Terminator Genysis* (2015)

Director: Alan Taylor

Cast: Arnold Schwarzenegger, Jason Clarke, Emilia Clarke, Jai Courtney

Have I Seen it Before: Yeah.

Did I Like It: And you know what, I kind of liked it back then. Sure, it’s a film powered almost exclusively by convoluted time travel, but I like convoluted time travel. Convoluted time travel is my bread and butter.

But here’s the problem, man can not live on convoluted time travel alone, nor should he try. Ultimately, this film reminds me of The Magnificent Ambersons (1942). Wait, wait. Come back. I’ll explain. I had spent several years between screenings of that most infamous second film directed by Orson Welles. The ending was taken away from him, re-shot by Robert Wise, a perfectly accomplished filmmaker in his own right, if more of a journeyman than Welles. Now Ambersons has never been my favorite Welles film, and I always thought the legends about the bastardized ending were off, but during my most recent viewing of the film, it was such a stark difference between the work of Welles and Wise that it had become inescapable how altered the movie had become.

Similarly, when comparing the work of Taylor against the work of Cameron—especially in those scenes where Taylor is recreating Cameron’s earlier work in The Terminator (1984), that difference is once again inescapable.

This is not to say that the film isn’t riddled with plenty of other unforced errors at which I could wag my finger. The film is riddled with awkward Riker Moments, where one character describes a phenomenon in the most convoluted technobabble available, forcing another nearby character to describe the same thing in terms so simple that even the not-so-bright kids will get it. Narration repeats stuff ad nauseum, just in case those same kids didn’t get the dumbed down explanations the first time. This renders the whole thing a pretty depressing affair, even if, again, some of that convoluted time travel still tries to justify this film’s existence far more than was done for its equally dim-titled successor, Terminator: Dark Fate (2019).

But do you want to know what really annoys me about the film this time, if for no other reason than I am mad at myself for not noticing it the first time. This film is so slavishly devoted to the mythology and iconography of the Cameron-helmed Terminator films. One can take that as a flaw or a comforting dose of nostalgia. Both perspectives are valid. But how in the hell does Kyle Reese (Courtney) have a photograph of Sarah (Clarke; not that one; no relation) just moments before he climbs into the time displacement field, when the first film really goes out of its way to show us that same photo burning during a Terminator attack? I’m willing to acknowledge that the makers of this film probably saw the original. I’m just not so sure they were paying that much attention.

*I needed several tries to get that title right. It is, truly, an insipid way to spell that word. Everyone was right on that front, at least.

Thor: The Dark World (2013)

Director: Alan Taylor

Cast: Chris Hemsworth, Natalie Portman, Tom Hiddleston, Christopher Eccleston

Have I Seen it Before: Tragically, it has been the most recent film I’ve seen at the drive-in. It is also the MCU movie I have probably re-watched the least.

Did I Like It: And there’s probably a reason that I haven’t watched it all that much.

I’ve always known this movie was at or near the bottom of many and my own personal rankings of the Marvel movies. I think it hits me in the opening few seconds. It’s not a moment like Superman IV: The Quest For Peace (1987) where something is truly, deeply wrong with the film and there is no chance of improvement. It is more banal than that. Odin (Anthony Hopkins) opens with a sweeping narration about what the Dark Elves are and why Malekith (Eccleston) has a beef with the Asgardians. Now, if you must open your big visual blockbuster with a VO—and I’m not entirely convinced this one does—you could do a lot worse than Hopkins. But, man, do I already want a nap after all that. The film is packed with this warmed-over fantasy banality that the film can never quite come together fully for me.

It is not completely without it’s charms. The pleasing qualities of the first Thor (2011) and what would become the bonkers fun of its successor Thor: Ragnarok (2017) are here, they’re just in highly rationed amounts. The tragically underused Heimdall (Idris Elba) gets a goodly action sequence or two to call his own, whereas he is appears content to just glower and watch for the rest of the series. The score—by MCU score secret weapon Brian Tyler—is actually one of the best of the whole series. Chris Evans’ cameo is quite a bit of fun.

It isn’t a bad movie, really and truly it is a testament to the MCU that they haven’t made an objectively (your mileage may vary) bad film. Nearly every other much shorter film series has a stinker. It’s just so pointedly obvious that everyone involved here—except for perhaps journeyman filmmaker Alan Taylor—is capable of so much more.

Now, that all having been said, if this review makes you put this film in the “non-essential” category, I don’t know if I would go that far, either. Missing The Dark World will make a large portion of the middle hour of Avengers: Endgame (and some truly enchanting expositioning from the freely wacky Thor) largely incomprehensible, and would rob that far more amvbitious film of some decent emotional beats. If that isn’t a recommendation (if a slightly damning one), then I don’t know what is.