Reloading - Terminator - Sega Genesis

2015 has been an odd year in film. In one year alone, we’ve had three films break the top ten for highest box office numbers, two of which are owned by the same company. One of which is the seventh movie in a chain of movies that really shouldn’t be earning billions given the quality of writing and content. One of which is a dusty old relic from the 90’s that somehow still manage to blow the minds of children and adults of a new generation. And one of which was another Avengers, and that was the least profitably of the three (surprisingly). And we’re only just now starting the second half of the year. I can only imagine how bombastically stupid the numbers will get when Star Wars finally gets back on the big screen.

But before we get to one series of overbloated sci-fi dribble, we must address another series of overbloated sci-fi dribble. That’s right, the machines have returned in a new film, Terminator: Genesys, which is the fifth movie in the most convoluted series of films I can possibly imagine. For those new to Terminator, much like myself, the series is about how an evil sentient AI, Skynet (think GlaDOS, Shodan, Ultron, or HAL) has deduced humanity is horrible and decide to enact genocide. But a future resistance is a threat to total global domination. So it sent a machine back to kill the mother (Sarah Connor of that resistance leader (John Connor) back in the 1980’s. (This is where things get confusing).

So that failed. In the second movie, there was a second attempt by Skynet to kill John Connor directly. This fails and John even reprograms the Terminator (name of the machine-assassin) to protect him. But another, more advanced, Terminator is sent to kill John. But through luck and movie-plot-convenience, John Sarah, and Good Terminator kill the bad Terminator. This leads into movie three where a Terminator is sent to kill an older, young-man John Connor while Good Terminator is there to protect him and also defeat Skynet before it’s made. There’s also a distant-future sequel that I’m not going to get into and now here we are with Terminator Genesys. Or as I like to call it, “Terminator: Reference Catcher.”

I thought Jurassic World was overloaded with references. But as I said in that review, at least it didn’t shove them in your face. You only caught them if you were paying attention, and they highlighted the movie, rather than distracted. Terminator Genesys only really distracts you from the film to highlight a lot of the glaring flaws involving the plot. The first Terminator model you encounter in the past is the same liquid-metal one from Terminator II. They reference the failing of Terminator III repeatedly (referring to “judgment day”). And they just don’t stop. But they also reference out-of-universe stuff as well, which just makes me upset. No joke, there’s a reference to Futurama in the dialogue. I’m glad we can agree Futurama was funny and had good writing. But stealing their jokes doesn’t make up for your crap writing Genesys.

I thought my issues with the film would stem from Arnold because I’m not a big fan of that Austrian Ham. Interestingly enough he brought enough dead-pan acting and charm to his washed-up and beaten-down T-800 role, that I actually enjoyed his work this go-around. If anything, he may have been one of the highlights of the film, but that should be a fair warning that the rest of the film is gut-wrenchingly stupid. And most of it stems from the same plot-holes you expect from a movie where the central cause and solution to problems is to travel through time.

Problem number one: Skynet loses the war against humans in the future, so it sent an agent back in time to kill Sarah Connor. Solution: Send Kyle Reese back in time to stop this, even though the war is won and there should be no need to do anything because if the Terminator sent back was successful, the war would have failed then, right? Problem number two: If Kyle goes back to save Sarah from the Terminator, doesn’t that erase the events of the second and possibly third movies? Solution: Yes, so explain it as this film now branches into its own fucking timeline, ala Back to the Future-style.

Problem number three: Skynet will still eventually exist and it needs to be eradicated. Solution: They actually do go after Skynet, but they have to travel forward in time because the timeline pushed back that “end of the world” moment by a few years for some contrived reason. Probably to give more time to our protagonist so they could fuck in order to please the canon of the series. Oh, because – Problem: What’s Kyle Reese supposed to do when the mission fails? Solution: Mate with Sarah to create John Connor to let the cycle repeat.

Also, spoiler warning, a character from the future travels back after Kyle goes back. But also back after he and Sarah travel forward in time to stop the birth of Skynet. And keeping in mind this is all on a separate timeline, one has to wonder exactly how this future character knew where and when to find them. Obviously said character is another Terminator in disguise because we’re going to have to rip-off and/or reference Terminator Salvation to some extent so Christian Bale won’t feel totally irrelevant.

To Genesys’ credit, it has some fun action scenes. But is marred down by stupid and illogical time-travel paradox problems that it created the moment someone decided sequels could be made with this franchise. You see, if time-travel solved the problem of Skynet, then there’d be no need for sequels because there’d be no way a Terminator could still exist. And if it doesn’t work, which seems to be the case on a regular basis anymore, then the end of the world and eventual defeat of Skynet is inevitable. Meaning all the time-travel bullshit is pointless because the future cannot change. Yes, the details may rearrange, but the events will continue as is. Or at least until they’re done milking this fucking series for more fucking sequels.

The first big disappointment of 2015 in terms of film and it fell predictably to Terminator Genesys. So what’s the lesson we should take from this bad example of a film? No matter how fancy the CGI or how spectacular the action, your film needs to have a good story. And while good is a relative term, it needs to have a clear beginning, middle, and end. The problem with Terminator is that its pretzel logic time-travel loops make it impossible to determine where the series really begins or ends. All we have is a bunch of middle crap that leads to no real satisfying conclusion.

In the end, Terminator Genesys is just a bad film. Fun in a stupid kind of way. But better action scenes were done in Furious 7. Robots were a bigger threat in Age of Ultron. References and nostalgia were put to better effect in Jurassic World. And all of them had more interesting stories than Genesys, and those are only just listing a few worthwhile examples from just this year alone. I’m not sure what compelled the studio to drag Terminator from its grave, but this series is dead to me and I think it’s best for all of us to just let it stay dead.

Thanks for reading this week’s Reloading and we hope you enjoyed the article! If you did, be sure to like, share, comment, and subscribe. We’ll be back with more review for you very soon.