Alan Taylor
Terminator Genesys

This review is almost redundant because you already know that Terminator Genesys is like Corazzata Kotionkin. If you're not brain-dead and you're not 16 years old, then you've seen it (if you've seen it...) out of pure nostalgic curiosity or because you didn't have anything better to do, certainly not because you were inspired by the trailer or the synopsis. But it was already clear: the world of Terminator is no more, submerged by the handovers from one production house to another, lost in the limbo of aborted and restarted pre-productions, bogged down in tedious and boring time paradoxes.

In Terminator Genesys, the producers have thrown in everything: from the T-101 model to the T1000, from the future, to the past, to the present day, from Cortana to Google. In the end, we find ourselves with a film like all the others, almost a B-movie on steroids: scripted with the imagination and creativity of a pantograph, soaked in FX, all in all, not very special, stuffed with clichés and overused dialogues. And crappy actors, because between the incompetent square-jawed actor playing John Connor, the toilet playing Kyle Reese, and the insipid Sarah Connor, I wouldn't know who to set fire to first.

And Schwarzenegger? Practically useless; he's no longer a cyborg but a bloated and puffed-up old man who strings together pseudo-scientific jargons with a stentorian voice, throws random punches, and takes a lot of hits. He cracks jokes, makes faces; he's like an old, doting, and tipsy grandfather walking around with a grenade launcher in hand. Can such a thing be seen in a Terminator? Definitely not..

With Genesys, the production has strived to demolish what James Cameron taught us, namely that machines are cold and ruthless beings that dominate a world made increasingly dark by technology. Forget all about that. If previously Skynet was an invisible and dark threat looming over humanity, now it's become an androgynous lookalike of Cortana giving tired and ridiculous apocalyptic speeches on how humanity is inferior and blah blah blah... Same story for the cyborgs, which from perfect machines have become chatty and tedious villains with complexities as thick as a piece of paper (with the exception of the T-1000 which, however, is seen for only 3 minutes...). Practically, the clear distinction between flesh and machine, which was one of the pillars of the two historic episodes, falls apart; the deleterious attitude of Terminator Salvation continues, which, as a film, might have been better achieved, if only because it featured actors worthy of the name.

Everything to throw away? Pretty much yes; the fight against Skynet is reduced to the frantic necessity of blowing something up while wielding an impressive arsenal of big guns that unfortunately lacks the rawness that characterized the early episodes. The bone-crushing scenes are reduced to a boring chase on the San Francisco bridge, which is practically a blend between the crane chase in Rise Of The Machines and some generic Spiderman falling from a bridge.

In the end, the effort to reboot the franchise, to give sense to Schwarzenegger's presence, and to milk the brand further led to a result that, while earning a good amount, says absolutely nothing and indeed tarnishes everything that has been done in 30 years. It was somehow predictable: The original Terminator is iconically based on the physical presence of the former Mr. Olympia and conceptually founded on a fear of the machine that, filmically speaking, over time has turned into an operatic refrain (it should be said that I haven't seen Ex Machina yet, and maybe I'm wrong...). In the absence of genius minds and visual solutions of caliber, the series is inevitably dying slowly. Does this therapeutic obsession make sense? This will be for the producers to decide, but it will only be a matter of numbers; meanwhile, two sequels are already in the works.

I'll repeat the question: throw everything away? Kind of; if we really have to choose something, then I choose the scenes from the old '84 movie remade anew. Because it starts where the whole series begins, with the Terminator sent to kill Sarah Connor, and so we see the first T-101 walking around naked, Reese stealing shoes in the supermarket, etc.. With unfortunately substantially different developments. The renewed scenes are nonetheless done very well (there the FX do work..) and are moving in their own way. But only because they remind viewers of my era what the real first Terminator was, and still is, which after thirty years has been more than lost along the way. Hence, for me, this new episode is more like a De Profundis than a Genesis.

Even if we leave aside the nostalgic vein, the cold reality remains; this movie is like many others, a mediocre diversion on a summer night, a more or less successful business production. It would have been nice to see in the last scene, instead of the phone call announcing the sequel, James Cameron saying “I'll Be Back...”