFFERENT.
So moving on to what I didn't like, and I'll continue with the cast members:
Jai Courtney. Jai. Frickin'. Courtney. Actually, he wasn't as bad an actor in this as I was expecting him to be, but why, oh why, did they cast him as Kyle Reese?! Right from the beginning, when they first said he was in the running to play Reese I said that he would make a better Terminator, both physically, and from an acting point of view. Dude is built like a Terminator. Michael Biehn was muscular, but really lean at the same time. Especially in this case, since Arnold isn't quite as physically opposing as he once was, Courtney looks far too powerful. One of the best things about Terminator Salvation was Anton Yelchin as Reese. It's a shame they couldn't really use actors from that film because he'd have been great in this. My personal choice for Kyle Reese in this was actually Sam Claflin from the Hunger Games series. He'd be the right build, right age, and I really think he looks like Michael Biehn.
But aside from Jai Courtney, Kyle Reese in this film is all wrong anyway. On two occasions that I can think off-hand, he should have definitely have died. He got hit in the back at a pretty considerable speed by a car, and then he gets thrown around inside a bus when it flips and he isn't wearing a seatbelt. Dead. Michael Biehn's Reese died from "just" a pipe-bomb explosion so I don't know what this new Kyle Reese is packing under the skin to be able to handle all this carnage.
As I mentioned before, the pacing is all wrong. It's the second longest Terminator film behind T2 and it feels that way. In my personal opinion, given that T3 and Salvation all pushed for bigger, louder, flashier scenes and got a critical pounding, they should have dialed it back and made it more intimate. I think the story ideas were just fine (although I still don't understand why Sarah and the Guardian needed to build a time machine to go forwards in time when they could have simply continued to prepare and sabotage any Skynet origins) but the movie was bloated with overused CGI and cartoon physics. We didn't need a high speed helicopter chase through the city, and if we did it would have been nice if we could have seen what was actually going on. Oh, and by the way, I'm absolutely calling bullshit on the Guardian being able to nose-dive into helicopter blades, crash the helicopter and then turn up with a couple of scratches on him later. To its credit, Salvation used a lot of physical props, including some of the Terminators themselves, but Genisys seems to use CGI for everything. Stan Winston is face-palming.
One thing that I wouldn't say I didn't like, more that I thought was pointless was that the T-800's endoskeleton has been altered. Not by much, but there's a clear difference in the design of the chest. Considering the amount of attention that was given to matching the continuity of the original, I don't know why they changed a perfectly good design. Salvation would have been the place to redesign the T-800 since it was set in a different timeline, but whatever.
Just a small irk, I do think the Guardian's "smile" was overplayed. I was in stitches when I first saw it in T2, and again people in the cinema laughed when he smiled, but by the end the laughs were not much more than an exhale through the nose. Hopefully they won't continue that in the sequel.
And that brings me to the final point. I don't mind that they made Genisys. I won't mind if they want to make another one. But dear god, what is it with movie studios wanting to set up everything as a trilogy these days? If Genisys spent more time focusing on the now, rather that the future it would be a lot better. Genisys is especially dumb for doing this, as the fanbase for anything post T2 is rocky as it is. The concept of Genisys borrows from JJ Abrams' Star Trek quite obviously. It reboots the series using an alternate time, while keeping the old timeline in existence for fans of older entries. But what Genisys failed to learn from Star Trek was that even though it was obviously going to be the start of a new series of films, the film itself was self-contained. If, for some reason Star Trek never got a sequel, it would still be a finished product on its own, but Genisys (which is getting slaughtered by critics) is probably going to end up the way of The Amazing Spider-Man 2; lots of loose threads and never the chance of closure.
Chances are that Genisys won't get a sequel, and my feelings on that are mixed. Because even though it's unnecessary, chances are that if it doesn't get a sequel it will just get rebooted. And if it's going to be rebooted then it won't be for a good fews years and in that case we either won't get Arnold, or we will and it will be even more hilariously unbelievable.
This review ended up being a lot more than two cents, and I really wasn't planning on typing this much, so I apologize for any rambling or poor sentence structure. All in all I'd say Genisys is an okay film, whether you're a Terminator fan or a newcomer. Maybe wait for it to come out on home release.
One final complaint isn't about the film itself, but the trailer. The fact that they revealed John Connor's villainous role in Genisys is ridiculous. Especially the fact that they decided to reveal that instead of Matt Smith's role. But enough people have complained about the trailer, so that's enough from me.
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