Termintor: Genisys (2016)

Directed by Alan Taylor. Starring Jai Courtney, Emilia Clarke, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Jason Clarke, J. K. Simmons, Byung-Hun Lee, Dayo Okeniyi, Courtney B. Vance. [PG-13]

Once again, John Connor (Clarke) sends back Kyle Reese (Courtney) to protect his mother, Sarah (Clarke), from the T-800 cyborg (Schwarzenegger)…except when he gets there, he finds out that the timeline has been fractured—Sarah is a seasoned warrior instead of an innocent waitress, and multiple Terminators are running around ready to duke it out over the fate of the planet. Attempt to reboot/revitalize the shaky franchise is interesting in concept but foolish in execution. The splintered, overlapping paradoxes are described to near-parodic levels; revisiting several scenes from the original film (echoes of Back to the Future Part II) are often awkward, and just remind how much better the filmmakers were the first time around. Efforts to add irony and tongue-in-cheek references land flat pretty much every time, even turning Sarah and Kyle into bickering rom-com caricatures whenever the pyrotechnics cool down. As for those pyrotechnics, only the battles with Lee’s liquid metal monster provide excitement; the rest are ruined by low interest coupled with mediocre direction and effects. Weathered and neutered by weak writing as he may be, it’s still nice to see Arnie back in the role that made him an international star. The next chapter would “go back to the drawing board” again: Terminator: Dark Fate.

38/100