MOVIES – After skipping one Terminator movie, Arnold Schwarzenegger, whose political career and personal life were both tarnished by scandals, is back with… “a vengeance”? Well, more it’s like he’s back with a movie with full of confusion, an utterly stupid and illogical script, average acting and some decent action sequences and special effects.

Time travel and Skynet’s AI taking over the world killing humanity was the main concept behind the first two movies, and it worked pretty well back in the eighties and nineties. James Cameron’s Terminator with Arnold Schwarzenegger in the main role was a shockingly good first episode (even by today’s standard) and the second movie succeeded mainly because T1000: the advanced cyborg, with liquid metal was an excellent idea.

The third Terminator was just Mr. Vajna’s (the Hungarian producer) horrible cash-in (perhaps the worst movie of the series) and – unfortunately, as much as its creators tried to use some great new ideas (namely a cyborg who isn’t aware that he is one) and good actors, Terminator Salvation was a turd as well. Here comes the fifth movie, in which we have a 70 years old Schwarzenegger. Uhm… by the way… how a cyborg can age, you might wonder?

…because the Terminator’s FLESH is actually aging!

Ah!!! Never thought about that! Thank you Mr. screenwriters! Well, to be fair, it was basically James Cameron’s idea, that Terminators can grow older (obviously for the same reason: to bring back Schwarzenegger in Terminator 2) but still: poor old Arnold looks horrible in this movie – when he is played by “himself” of course.

There are some short scenes in the movies, when the T800 has to fight the older T800 from the first episode, and the filmmakers used a digital version of Arnold here. It was actually pretty good (one of the few good scenes) and one might wonder why didn’t the makers used digital young Arnold the WHOLE time? Old Arnold looks like he is ready to get a heart attack in this movie – still, he was the least laughable actor in this train wreck.

Beyond stupid

The plot alone, happening on three different timelines, will make your head dizzy. It begins in 2029, with humans about to strike a finishing blow on the evil machines controlled by the all-seeing global computer program Skynet. But mankind’s savior, John Connor (Jason Clarke), still must send his friend Kyle Reese (Jai Courtney) back to 1984, to protect John’s then-20-year-old mother, Sarah Connor, from the Terminators whose mission is to kill her and prevent John’s birth.

Kyle goes back, but finds a different world than he was expecting. For one thing, Sarah (Emilia Clarke) isn’t a naive waitress. She’s a trained survivalist, looked over by a kindly Terminator T-800 she calls “Pops” (Arnold Schwarzenegger). Turns out, the machines have been jumping earlier into Sarah’s timeline, requiring the Austrian-accented T-800 terminators to do the same thing.

Reese realizes that if they want to stop Skynet from taking over the world’s weapons systems — on the date known as Judgment Day — they have to go to 2017, when the Genisys program is set to trigger Skynet’s weapons system. So he and Sarah use a quantum particle machine to leap there, as Pops waits for them and stockpiles an arsenal. Flash-forward to 2017, when all three catch up to John Connor, who in this altered future has a sinister interest in Skynet, and whose savior status isn’t what Reese thought it would be.

Pleashe Ahnold, sthop thalking! Thanks.

While Arnold – even at 70 – is still the best thing about this movie, I wonder whose idea was to put loads of expositions in his mouth? Yes, the action icon is still kicking ass, but to listen him narrating important events is laughable at best.

Emilia Clarke doesn’t fit the role of Sarah Connor either. Yes, we get it, that she isn’t the same “helpless waitress” but she isn’t any more credible as a survivor amazon either. It’s actually funny – looking back to the eighties – how well Linda Hamilton (who was otherwise pretty average in her other movies) nailed the role both in Terminator 1 and 2. Miss Clarke might be prettier but doesn’t comes close to Linda Hamilton in this role.

Jason Clarke is also a miscast for John Connor. Christian Bale, Nick Stahl or even Edward Furlong surpassed him in every aspect of this character and he is rather annoying as this “new” kind of Connor too.

Other characters are just thrown there in the movie, without any sense of artistic flair. As the film makers tried to make a roller coaster ride of every past Terminator movies, we have our liquid-metal robot as well played by Korean action star Lee Byung-Hun who is far less convincing, than Robert Patrick was in Terminator 2. Same goes for Jai Courtney who’s just a shadow of Michael Biehn as Kyle Reese in the first movie.

It’s actually pretty surprising to see modern actors to fail so much at those roles, you would expect the contrary.

At least action sequences are fine

Concerning the action sequences the film is a mixed bag. Some of them are pretty well done, like the helicopter or car chases between our heroes and the main terminator villain. Others are pretty stale, and missing the punch of the first two movies. Terminators are still rather scary, and Arnold tries his best to be the funny and sympathetic main good cyborg. Sometimes it works, sometimes it’s cheesy.

On the other hand visuals and IMAX 3D effects are both excellent. It’s a big plus in this movie.

„I’ll be back!” (How about no?)

The Terminator franchise clearly lost its charm, and while Terminator: Salvation was meant to be a right step in the good direction (leaving Schwarzenegger behind) it still couldn’t make an impact. Still, it was actually better than Genisys, which is perhaps the second worst movie of the franchise after the god-awful Terminator 3.

There’s a new tagline uttered during the movie uttered by Emilia Clarke: “You just go. And! Don’t! Look! Back!” The owners of the Terminator franchise should listen to those words of wisdom.

-BadSector-