I'm a big fan of the Terminator Series, and I'm pleased to say that this new instalment is the fourth best. It's better than Terminator Salvation but not as good as the first three.
As the plot gets quite complicated most of my review is recapping what goes on to try and make sense of it. Spoilers coming...
The story begins with the humans in 2029 fighting against the robots, and about to win. John Connor is very rugged and Kyle Reese looks up to him gormlessly. It's good stuff. Just before their final victory against Skynet John Connor is thwarted when the machines manage to send back a young-Arnie Terminator to 1984. The humans manage to send back Kyle too (just as John Connor is mugged by Doctor Who) and we get ready for a face-off in the 80s. So far this is a lot like the first Terminator film.
The twist comes when young-Arnie Terminator gets a surprise by meeting an old-Arnie Terminator. Old-Arnie is well prepared and kills the young version with the help of Sarah Connor, who is now a badass. However, there's also a shiny Asian T-1000 liquid metal Terminator chasing around Kyle Reese. I'm not sure where he came from. Then Sarah, Kyle and old-Arnie get chased by the T-1000 until they manage to trap him with some acid.
Kyle and Sarah decide that rather than justing killing the Terminator they should try to stop Judgement Day from happening altogether. But rather than going to 1997, Kyle has a weird vision that Judgement Day is now going to be in San Fransisco 2017 so they travel there on a time machine Arnie and Sarah built. In 2017 they get arrested but break out with the help of John Connor. What's he doing there? Old-Arnie shoots him straight away, and suspicious Kyle thinks that Arnie's mission all along was to shoot John Connor. But actually John Connor is now evil, he's a Terminator hybrid. This is the low-point of the film. He's half metal half-person and is determined to stop them stopping Skynet from activating. He's also highly magnetic, which turns out to be his undoing.
I didn't like all of it, and the stuff about Kyle meeting his young former self was a bit rubbish. There's a few interesting aspects though. The best of these is that the old-Arnie was originally sent back to about 1975, where he rescued young Sarah Connor from another Terminator. We never actually find out who sent back that pair of Terminators. Since her rescue Sarah was raised as an orphan by the Terminator, who she calls Pops. They've then been waiting for the next batch of Terminators to arrive in 1984. Then when Sarah and John jet forward to 2017 Arnie says he's going to get to 2017 'the long way' by waiting 30 years. I like the idea of a Terminator calmly waiting in a bunker for 30 years to be of service again.
Another nice idea is that in 2017 everyone is desperate to get hold of the new Genisys social-media super-App, not realising the danger they're in. They're all addicted to their phones too. We are a lot closer to Skynet level technology now than ever before, which is a point nicely made.
There's some nice continuity points in the film. The mall-cop who arrests Kyle in 1984 is still around in San Fransisco 2017 and is the only one who believes them. The new Cyberdyne building also features some molten metal and a quantum-accelerator, which get well used.
The cast are OK. The stand-out, of course, is Arnie. He is an old and world-weary Terminator in 1984 and even more so in 2017. It's touching when he admits he is "old....but not obsolete". His deadpan delivery is expertly done, and he doesn't quite as many awful lines as in T3.
This is not quite the Terminator film I wanted, but it's quite good and I might watch it again.
