★ ★ ★ ☆ ☆
"There is no fate but what we make"…and re-make…and
endlessly re-boot. The paraphrased mantra of heroine Sarah Connor (Emilia
Clarke) lies at the centre of Terminator
Genisys, the fifth entry in the franchise. Far in the post-apocalyptic
future, resistance leader John Connor (Jason Clarke) sends Kyle Reese (Jai
Courtney) back in time to protect his mother Sarah from the machines dispatched
to kill her before she can avert judgement day. However, when Reese arrives
back in 1984, he finds that the timeline has been altered, and Sarah is already
under the protection of The Guardian, another Schwarzenegger-faced machine
turned hero.
When the first glimpse of the latest instalment in James Cameron’s
time-travelling robot franchise hit the internet, those of us unfortunate
enough to remember Terminator Salvation
felt a glimmer of hope. With a plot involving re-written timelines and sporting
a fresh-faced new cast, it brought to mind Bryan Singer’s Days of Future Past or J.J. Abrams’ Star Trek, films which single-handedly re-invigorated entire
franchises and wiped the slate clean of sub-par sequels. So, does Genisys give us a hat-trick?
Not quite, but it’s only a near miss. Genisys takes a much closer route to franchise rebooting to that of
Jurassic World: it relies heavily on
nostalgia for the original and best-loved portions of the series whilst
ignoring or dis-crediting lacklustre sequels. To this effect it forgets that Terminator 3 or Salvation ever existed (hallelujah!) and focuses on playing (or
simply replaying) the top trumps of The
Terminator and Judgement Day.
One particular aspect played to the full is the role of
Schwarzenegger, reprising his role as the robotic protector of the Connors, and
occasionally merged with a recreation of his original 1984 appearance as the
T-101 sent to kill Sarah. Connor’s attempts to integrate ‘Pops’ into human life
provide a healthy dose of comedy, coming to a head in a final gag that might
just rival the oft-imitated ‘talk to the hand’. Whatever else might be said of
Schwarzenegger’s acting, he consistently delivers reliable (if not always
intentional) laughs that help prevent the film from becoming too full of itself
and straight-faced, a mistake that Salvation
made…and paid dearly for it.
Emilia Clarke is fresh enough from her starring role in Game of Thrones to bring enough cred and
gravitas to the role, and has nailed the Linda Hamilton’s trademark pout. Jai
Courtney is a charisma vacuum as usual, a consistent problem when he’s
ultimately supposed to be the audience’s guide through the story. His
centrality also means that his fellows have to keep stopping between firefights
to explain the time travel gobbledegook, stretching the film’s length like one
of the T-1000’s liquid limbs.
The remainder of the cast is also a mixed bag: Jason Clarke takes
a supporting role as the aged John Connor and has a chance to put his strange,
carved-looking features to good use in a neat twist (spoiled by most of the
film’s marketing), whilst Oscar-winner J.K. Simmons is inexplicably wasted in a
role which ends up having little to no influence on the proceedings whatsoever.
So yes, the action sequences are nowhere near as memorable
as the originals (bizarre, given that the climax combines most of their classic
moments into one), the dazzling special effects allow them to be diverting when
the story calls for it, and most of the loose ends are neatly (if not always believably)
tied up. The formula of Terminator
Genisys might be a familiar one, but as Schwarzenegger’s Guardian says, it’s
“old, but not obsolete”.
