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Terminator Genisys More at IMDbPro »

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363 out of 549 people found the following review useful:

Once again Hollywood shows us how difficult it is to make a good Terminator movie

Author: abyboom-1 from Singapore
26 June 2015

*** This review may contain spoilers ***

The Terminator movies (sans TS - I am not even sure if it's part of the cannon) are basically chase films with the element of time travel thrown in to create unique Sci-fi protagonists and antagonists.

The first two films were smart enough to understand the limitations of time travel as a viable "science" and hence kept the focus on it's characters, surroundings and action (note : I do not say special effects). T3 tried to explain away the canonical inconsistencies (eg. it's existence) with some quantum mumbo-jumbo, but again it was kept at a bare minimum (almost hinted), showing a self awareness from the writers that even if you need to write stupid stuff for exposition, it's not necessary to go full blown Shyamalan on things. Of course, T3 is nowhere clinical in it's nightmarish quality of T1 or matured enough for the majesty of T2, but at least it looked like the people behind the movie were trying sincerely.

TG jumps into the bandwagon of using time travel as a rebooting device, which currently is the go-to template for many franchises (XMEN, Star Trek). But it makes the cardinal sin of driving ALL plot elements through this device multiple times. Hence, you are left with bizarre recitation of quantum fields, alternate time-lines, nexuses in time points associated with important events, all wrapped in "delivery under 60 seconds" by Arnold's "Pops" (Dear me, Arnold and Quantum Theory in the same sentence). Mix into this Internet/Cloud/AI, phase matter, time displacement with a dash of 12 Monkeys - all stamped with Hollywood's grasp of "science", and you start wondering why was the Kitchen Sink left out.

The movie really doesn't have a plot line as such. It's feels more like a re-edited version of separate episodes stitched into a movie, to throw a glimpse into the life of these characters over a period of 2?3?4? days. Each day/episode starts with a shocking (read : spoiled by trailer) reveal, followed by "scientific" explanations, followed by CGI explosions and chase. The less said about the ending the better - the "emotional moment" where the survivors think they will "live happily ever after" has concrete foundations in "Marvel Studio Science" - the current rage of Hollywood. The feeling of clunky and disjointed adventures for our saviors of humankind is more akin to Stargate tag line ("Saving the universe one day at a time") rather than a complete coherent movie, even if it be a summer popcorn/potboiler/studio crash grab event.

Now Arnold can play a terminator without getting out of bed in the morning, and sometimes it feels exactly like that - there are many instances where he was just disinterested in the proceedings. He also has the onerous task of providing dumb plot expositions every time the "plot" takes a hard right/left. One is left to wonder that with this much encyclopedic knowledge on the universe and decades of readiness, why he never leaned how to fist fight against his fellow 800s.

The movie might also be called "The death of Kyle Reese as we came to love him", as Jai Courtney is probably the biggest miscast for the role (bigger than Matthew Goode as Ozymandius in Watchmen) . Gone are Michael Bhein's nuance portrayal of a psychologically scarred and physically fatigued soldier doomed to a tragic fate as he tries to fight impossible odds to save the women he loves. Instead, we have a clean shaved and chiseled smart-ass who spends the entire movie being a HUGE ass**** to Arnold (with multiple stare contests between him and Arnold ALA Twilight) , and who is looking to "score" with Emilia Clarke's Sarah (not bad in the role). Even though he says he will die for her more than once, the delivery is just not reliable. A big element of Reese's character in T1 was his virginity, something the audiences gulped down because of Bhein's performance. Courtney's Reese comes across someone who LOVES his soldier job way too much and has tamed many members of the opposite sex. There is ZERO chemistry between the two, and the inherent romance (which in my opinion was quite smart in Terminator) becomes another obligatory check box for the movie to tick. I wont even go into the "humor" between Arnold and Emilia on this topic (borrowed from T3) that the movie tries to choke it audiences with multiple times.

Mostly everything in the action scenes are CGI, but in majority they are not distracting, except when they CGI-ed Arnold all over. There are multiple chase sequences of varied length and complexities - not bad, but nothing we haven't seen before in other movies.

Twice we hear Fidel's epic Drumbeats from the Terminator theme, but that's it. Rest of the soundtrack is so off, that these two instances come more like a reminder of the good times we had decades ago, while TG gleefully murders everything that was great about T1 and T2 (come to think of it, T3 is a masterpiece compared to this). The final nail in the coffin - "Bad Boys" playing in the background as characters get their mugshots (don't ask).

191 out of 287 people found the following review useful:

They finally lost it

Author: sentient-74528
6 July 2015

*** This review may contain spoilers ***

The Terminator franchise started with a low-budget thriller film that introduced a very interesting and compelling story about a woman who is a target of a ruthless man from the future that turns up to be a cyborg. It was a simple yet good story and a good piece of science fiction. Why was it a good film? Well, for starters, the bad guy, i.e the terminator, according to Kyle Reese, doesn't feel pain or pity, can't be reasoned with, can't be bargained with. It was the perfect killer, and almost invincible. So there you got all the elements of a good story.

Then came Terminator 2: Judgement day. Here things start to get weird with the new T-1000, because it was the result of CGI of that time. The whys and hows of the T-1000 were cleverly hidden away and never discussed. The story was good: here Sarah Connor wants to change history and the new terminator ends up showing a window of opportunity.

T3 came along and stuff started to crumble. T3 makes no sense. A seemingly old terminator that goes back because a "more advanced" (and absurd) terminator came to yet again kill John Connor. They used preposterous ideas justified by the fact that it is a "fiction" film (i.e the stuff about controlling automobiles with a "virus": cars don't work like that). Well, even fiction must be based on some rules, and T3 simply disregards these rules, and that is what makes it so bad.

Salvation came and it was good. Honestly, I don't see why people freak out about Salvation, because it was consistent, it makes actual sense. It looks like a war zone between our present and that future we see in the first films. There are no crazy liquid-metal things this time, only "normal" cyborgs and there were very nice references to the first two films. I have no idea why people hate it. It is not a thriller, but action, but then T3 isn't a thriller either, nor is T2, so that is a very bad reason to hate TS.

And now came Genisys, with the typo in the name.

The film starts with a disturbing change: the judgment day occurred, apparently, in 1997. It means that the whole second film was thrown in the rubbish bin. Sarah's efforts were pointless, apparently Skynet wasn't destroyed after all. But maybe I was confused, so I'll just ignore this and move on.

The film introduces an interesting idea: since the future already changed before, Skynet was aware of John's plan to send Kyle Reese and attacks him (John) before he tears the time machine apart, altering the whole story.

But this leads to a series of confusing events that end up having a terminator sent to kill Sarah when she was 9 and another to protect her. Then the "good" terminator ends up "raising" Sarah to have the face of Emilia Clarke instead of Linda Hamilton and both prepare for the arrival of a disturbingly different Kyle Reese in 1984.

Then appears the original terminator, apparently unaware it was not the first assigned to kill Sarah, and a T-1000 was apparently sent to kill Kyle (it is never explained who was the target).

Then instead of waiting for the right time, Emilia Clarke decides to build a time machine and go to 1997 stop Skynet. But Kyle, as explained by some pseudo-science theory, has memories of an alternate childhood (go figure), and knows Skynet goes berserk in 2017. So they go to 2017 and find out that there is this software which is a mixture of Apple, Google and Facebook called Genisys that for no reason is being used on mobiles, hospitals, and even the army and is going to be "available" at precisely the time of judgment day, even though it is already being used.

John Connor shows up in 2017 looking like Jason Clarke, and we assume he was cast because he shares the same surname with Emilia, and he is a cyborg because Skynet itself was contained inside a cyborg and it managed to replace every cell in John Connor for nano-technology. He wants to turn his parents into machines and he inexplicably not only defends Skynet, but he created Genisys himself.

So John Connor is the bad guy! And he is a terminator who created Skynet! Schwarzenegger tries to kill him, but Sarah points a gun to his... head, and.. it makes no sense.

They then invade this company that developed Genisys and end up stumbling on the same computer interface used in Resident Evil: Skynet for some reason has several projectors in the place with the hologram of a child that tries to convince the heroes that they are doomed and you wonder why Skynet wastes time talking to them if it really thinks that, but the holograms make funny noises when they cross the light and you give up trying to understand.

In the end Schwarzenegger kills Jason Clarke by getting into this unfinished time-machine with a giant magnet, while Kyle and Sarah explode the building, but in the last second Schwarzenegger falls into the metal goo that would be the T-1000s and even though a T-1000 cannot emulate complex machinery because it has moving parts and all that (check T2), he inexplicably blends just fine with the goo and becomes "updated". Oh, that trick is used before too. So even though stuff exploded, the terminator "survives".

So the film ends leaving a feeling of "what the hell I just saw", and I wonder why people find this any better than T3 and why Terminator Salvation is considered worse. It is beyond me. Really people, something is wrong here.

So if you like Terminator, go see it. If you liked Salvation, I'm so sorry, but it didn't turn into a trilogy and they just "terminated" a good project.

208 out of 330 people found the following review useful:

WOW, IMDb rating is a joke

Author: Jerry
31 July 2015

*** This review may contain spoilers ***

I am so disgusted with this movie and its rating that I have decided to sign up here for the first time and write my opinion. There is no way this movie is a 7.0/10. Not even close and it never will be. If this is a 7.0 then Salvation is a 14.0/10. James Cameron should be ashamed for even entertaining the idea that this movie is good. He has made me realize that everyone can be bought for the right amount. I hope he got paid a lot of money to say "If you are a terminator fan, you will love this movie", because he has lost a lot of respect with that statement. Hope it was worth it James!

I waited for this movie every day counting down as the days go by. I went to see it with my wife and I felt sorry for her she had to sit through the eye ball torture. I wanted to walk out a couple of times after countless cheesy jokes and terrible acting but I didn't. I thought I would stick through it because it has to get better until I witnessed the helicopter scene. At that moment I realized that the terminator franchise is nothing more than a childhood dream. Anyone who rated this movie above 3 stars on here is either getting paid by someone or 13 years old since after all it was a PG-13 movie.

Terminator 1 was good. I rate 8/10.

Terminator 2 was great. I rate 9/10.

Terminator 3 was decent, hated the overly futuristic female T-X. Ending was good and we finally see Judgement Day. I rate 6/10.

Salvation was good once you got passed Bale's Batman voice. At least it was getting into the future war and heading the right direction after T3. No fancy robots, just cold steel cyborgs with one acceptable twist (Marcus). The T600 was awesome. I rate 7/10.

Than comes Genisys, a Saturday Night Live skit at best. Was this a wannabe comedy or a terminator movie? We have a Kyle Reese that is cocky and looks like he should be the Terminator. Probably worst acting I have seen in a movie. We have John Connor that is some weird combination of human/nano technology/robot/liquid metal that is so far out there that it is stupid. Yes, stupid. We have the new Sarah which is not so bad other than the weird interactions between her and Kyle. It was awkward at best. We have Pops who is the terminator who is a father figure and competes with Kyle for his "daughter's" approval. He awkwardly smiles a lot and repeats the same punch lines over and over as if we didn't get it the first 6 times. It is border line offensive to average human intelligence. Add to that ridiculous scenes like the helicopter chase towards the end which defies logic and I am ready to question anyone's intelligence who rates this movie as anything above a joke.

Some people say "it was a fun summer flick, lighten up and just enjoy it for the action". What action? The crap CGI all over and helicopters from starwars? The T800s looked better in the originals. I wanted to enjoy it and went in with an open mind not expecting much but I wasn't prepared for what I actually witnessed. It was the worst summer flick I have ever seen that has actually insulted me for wanting to watch it. (if that's even possible) It was a joke and a mockery at best. It can't be taken seriously even if you wanted to. It fails at being a terminator movie. It fails at being a "true sequel to T1&T2". It fails at being funny. It fails at having ground breaking CGI. If fails at having a story. It fails at character development. It fails at having good sound effects. The music is TERRIBLE! It even destroys the prequels timelines which I don't care for really if it was good. It has nothing going for it. I walked out of the theater dumbfounded at what I have just watched. My wife laughed at me and said "this is what you waited for all these months? WOW. Terminator 2 is still my favorite."

212 out of 352 people found the following review useful:

Though flawed, it was better than I expected...

Author: Lambysalamby from Ireland
2 July 2015

The new Terminator wasn't terrible! I'm surprised. Though it had its flaws it was much better then Terminator 3 and Salvation... and I actually enjoyed it mostly. I probably won't be watching it like 30 times like Judgement Day, but its not like I expected it to ever live up to Cameron's work....

First off, the action was good and so was the pace, the film never became boring even with how complex the story was so it certainly gets points for that.

The film itself runs like the greatest hits of the the franchise which is both good and bad.

The pros: Revisiting 1984 (the first terminator timeline) was a lot of fun for obvious reasons.. You get more things like crazy manoeuvres from the T1000 etc and Arnie gets to kick some ass and even be funny at times....

The cons: How many times do they have to repeat lines from the previous films? Sarah Conner says: "Come with me if you want to live" Really? Again? Really? Come on, having that as an obligatory line in each movie is actually annoying. "I'll be back" is just like an obligatory oh, we'll just squeeze that in there, the audience will love that! Nope, not really, see in the first Terminator that had impact! Like the impact of a car coming through the wall! This is there just for the sake of it...

Aside from that, I think JK Simmons character was borderline pointless, you could nearly have cut him out of the movie and barely noticed! A crying shame for such an excellent actor.. Generally the script could have done with more tweaking, some plot towards the end just seemed outright silly, but I will say the chemistry between Arnie and Emilia was actually pretty good!

Overall: It's no Judgement day but you know what, it was actually a decent film and it was great to see Arnie as the Terminator again, and not saying "talk to the hand" . I can see why James Cameron endorsed this as the true sequel to T2...

169 out of 270 people found the following review useful:

Hollywood soup for the catatonic

Author: Maria Richards from Ireland
11 July 2015

*** This review may contain spoilers ***

Against all odds I was amazed I made it to the end of this movie. I only wish I could go back in time and tell my wife to talk me out of the suggestion I made to see Terminator Genisys. The original Terminator movie is a cult classic and yes, the remade scenes entertained me on a nostalgia level but as for the rest of the script, it played out like an episode of neighbours. The acting was terrible, the casting was terrible, the action sequences...If I said, give me $170 million dollars for me to take a dump and then I'll feed it to the masses and make a profit, you'd think I was insane - yet Hollywood does it again. Another 3 dimensional turd (yes I sadly paid the extra for the 3D which only really amounted to feeling like someone was actually shi**ing in my face) served up for the intellectually bereft to eat popcorn too. I don't know where these great reviews are coming from, but they're certainly not from Ireland, because in my cinema there was a general feeling of agitation and boredom about an hour into the movie.

It felt like Arnie was trying to save the movie by explaining the plot to us, which simply didn't come together, as well as trying to plead with us that his acting days weren't over, even if they were limited to playing an emotionless robot - i.e. the role he has played in all his movies since the 80s.

So here's the spoilers, if you can call them that:

If I knew that a computer programme was being developed that was going to cause the end of humanity, or at least try to and I had a time machine that would enable me to "destroy skynet before it's born" would I really jump to just 24 hours before Judgement Day? I think I may have had the foresight to nip it in the bud a bit earlier.

If I was in a bus that flipped and was completely mangled, hanging off a bridge, and I was initially sitting in a passenger seat without a seat belt, I would expect...well..I wouldn't expect anything, I'd be dead. Hardened soldier as he is though, Kyle Reece steps out with the obligatory scratch on his forehead. At one point I thought they were going to reveal that they were all T1000's, the amount of physical abuse they could take.

If I could essentially break myself into a floating atomic state, I wouldn't then spend my time struggling to pull myself off a lamp-post through my guts - I would simply float round it, or at least open up the hole so I could walk away without a struggle.

If I was a hardened female self made soldier, I would expect that I would show some signs of physical fitness and muscular definition - sorry Emilia, but if the fate of humanity rested on you even being able to act like a militaryesque hero, I'd be guessing it was game over. She looked like she was struggling to run with the props. And yes I know "militrayesque" is not a word, so give it 3 minutes after reading this and it will probably appear in a US dictionary.

If I had created an explosion that was enough to liquidate an entire compound around me, I doubt I would put my faith in a steel door to save me from the blast. Especially one that a sword handed T1000 has no problem puncturing with with his sword hands.

I could go on...and on.

As for the chemistry between the two leads, if there was a formula for this and we could create a bomb with it to be used on "Judgement Day", the fallout would turn everyone into Keanu Reeves, or Pinocchio.

Just awful.

All I can say is that all of you so called fans of the original that loved this movie, must have been the result of a 70's fertility drug gone wrong. Seriously, watch it again with your brain stem attached and tell me this even comes close to quality cinema.

492 out of 920 people found the following review useful:

Should I be ashamed for LOVING THIS!

Author: Edward Kenway
25 June 2015

I am a massive Terminator 1 and 2 fan, I disliked 3 and 4 a lot and I really thought this would be terrible as well!

However I turned out to be wrong! Dead Wrong!

This film has the best Arnold character of them all! He is the most 'human' towards Sarah and I really loved that connection, I can see many people liking it also. It was reminiscent of John Connor and Arnold from T2 which I just saw today... I remember seeing the first trailer and having many problems. I thought the story line was too complicated and wasn't respectful of the older films and I thought the visuals were bad.

I was wrong in both cases. The story pays massive respect to James Camerons first two classics! And it wasn't complicated for me. It was a fun story and kept my eyes on the screen. Also the visuals... wow the visuals... I know people said that we will never be shocked again by visuals like we were in T2 and the first Jurassic Park! But the young T800 looks too good to ignore. Wow! The best animation I've ever seen, I can't see the difference between him and the real one.

This is a fun, humorous, emotional action flick that shouldn't be ignored! I loved it! And you know what, I'm not ashamed! Alan Taylor deserves praise!

P.S. I love the soundtrack, I hand it to Lorne Balfe who I know makes great soundtracks from Assassins creed!

127 out of 203 people found the following review useful:

Entire series becomes pointless

Author: Steph Steph
31 July 2015

*** This review may contain spoilers ***

The story contains the existence of alternate timelines but if they exist you can have as many timelines as you want and the story will never end. Winning the battle against Skynet would mean nothing because the characters can travel back in time and it can happen all over again, forever and ever.

Everything that happened in Terminator 1-5 will just be one of those timelines and anything can be changed at any time, including a win against Skynet if it ever happens. Also Terminator 1 didn't even need to happen if the Guardian could successfully protect Sarah Connor. Oh right, it's just an alternate timeline, so what's the point? Just create 20 or 30 timelines if you want the franchise to go on forever.

97 out of 147 people found the following review useful:

A once great franchise raped without any shame or remorse and doing so with a smile by Arnie all the way through.

Author: Bohemian81 from Netherlands
11 August 2015

*** This review may contain spoilers ***

What is there to say? A quick summery: Everything is over the top. Instead of using one good idea like T1 and T2 they try to cram as many (bad) ideas as possible into one movie.

We get like 4 terminators, 3 time machines, 3 time periods, an app that is about to take over the world, nonstop cheesy one liners, to many 'funny' moments, to many plot twists. Ridiculous characters. A high school princess as Sarah Connor. B-grade acting. Generic action. A senior terminator attempting comedy.

The worst part: it has no tension buildup at all. What made T1 and T2 such great movies was the suspense of being chased by one (not 3) almost completely indestructible machine. That haunting feeling, done so well in the past, is totally missing. Overall it felt more like a poorly executed attempt at comedy with a convoluted mess of a plot.

This is a new low point in the franchise with a terminator named 'pops' saying awkward lines and doing creepy smiles. This is Terminator for the marvel generation. Braindead entertainment at its finest. Sadly a growing trend in Hollywood.

Please tell me this was just a fan made parody and the actual movie is still under development, right?

299 out of 560 people found the following review useful:

Forget the Critics

Author: lquessenberry from United States
2 July 2015

I may be one of the flock, but I am a big fan of the Terminator franchise. This movie was appropriately delivered to fans of the franchise more than the prior 2 sequels. Arnold was Arnold and genuinely looked like he was having fun with the role. The story to me was pretty well written and despite lots of turns along the way, was engaging. There was plenty of comic relief. The battle scenes play homage to the aesthetic and look of the future wars in the 1st two movies.

Emilia Clarke did a pretty good job of playing Sarah Connor although she might have been a little softer looking than Linda Hamilton, I think the justification of the plot makes you understand a little more of how and why she is the way she is.

I'll tell you what they didn't do in this film. They didn't go and screw up the source material like the Star Trek reboots have. This story plays out a different scenario but the characters both old and new are familiar and this movie was done very well with respect to the source materials. If you are a fan of the franchise, you'll feel like you are getting more of what you might have had to imagine way back in the 1984 film. You'll enjoy it.

Any fan of T1 and T2 should go and see this and add it to your library.

118 out of 202 people found the following review useful:

If You're Thinking About Seeing This Film...

Author: TheReverendSoleil from Portland, OR
2 July 2015

*** This review may contain spoilers ***

...lie down until the feeling goes away!

Or better yet, go rent the first three Terminator movies, watching only the cool action moments and immediately fast-forwarding past every scene where anyone demonstrates anything resembling personality or acting ability. Because really, that's all this movie ever does.

Seriously -- over and over again, every time sometime cool or interesting happens in this movie, a moment's thought will remind you that they're simply apeing a scene or shot from a prior film, and did it better with technology from a quarter-century ago! Hell -- they even stole the "quantum frequency matter" bit from Jim Cameron's treatment for his proposed (but never filmed) version of "Terminator 3"!

Add to that the neutering the film underwent in order to squeak into a PG-13 rating, plus handing key roles in the story to the complete charisma-vacuums that are Jason Clarke and Jai Courtney (how do you even pronounce that -- does it rhyme with "die", or with "oy vey"?), and it becomes clear that the real disaster that we need to invent a time machine so that we can prevent it from ever happening, is this abomination on celluloid...

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