Well, I really liked it. Easily the third best Terminator movie (and with very strong emphasys on the word “easily”, that’s not meant as snark).
I liked Emilia Clarke as Sarah Connor. I have never seen Game of Thrones so I really didn’t know her as a actress before this. Bothered me a little bit that she’s so teeny tiny and young looking (she, the actress, is actually the same age as Linda Hamilton was in the first movie), she’s a decent match facially and in coloring, but she’s really tiny. Still, her performance was really good.
I don’t know if Sarah Connor’s age had ever been stated in the franchise before, but in this one they say she’s 9 in 1973 so she’s 20 in 1984. That bugged me a bit, I think she should be a bit older (Hamilton was and Clarke is 28).
Jai Courtney was equally as good as Kyle Reese. I liked seeing Sarah and Kyle working as a team, as partners. And I loved the SamAndDiane-ification of their romance.
Schwarzenegger was great. He’s what you really want from a Terminator movie (sorry, Salvation).
Not sure how I feel about this being the start of a new trilogy. They did leave a few dangling threads and unanswered questions, so at least they’re taking a long view of it. As a standalone movie, however, I was entirely pleased.
I don’t mind open spoilers in a " Seen It" Thread but I’ll box this one complaint for scroll over saftey and as a courtesy to anyone looking just as far as the OP for a general thumbs up or down.
I didn’t like the whole co-opted John Connor as villain, at least not the implication that it’s impossible to save him.
I wish that T-1000 had been the main villain. He did an awesome Robert Patrick impersonation, and had me sold on the whole movie. I avoided spoilers and managed to avoid all the recent trailers, so I was a bit unprepared for the twists. While I wasn’t completely disappointed, I’d have been happy enough if the plot of the first 30 minutes was expanded to an entire movie. It would’ve been nostalgic and an effective reboot. Instead, time travel and robo-upgrades took the movie further than it needed to go, IMO.
The first 30mins easily makes the best part of the movie and, since I only watched the first trailer and avoided spoilers, that’s what I was hoping for. Still, the rest of the movie was still plenty enjoyable.
As I said, I don’t know how I feel about the idea to use this movie as the start of a new trilogy but, if that’s what they’re doing then the time jump and timeline reset is probably the best way to go about it. Seems awkward to have a series of new movies set 30 years ago (unless being a period piece is part of what the franchise is specifically all about). I’m interested to see just how long they can continue to make it work for the X-Men movies.
I personally thought Jai Courtney was horrible as Kyle Reese and Emilia Clarke was only slightly better cast as Sarah Connor.
Kyle Reese wasn’t some gym rat with the carefully sculpted body that requires a disciplined exercise regimen, crafted diet and nutrition and regular sleep schedule. He also never had anything approaching a uniform but was instead dressed in rags and had the lean feral look of someone who’d grown up after the apocalypse, he was much smaller than the 900 which was something Cameron deliberately chose.
Oh, and he was also clearly suffering from PTSD whereas Courtney barely seemed capable of registering any emotion.
As for Clarke, she was more annoying and bratty than anything.
And the scenes where they tried to recreate the scenes from the original movie, in 1984 were painful.
I’ve never really understood why Terminator 3 gets so much hate; I quite enjoyed it, though its followup in Terminator Salvation was well and truly awful.
That said, I was surprised by how un-terrible Terminator Genisys actually was. It was certainly better than the last film and at least as good as T3.
Still, the poster above me recognized my biggest gripes with the movie: the casting of Reese & Sarah Connor was pretty damn bad. After it was over, I specifically made a reference to the person I saw Genisys with that Kyle Reese was unbelievably (and I meant that literally) ripped and toned for somebody who grew up in post-apocalyptic Los Angeles. No fuckin’ way.
My problem with Sarah Connor was that she just looked so damn young the whole time, and I just couldn’t buy into that actress as the battle-hardened warrior that arose in T2. For all I know, Emilia Clarke can pull off such badassery with the right material, but I’ve never seen Game of Thrones so I don’t know.
The casting of John Connor was great, however, though I have mixed feelings about turning that character into the villain of the film.
It’s a role so tiny you wouldn’t expect them to put any significant effort into casting anyone special …except that, apparently, the character will be of great importance of they decide to go forward with the planned new trilogy that this film is meant to kick off.
I remember liking it well enough (although not loving it) at the time. I just haven’t rewatched it ever since seeing it in the theater when it was released.
It did have the benefit that Claire Danes was in it looking like Claire Danes and giving a performance with the acting talents of Claire Danes. So, that’s all pretty good. I actually just yesterday saw the Bluray on the $7.50 Bluray rack right next to the $5.00 Bluray rack. I thought that if it had been on the $5.00 Bluray rack I’d have bought it.
Terminator Salvation actually was on the $5.00 Bluray rack, but I determined that $5.00 was too much for that one.
Because it shits on a much better movie, Terminator 2.
The Terminator leads naturally into Terminator 2: the first movie is about keeping John Connor on the road to eventually win the war against Skynet, and the first part of the second movie is a continuation of that mission. The end of Terminator 2 is still about winning the war against Skynet, but it rejects the idea that billions of innocent people have to die to make it happen. The protagonists are not just running away to keep John Connor alive any more, they are fighting to make sure Judgement Day never happens. Uncle Bob sacrifices himself for no other reason than to make sure Judgement Day never happens.
They earned their happy ending. Then Terminator 3 comes along and says “Lol, nope” and undoes everything they worked so hard to achieve. That’s why I hate Terminator 3.
Thing is, Grumman, respecting the end of T2 basically means it’s impossible to make any additional Terminator films ever …which would not have been a bad thing at all. But, given that they decided to go ahead with the franchise, Judgment Day would still have to happen.
For me, and at least for this first part it seems you agree, the whole Terminator story works perfectly as a two act. The Terminator and T2 pair to tell the story perfectly and wholely.
Anything additional can only at best amount to “pretty cool fan fiction”. Terminator 3 does not taint T2 for me because, for me, The Terminator and T2 will always be the whole story. 3 is basically “Hey, you liked the Terminator films? Here’s a little story based on those”. The idea that timeline changes resulting from Time Travel can only ever affect delays at best is an interesting enough angle on the whole Time Travel genre, so 3 for me worked in the “pretty cool fan fiction” kind of a way (at least a little bit, again: I never rewatched it after seeing it the first time).
Salvation was, for me, “totally dumb fan fiction that was a waste of time” and Genisys amounted to “pretty cool fan fiction” several degrees better than 3. I found it really enjoyable.
But, ultimately, I’ll always see it as The Terminator and T2 end of story.
As you surmised, I do think that Terminator 2 should have been the end of the story. I think there was room for a “prequel” set during the war before the events of T1 changed the timeline, or a “pre-sequel” set during the war after T1 (the advances from the arm and chip on Skynet’s side, what Sarah Connor taught John on the Resistance’s side) but before the events of T2 prevented the war entirely, but that’s as far as I’d go.
See, to me this is the least interesting of all ideas in time travel fiction. It’s not new, it just destroys any pretense that what you’re showing on screen has meaning. If the laws of time travel mean that John Connor is fundamentally incapable of preventing Skynet’s creation, doesn’t that also imply that the laws of time travel mean Skynet is fundamentally incapable of preventing John Connor’s creation?
I saw it today and I’m slightly annoyed that I left before seeing the mid-credits scene. I also didn’t notice Matt Smith. It was fun enough, referencing the first and second movies. I would have liked a reference to the “No fate but what we make” line from the second movie.
The second movie had a nice theme of Sarah as the mother protecting her son. (Similarly, in Aliens 2, Ripley was the maternal substitute protecting Newt, while the mother alien was avenging the destruction of her eggs.) This one flipped that theme, by making Arnold’s character the protective father figure for Sarah.
I saw it today. Meh. Much as above posters, I really enjoyed Michael Biehn’s Kyle Reese in T1. He reflected the horrors of a life-long war on his face and in his words. He had suffered enormously. The guy in Genisys might’ve missed a work out at some point, a few months ago. Beyond that, not much.
BTW: I just want to echo what was said above about T3 being bad because it spoiled much of the achievement of T2. And… not just that Judgment Day had to come… but that the whole thing was done so very poorly and acted so badly. If T3 had been a decent stand-alone film, I wouldn’t have been half as disappointed.
Terminator: Salvation… I don’t know… I rather enjoyed it. But, I guess I saw it as a story in the Terminator universe rather than as “canon”. Besides, it was better than T3 in every measurable category, so that helped. When it comes right down to it, both T3 and Salvation were really unnecessary and probably should’ve been avoided.
Heh. Wasn’t the original ending for TERMINATOR:SALVATION that Skynet manages to kill the elusive John Connor – so a good-hearted and inhumanly durable Terminator shrugs and says, hey, from now on, everybody just call me John Connor, okay? So robot assassins will get sent back in time to hunt the real Connors, and, eh, maybe they get the kill, maybe they don’t; either way, it doesn’t really matter, right?
I haven’t seen the movie but I did stumble across the review from everyone’s favorite movie critic - Sarah from “Sarah takes on the movies”. She didn’t say whether it was a “thinking movie” or not but she seems to like it.
*"I saw Terminator Genisys in Imax. It was a cool movie to see there. I loved all the stuff that pops out at you from the screen. I also love the big screen in Imax.
Terminator Genisys was an interesting movie. It had a strong female lead and lots of violence and robots. It had a somewhat good storyline with a twist. The twist was predictable. It was cool how they showed time travel. It was your typical action movie in today’s standards. The movie had something for everyone romance, action, sci-fi."*
I enjoyed it as an inferior-but-still-fun companion piece to T1 and T2. I thought Emilia Clarke was great (and she’s not supposed to be Linda Hamilton… she’s led a very different life than the Sarah Connor we see in T1). I agree that Reese was fairly week. John Connor was good, even if it seems like a bit of a cheat for him to have become the baddie.
My main plot complaint was that they have a TIME MACHINE and they choose to travel to 1 day before skynet goes online. I dunno, how about, 6 months or a year earlier?
But, overall, definitely enjoyable, and I’ll happily go see a sequel.
(Btw, anyone know how they did the scenes with T1-era young Arnold? Was it just a lookalike? Or cgi based on the 2d images from T1? I noticed they didn’t even try to have one of the punks at the observatory be Bill Paxton.)