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.

Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991)

Director: James Cameron

Cast: Arnold Schwarzenegger, Linda Hamilton, Robert Patrick, Edward Furlong

Have I Seen it Before: It’d be weird if I hadn’t by now, right?

Did I Like It: It’d be weird if I didn’t right?

The big (and likely unfair) question one must confront when critiquing this movie is how it ranks against its predecessor, The Terminator (1984). Many say that this is the superior film, putting it in that rare pantheon of sequels that out-perform the original film, The Godfather, Part II (1974), Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan (1982), and another entry in the Cameron pantheon, Aliens (1986).

I’m not sure this one qualifies.

Don’t get me wrong, the tools Cameron brings to bear here (now with a full budget) cements his status as one of the greatest technical filmmakers. The then-embryonic use of CGI is perfectly applied, used to bring the T-1000 character to life at a time when it really couldn’t do anything other than give us strange metallic polygons. But at the same time, the use of puppetry, miniatures, and even rear-screen projection is used with just the right amount of restraint that it makes it all the more irritating when other filmmakers over the last twenty-five years have decided that even lesser quality CGI is all they needed to sell the reality of their films. Honestly, no one uses rear-screen projection anymore, even Cameron. It’s a real shame.

And yet, the restrictions make for a more interesting film. The restraint that Cameron uses here is all the more present in the initial film. There a fewer moments in the original film where I am thinking about the technology at play. I am more thoroughly immersed in the story there. Maybe the romance between Sarah (Hamilton) and Kyle Reese in the original film is a stronger engine for a story than the Shane built out of chrome on display here. No wonder Cameron got out of the cyborg game after this one, and with each new entry in the series why we wonder why they keep going.

Terminator Dark Fate (2019)

Director: Tim Miller

Cast: Linda Hamilton, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Mackenzie Davis, Natalia Reyes

Have I Seen it Before: Oddly enough, no. For the most part. Who would have thought that any Terminator movie could reach for anything fresh? 

Did I Like It: Yes… But a qualified yes.

It’s probably unreasonable to ever thing that we’re going to get a Terminator film that is somehow better that the first two films directed by James Cameron. Several have now tried, and they’ve had varying degrees of ultimately disappointing success. Cameron is one of the greatest filmmakers of all time. Even his arguable failures like The Abyss (1988) never fall short of ambitious.

He’s now back in the business—if even in an ancillary fashion—and the results are remarkable. The film has a lively energy that none of the non-Cameron films could even hope for, and this is coming from someone who actually kind of sort of liked Terminator Genysis (2015), despite it being a huge convoluted mess of time travel with a crappy title. The clutter of previous entries has been swept away, and the action re-focused on the central element of the first and greatest movies, Sarah Conner as played by Linda Hamilton.

Now that doesn’t make it entirely fresh, as a rash of legacy sequels—most notably last year’s Halloween—have trucked in similar territory. This film isn’t quite as crowd pleasing as that other film, but one has to admire this for indulging only in the bare minimum of fan service (especially for the sixth film in a series). The only time nostalgia takes over is in the films opening minutes for a scene that takes place shortly after Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991). The technology on display to make Hamilton, Schwarzenegger and even Edward Furlong appear as if no time has passed since that peak of the series is staggering. Thirteen years ago we were subjected to the twitchy CGI horrors that were Patrick Stewart and Ian McKellan in the opening scenes of X-Men: The Last Stand, and four years since Schwarzenegger himself awkwardly appeared as his younger self in the aforementioned Genysis, but it truly seems like the technology has reached its maturity here. How long before we are treated to entire films using the same tools?

How long before this series clears the decks again and just gives us a an entire movie with those stars as they appeared in the 90s.

I suppose Dark Fate’s box office will dictate what that strange techno future will look like. 

Come to think of it, Dark Fate is kind of a dumb title that doesn’t really have much to do with the film that surrounds it. At least Genysis was the name of something in that movie…

Oh, well, start the clocks for the next entry Terminator: Woo-hoo b-words coming sometime in the next few years.

The Terminator (1984)

Director: James Cameron

Cast: Arnold Schwarzenegger, Michael Biehn, Linda Hamilton, Paul WInfield

Have I Seen it Before: I want to make some kind of joke about their being no fate but what we make

Did I Like It: Why don’t you make movies with real things and real people, James Cameron? Why?

Let’s get the obvious out of the way first. This film is perfectly cast. Before he became the most improbable quip-machine in history, Schwarzenegger brings all of his monosyllabic lethality to the role of a lifetime. Lance Henriksen wouldn’t have been the right choice—although he is good in the film, and does eventually reach his potential as a robot for James Cameron one day. OJ Simpson was in the running at one point, but everyone decided he wouldn’t be convincing as a killer. True story. Linda Hamilton plays the arc of the Final Girl’s transformation to Warrior Woman much more efficiently than her peers or successors. And then there’s Michael Biehn. Is there an American action star who is better to display constant patience with the events and people around him? That he hasn’t been a much bigger star over the years is completely beyond me.

But let’s really talk about how this film has no business working out at all.

This thing could have floated away in a river of nonsense exposition, in the middle of the second act. But Cameron is no idiot. When Kyle (Biehn) has to tell the whole story of the future, and John Conner, and the Terminators to Sarah (Hamilton), he does so in the middle of a car chase. And not just any old blah-blah middle-of-the-backlot run-of-the-mill car chase. This is a next level, look out French Connection (1971) car chase, and it’s one of three in the film. You could do a film like this much less artfully, but then it would be Highlander (1986).

Even the few elements fo special effects in this film that don’t age super well (spoiler: it’s those moments when there’s any kind of rear-screen projection, or when The Terminator (Schwarzenegger) is clearly a puppet) have their delightful charm. I can kind of see how a grade-a control freak like James Cameron now wants to exclusively make films using the motion capture technology he adopted in Avatar (2009). He is no longer at the mercy of the elements, time, or people. It sounds nice, but I’m starting to miss great movies made outside of a computer, especially when James Cameron is making them.