SPLATTERdrome

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23 Dead bodies

0 Breasts

1 Power outage

3 Flashbacks

5 Stolen vehicles

1 Awkward grin

 

 

Release Date: July, 1st 2015

Director: Alan Taylor

Screenwriter: Laeta Kalogridis & Patrick Lussier

Genre: Science fiction

 

 

Terminator Genisys is so rife with plot holes and half-explained timeline alterations that I could spend this entire review just listing them without elaborating. The events of the previous two films are entirely ignored (probably a good move) and those of Terminator 2 essentially negated within the first half hour. This gives the writers of Genisys a lot of room to work but they make a mess of things anyway.

 

Three new terminators enter the timeline (which now extends back to 1973) without explanation of their origins. Who sent them and from what year? Yes, it makes sense for Skynet to begin sending assassins to kill Sarah Connor as a child but it's unclear who is doing this, especially in the cases of Pops appearing in 1973 and the T-1000 in 1984. How many cycles of the story have been impacted by these changes? 

 

John Connor becoming the primary villain was a move that I absolutely hated. I've rooted for this guy since I first saw Terminator 2 as a kid and now he's the baddie? I don't think so. This not only irritated me on a personal level but also assaults the intelligence of the audience since the events of Genisys ensure that John Connor couldn't possibly exist. Let me explain. 

 

Sarah and Pops destroying both the T-1000 and evil T-800 in 1984 pushes the 1997 judgment day back to 2017. By traveling to 2017 together Sarah and Kyle negate John Connor's famous conception from the first film. Unless they were to travel BACK to 1984 and sleep together John couldn't be born until 2018 at the earliest. By the end of Genisys we should understand that a) John Connor has been deleted from history and b) he never mattered in the first place! John was never an elite military mind, he just had the good fortune of being warned of everything ahead of time. It could have been anyone leading the human resistance to victory. I feel cheated.

 

I could go on like this but won't. There's a laundry list of convoluted and poorly thought out elements in this film but the worst part is how dull the whole thing feels. The second half of the film is just explosions and vehicle chases. Haven't we seen this already? I mean come on. Re-imagining scenes from the original film was such an excellent and well-executed idea and then it segues into a bland action flick that could have been about anything. If Terminator Genisys isn't the worst film in the series it certainly belongs in the conversation.