User Reviews

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).

Arnold is at it again , at the respectable age of 68 and still manages to pull it off, though he is one of the few characters in this movie that actually feels as if he belongs there.

It's a great popcorn movie to watch lots of explosions, fights and a reasonable story all make the 2 hours running time fly past. However it does have it's share of problems biggest one is the miscasting of Sarah Conner in this installment.

Remember Linda Hamilton from the previous movies ? Her charisma, strength and borderline insanity just oozed from the screen making her a perfect match for the dangers that were lurking around each and every corner. In Genisys however, Emilia Clarke plays the role of Sarah and it just does not work. She is pretty , attractive, but there is no strength , charisma or dedication in her performance she is "just" a girl not a worthy adversary for the truckloads of terminators on her tail. Together with a really bad makeup job on John Connor, this is a little distracting.

But all in all, the movie still works the fights, the Schwarzenegger and some humor make for a good and entertaining watch. As with all these movies, switch off brain, hand in popcorn, and be entertained !

Side-note : Why is it o.k. to show so much violence in a movie and not o.k. to see two people naked ? The camera really has a hard time to avoid Emilia's breasts and Jai's male parts. Shame such movies are not made in Europe as naturally showing people distracts way less from the story than awkwardly trying to avoid showing any skin. Grow up USA.

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.

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."

Kyle Reese travels back in time to save the mother of the saviour of mankind only to find himself in an alternative time-line.

Despite being void of the gritty feel, thematic depth, simplistic conceptual thrills of the 1984 scifi classic Terminator Genisys is fast paced and slick.

While surround by state of the art special effects, super costume and set design, Jason Clarke is solid in his functional incarnation of John Connor. Without drawing too many comparisons to the original actors who portrayed the characters Sarah & Kyle respectively both Emilia Clarke and Jai Courtney do there best but are never given the staging or dialogue to stir the same believable emotions in this science fiction. Lee Byung-Hun, J. K. Simmons are great in their supporting roles but sorely underused. There's also Matt Smith's bland and minimal, yet pivotal role being underutilised for possible future instalments.

The T-800 versus T-800 fight and Pops upgrade is a fanboy dream. You have to commend Schwarzenegger's efforts here who is fine and the glue that tries to hold it all together as they travel from 1984 to 2017 to stop Skynet and yet another Terminator with higher stakes than before.

There's some genuine relationship and heart buried in Genisys but it never explorers these themes or slows down for you to attach to the characters. Director Alan Taylor offers nods to the first instalment, it's fun when its retreading and twisting past events but is less effective when it goes it alone becoming just another action going from one location and confrontation to the next, mindless, car, van and helicopter chases, complete with a setup on the Golden Gate Bridge as every film needs to have one these days.

With its fan film like premise Genisys is crisp, glossy, with big set ups, great effects and a nostalgic score by Lorne Balfe to match but like many big budget contemporary films less is sometimes more. With its lack of danger, debatably this makes Salvation look like the Godfather.

(Partly reminiscent of Rick Kingerski's short film Final Transmission: John Connor which captured the Terminator spirit and had a harder twist) Taylor's effort leaves loose ends for another sequel with a mid end credit sequence that points to it's now Sarah Connor and company that inadvertently create a hybrid Skynet but it also makes you ask yourself, do you really want one.

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.

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.

There is really nothing to say about this film besides that it's a complete slap in the face to anyone who is a fan of the Terminator franchise. The plot is very tedious and the script is poorly thought out. For instance, nothing in this movie makes any sense whatsoever. And oh yes, I am going to spoil it for some folks.

Basically, we have Kyle Reese sent by John Connor back in time to save Sarah Connor. But then, Sarah rescues Kyle, and is protected by a terminator dubbed "Pops" who saved her as a child. So Kyle, Sarah and Pops plot to prevent Judgement Day from ever happening. Apparently, "Genisys" was a project said to change the world, but it was really Skynet and was to bring forth Judgement Day. On top of that, John Connor turns out to be the bad guy, as he got attacked as he was sending Kyle, and then becomes something more than man and machine. Apparently, John is not Earth's hope but Skynet's hope. What? That is just stupid.

Even for a time travel story it is incredibly illogical. In a world where time travel is possible, I am sure that time can be re-written in a way, but you have got to have logic. This "time travel" movie defies logic in every possible way.

It's like, the whole thing revolved around John Connor, and Kyle, Sarah, and Pops successfully stopped Judgement Day. After all of that, Why would Sarah decide to have a John Connor? And if Sarah decides not to have a John Connor, then Kyle Reese would not have been sent back in the first place, and there would be no Terminators sent to kill Sarah. All of these changes in time would cause a paradox.

It is also horribly miscast. Emilia Clarke, Jai Courtney, and Jason Clarke did not play their roles very well and they can barely act. Arnold Schwarzenegger, J.K. Simmons, Matt Smith and that kid (whatever his name is) who played young Kyle Reese are the only cast members who could act and were not completely miscast.

Not even the special effects are good. Basically, it relies very heavily on CGI effects and it is very fake looking. The CGI in Terminator 2: Judgement Day looked great and was very impressive. But here, it is just very unbelievable and looks like a bad video game.

It also had an attempt at comedy that did not work. For example, what was with that Grin that Pops often made. Was that supposed to be funny? I loved the first Terminator and Terminator 2: Judgement Day. Heck, I even enjoyed Rise of the Machines and Salvation for what they are. But Genisys was just a terrible mess and an insult to the franchise.

Overall, I hated Terminator Genisys and I would not recommend it. If you are a Terminator fan, you will not like this film.