Film Review: Only Arnold impresses in latest ‘Terminator’ film
The titular villain in James Cameron’s original “Terminator” wasn’t kidding when he said, “I’ll be back.” Shot, smashed, incinerated, he kept coming back (even when he didn’t promise to). It might as well have been the franchise talking. From 1984 to 1991 to 2003 to 2009 to this week, “The Terminator” seems as unstoppable as the Terminator.
Sequels to films that weren’t originally designed to spawn sequels are driven — even more than everything else is — by money. Amazingly, the gross take of the 1984 “Terminator” never broke $40 million — about a quarter as much as 2003’s “Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines” and a third as much as “Terminator Salvation” (2009). (Distributor Orion was having problems at the time, on top of which it bungled the release.) Of course, “3” and “Salvation” faded from memory before they even came out on video, while the first two entries are permanently etched within our collective consciousness. It is not coincidental that those first two were made by Cameron.
The other force that made the new “Terminator Genisys” inevitable is Arnold Schwarzenegger’s stumbling post-gubernatorial career. He was stuck in Sacramento when “Terminator Salvation” was made, and his absence made the film even more a shadow of Cameron’s two.
The makers of “Terminator Genisys” say that it’s not a reboot, not a sequel, not a remake. In fact, it’s all those...and more...and less. It’s sort of an alternate take on the first film, from a different perspective.
For starters, neither Sarah nor John Connor is now our central identification figure. The film is inconsistent on this front, but — at the beginning at least — Kyle Reese (Jai Courtney taking over from Michael Biehn) is our POV. A bunch of the memorable scenes of Kyle and of the original Terminator are convincingly restaged from 1984’s “Terminator.”
It’s sort of a neat idea, but it’s also a terrible idea. The first film started in a recognizable “now” centered on a believable young woman. If Cameron had started in the future, the effect would have been ruined. Yes, there is a little frisson in “T. Genisys” when we recognize the events we’ve all seen before, but it’s a very little one.
In short order, director Alan Taylor and screenwriters Laeta Kalogridis and Patrick Lussier have more apparent cyborgs on screen than a mind can keep track of. Korean star Byung-hun Lee seems to be the same cyborg as Robert Patrick’s shape-shifting T-1000; and there are two Arnold-model Terminators and yet another T-1000 (I think) and a human who gets infected with cyborg DNA or something.
You can’t tell the machines apart without a score card, particularly since the action leaps around in time so frequently. The movie cites the notion of a quantum multiverse to explain away the cast changes and inconsistencies with previous entries. That is: Each change effected by future dwellers rewriting the past spawns its own time stream, of which there are infinite variations. In the timeline we’re in for most of the film, Sarah Connor looks like English actress Emilia Clarke rather than Linda Hamilton. And the stuff in the first film never happened and...well, I’m not all that sure.
In practical terms, this multiverse business opens the door, consistency-wise, for endless sequels: oops, different time stream! In aesthetic terms, it’s self-defeating as a plot device. So what if the good guys lose? They also win...someplace (some time?) else.
The action moves fast, but not fast enough to distract us from trying to unpuzzle the time manipulations. The intent seems to be somewhat like “Back to the Future 2”: a new set of time travel changes that coexist as hidden activity behind the stuff we’ve previously seen. But “Back to the Future 2” brilliantly “rewrote” the events of its predecessor. “Terminator Genisys”...not so much.
There are casting missteps as well. Clarke has a cute, soft look about her — exactly what warrior Sarah shouldn’t have (even with her new origin story). She’s so untough that, by comparison, Hamilton in the first film looks like Hamilton in the second film. Neither Courtney nor Jason Clarke (as John Connor) leave much of an impression. Really the only one who does is Arnold, who — through the magic of cyborg “skin” — is allowed to age to his current self.
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ANDY KLEIN is the film critic for Marquee. He can also be heard on “FilmWeek” on KPCC-FM (89.3).