When John Connor, leader of the human resistance, sends Sgt. Kyle Reese back to 1984 to protect Sarah Connor and safeguard the future, an unexpected turn of events creates a fractured timeline.
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When John Connor (Jason Clarke), leader of the human resistance, sends Sgt. Kyle Reese (Jai Courtney) back to 1984 to protect Sarah Connor (Emilia Clarke) and safeguard the future, an unexpected turn of events creates a fractured timeline. Now, Sgt. Reese finds himself in a new and unfamiliar version of the past, where he is faced with unlikely allies, including the Guardian (Arnold Schwarzenegger), dangerous new enemies, and an unexpected new mission: To reset the future...
James Cameron once stated that he saw the battle between the T-800 and the T-1000 in Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991) as a confrontation between East and West, meaning that the T-1000 resembled the sleeker Oriental designs of machines, and the T-800 the traditional, more bulky Western designs. In this movie, this is taken to literal levels, as the T-800 is played by a European actor (Arnold Schwarzenegger) and the T-1000 by an Asian actor (Byung-hun Lee). See more »
Goofs
In the -84 scene where some acid drips on Sarah's sleeve and she removes her jacket, there's a shot of her picking up a weapon with her left hand. In the next shot the weapon is in her right hand. See more »
Quotes
[first lines]
Kyle Reese:
[narrating]
Before they died, my parents told me stories about how the world once was; what it was like long before I was born; before the war with the machines. They remembered a green world, vast and beautiful, filled with laughter and hope for the future. It's a world I never knew. By the time I was born, all this was gone.
Kyle Reese:
"Skynet," a computer program designed to automate missile defense. It was supposed to protect us, but that's not what happened. August 29th, 1997, Skynet woke...
[...] See more »
Crazy Credits
There is an extra scene during the credits. See more »
Fighting Shadows
Written by King Logan, Eric Dawkins, Sean Anderson & Liang-ying Zhang (as Zhang Liangying)
Produced by King Logan
Performed by Jane Zhang featuring Big Sean
Jane Zhang appears courtesy of Show City
Big Sean appears courtesy of G.O.O.D. Music/Def Jam Recordings See more »
The first two Terminator films are among the best of their genre and are brilliant films also in their own right. Rise of the Machines started the series' decline and had its faults but also had some good things that made it better than its reputation, while Terminator Salvation although with its moments was even more disappointing. While not a complete disaster, the latest in the Terminator franchise is the worst yet and sees a once classic series at rock bottom.
Are there any good points? Not many, but yes there are. The best thing about Terminator Genisys is Arnold Schwarzenegger, while more subdued than he can be he is rock-solid and has the most intensity and charisma of the entire cast. Despite not having a lot of screen time and being mute, Byung-hun Lee is nonetheless credible as T-1000. Some of the scenery is quite atmospheric and striking.
Everything else was severely wanting. The rest of the cast are not good at all, with Jai Courtney being by far the worst actor for Kyle Reese of the series in a performance that is both insipid and annoying (which didn't entirely surprise me seeing as out of the little I've seen of him he's always struck me as a lazy actor with an arrogant ego). Just as much as the anaemic Emilia Clarke faring the worst of all the actresses playing Sarah Connor, who behaves in a way that you'd expect a stereotypical bratty and vapid high school teenager to act but not Sarah Connor. Jason Clarke is not quite as stiff as Christian Bale was in Terminator Salvation, but it is still a shock to see the role of John Connor being performed and written so blandly. The chemistry between them is also barely there, most of the time it's even non-existent. JK Simmons is basically wasted, and his dialogue and character are forced and out of place.
The characters are like personality-less ciphers, with none of what made them so memorable before as characters and no convincing conflict, in a film that definitely could have benefited from less characters and more development (which is non-existent) . The script is overstuffed and confused, as well as tonally unbalanced with overly-complex scientific jargon, cheesy one-liners (even Schwarzenegger's don't work particularly well this time), misplaced comedy (that's even more distracting than in Rise of the Machines and used with even less subtlety) and too many ideas barely explored. The story, as well as having a stitched-together episodic feel, is at best a head-scratcher, with it being confused to being at times incoherent as a result of doing too little with too much. It's also very dull, not just because of the leaden pacing but because there is not much new and little interesting is done with the ideas presented in the film and it completely lacks atmosphere, thrills, mystery or suspense, and any drama is both heavy handed and lacking in heart.
Direction from Alan Taylor is lazy, favouring spectacle over depth and story and character development. And unfortunately the spectacle is not that good. The special effects are not terrible, but they at best never rise above just-passable (the worst of the series in this regard, they are quite poor actually in the beginning section and fake-looking too in other parts), are used with little to no imagination, and there is too many of them (sometimes in places where they were not even needed). The action sequences are equally painfully unimaginative, are sloppily edited, are leadenly and predictability choreographed and contain no tension or thrills whatsoever, let alone any fun. It's very erratically shot and scored with a mix of overbearing bombast and dirge-like drone. The ending also felt incredibly forced and tacked on.
Overall, Terminator Genisys was a pretty poor and disappointing film, and is by far the worst of the Terminator franchise. 3/10 Bethany Cox
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The first two Terminator films are among the best of their genre and are brilliant films also in their own right. Rise of the Machines started the series' decline and had its faults but also had some good things that made it better than its reputation, while Terminator Salvation although with its moments was even more disappointing. While not a complete disaster, the latest in the Terminator franchise is the worst yet and sees a once classic series at rock bottom.
Are there any good points? Not many, but yes there are. The best thing about Terminator Genisys is Arnold Schwarzenegger, while more subdued than he can be he is rock-solid and has the most intensity and charisma of the entire cast. Despite not having a lot of screen time and being mute, Byung-hun Lee is nonetheless credible as T-1000. Some of the scenery is quite atmospheric and striking.
Everything else was severely wanting. The rest of the cast are not good at all, with Jai Courtney being by far the worst actor for Kyle Reese of the series in a performance that is both insipid and annoying (which didn't entirely surprise me seeing as out of the little I've seen of him he's always struck me as a lazy actor with an arrogant ego). Just as much as the anaemic Emilia Clarke faring the worst of all the actresses playing Sarah Connor, who behaves in a way that you'd expect a stereotypical bratty and vapid high school teenager to act but not Sarah Connor. Jason Clarke is not quite as stiff as Christian Bale was in Terminator Salvation, but it is still a shock to see the role of John Connor being performed and written so blandly. The chemistry between them is also barely there, most of the time it's even non-existent. JK Simmons is basically wasted, and his dialogue and character are forced and out of place.
The characters are like personality-less ciphers, with none of what made them so memorable before as characters and no convincing conflict, in a film that definitely could have benefited from less characters and more development (which is non-existent) . The script is overstuffed and confused, as well as tonally unbalanced with overly-complex scientific jargon, cheesy one-liners (even Schwarzenegger's don't work particularly well this time), misplaced comedy (that's even more distracting than in Rise of the Machines and used with even less subtlety) and too many ideas barely explored. The story, as well as having a stitched-together episodic feel, is at best a head-scratcher, with it being confused to being at times incoherent as a result of doing too little with too much. It's also very dull, not just because of the leaden pacing but because there is not much new and little interesting is done with the ideas presented in the film and it completely lacks atmosphere, thrills, mystery or suspense, and any drama is both heavy handed and lacking in heart.
Direction from Alan Taylor is lazy, favouring spectacle over depth and story and character development. And unfortunately the spectacle is not that good. The special effects are not terrible, but they at best never rise above just-passable (the worst of the series in this regard, they are quite poor actually in the beginning section and fake-looking too in other parts), are used with little to no imagination, and there is too many of them (sometimes in places where they were not even needed). The action sequences are equally painfully unimaginative, are sloppily edited, are leadenly and predictability choreographed and contain no tension or thrills whatsoever, let alone any fun. It's very erratically shot and scored with a mix of overbearing bombast and dirge-like drone. The ending also felt incredibly forced and tacked on.
Overall, Terminator Genisys was a pretty poor and disappointing film, and is by far the worst of the Terminator franchise. 3/10 Bethany Cox