Even the red staters have gotta be sick of how often celluloid trashes San Francisco these days. I’m betting cinephiles who have never in their lives strayed from, say, the Dakotas could still give expert directions to the Golden Gate Bridge, wax eloquently on the best vantage point for viewing the Transamerica Pyramid and, without-a-doubt, supply the key piece of information to taking down Coit Tower.
Hollywood sure has blown San Francisco a lot lately. Do you suppose it’s jealousy or just some film folks showing pride? Hard to figure.
Speaking of hard to figure, Terminator Genisys, the 5th iteration of a film which needed no sequel, gave us a fair amount to think about … or at least it would have if the plot made any sense at all. Hence, most of us are just thinking, “why is there 
an old Terminator?” After that, I wondered how an old Terminator could lose in hand-to-hand combat to a young Terminator. You’ve learned nothing in, say, the thirty years advantage of experience you have on the younger version of you? This isn’t a human we’re talking about; it’s a thinking, learning machine. It can assess weakness and deterioration the same way we can assess color. It knows exactly what it’s capable of and where it is weak. That information never seemed of interest to you, Terminator – robot specifically named for its ability to kill things?
Genisys starts in the future at the pivotal moment where Kyle Reese (Jai Courtney) goes back in time to set the premise for the first Terminator film. Do you need to see the first Terminator to get this one? Probably, but you’ll be confused all the same. Just as Kyle is flashing back to the 80s, however, he sees that the machines have gotten to resistance leader John Connor (Jason Clarke). – Jason Clarke is the very latest in a series of bad John Connors, btw, but that’s not important – so instead of finding helpless Sarah Connor (Emilia Clarke – are you kidding me? Clarke, Emilia plays mother to Clarke, Jason?! Did you guys decide casting was complete after flipping the guild register open the one time?), Kyle instead finds badass Sarah Connor and liquid Terminator Byung-hun Lee waiting for him in 1984. Uh oh. Something is wrong.
This film went to a lot of trouble to tell us what was wrong. I got lost. I can only imagine what somebody thought who didn’t see four Terminator films previous. The good guys here decide to combat the aberration made in the past by traveling to the future which was altered to make the past because the future isn’t wrong yet like it was in the past future but it will be if Doc Brown and Marty can’t get the DeLorean up to 88 MPH again. And every.single.time Terminator Genisys opted to explain what was going on instead of, say, developing a character or two, it made less sense than the time before.
Seriously, to watch this film, you’re better off understanding – Middle and Old aged Arnold Schwarzenegger = Good Guys. 
Young Arnold Schwarzenegger = Bad Guy. Anybody who looks like a person, but can turn liquid = Bad Guy. Anybody who looks like a person, can’t turn liquid and is a lousy actor = Good Guy. And it’s harder to kill the liquid Guys than the Arnie Guys.
My two favorite moments among the exposition highlighted by destruction were when young Kyle in the future is given a time bomb for a present – basically a machine that counts down when the machines take over. What the present was actually supposed to be … who the freak knows? Terminator Genisys sure didn’t explain that. But my personal favorite … the coup de grâce in the cavalcade of this expositidiocy is when good 1984 Terminator decides he can’t leap forward in time because the acid that melted bad liquid 1984 Terminator also claimed the skin on his arm, so he waits it out a few decades for Kyle and Sarah to show up, and, get this, when they arrive at the set coordinates at the set time, he’s “stuck in traffic.” I kid you not.
You had one job, old Terminator. One job. I know traffic in San Francisco is bad, but seriously?
Do you wonder how old Terminator waited out all those years in San Francisco waiting for Kyle and Sarah to show up? I sense a wacky sitcom on the order of “Three’s Company” where Terminator has to pretend he’s gay to find work in The Castro. Two wacky 
roommates – one’s a pansy, one’s a death machine from the future … it’s “Sherman & the Terminator” tonight at 9:30 on the WB.
Mostly here I’m kinda horrified by how far this franchise has fallen. And this is from somebody who thought the sentimentality in Terminator 2 was a pile of crap. Every franchise addition makes less sense logically than the one before. The man-battles-robot-for-Earth’s-future has been firmly established; have you actually got anything new to say about it, or do you just want to toss Arnie at a helicopter? And for all the exposure, these films are dead ends for up-and-coming actors.
Still, Terminator Genisys was a great deal better than Terminator Salvation.
♪He keeps humanity’s weakness
In the webby ethernet
Yo, “I’ll be back” he says
Just like before, and yet
A built-in arsenal
Will take more than Tylenol
At anytime he’s ready
He doesn’t sleep
In weaponry proficient
Speaks with German accent
Extraordinarily daft
He’s a Killer ‘Chine
Gunpowder, glycerine
You might need some Dramamine
Guaranteed to f*** things up
Anytime♫
Rated PG-13, 126 Minutes
D: Alan Taylor
W: Laeta Kalogridis & Patrick Lussier
Genre: Reboot in need of a boot
Type of person most likely to enjoy this film: The old-not-obsolete
Type of person least likely to enjoy this film: People who can remember how terrifying the original was
♪ Parody inspired by “Killer Queen”
