Terminator Genisys

THE PITCH

WORTH

$$$1/2

THE VIEWING

"This is all wrong! John sent me here to save you!" 

    Terminator Genisys received a lot of bad reviews and probably rightly so depending on the individual expectation level. I am NOT going to be another bad review guy.  Ultimately, I was entertained, a feat the last two installments just could not provide. The ONLY reason it succeeded, in my opinion, is solely because of AH-NAWLD.

    Yeah he will more than likely never win an Oscar or proper recognition for his role in cinema, especially in the 90’s era but that is okay.  Those of us that know realize charisma and originality goes a very long way.  This Terminator movie would have been miserable without Schwarzenegger and that is a fact.

    Whenever you have an iconic movie franchise this fixed on a very specific date ("judgment day"), the more it’s stretched out over decades and decades of movies, the more we lose interest.  It is inevitable, like a kid promised ice cream at the beginning of the day and it’s past nighttime, the moon is out and still nothing… What!? You think we forgot!!???  Enough with the politicking already!!  We know you want to make money but forget that too!  You guys are going to lose a very sizable part of your fan base if you keep twirling that yarn in front of us cats… somebody at Paramount Pictures apparently got that memo.  We finally have proper direction. Amazingly that only adds to my then stagnant intrigue.

     I must admit to being frustrated roughly all the time in the beginning of this story.  Thanks to all the space time continuum being all mixed up and confusing but honestly, each time that happened, the story explained itself and I was able to catch on.  

    Emilia Clarke was decent and so was Jai Courtney as Kyle.  Shout out to J.K. Simmons!  I don’t want to be too prickly with critique.  One thing this franchise is going to have to do along with most other current CGI filled movies is go back to using real fire, real explosions and give more of a percentage to actual mockups and puppets screentime than post production computer imaging work.  Maybe I am becoming desynthesised to great GGI work.  I am shocked that this isn’t being dealt with in the focus groups.    Jurassic World even suffered a little bit of this.  I wrote about that very thing in the review here on Worth Watching.

    I think this movie is Worth Watching.  3D was okay but not a must.

BE SURE TO WAIT THROUGH THE CREDITS FOR BONUS FOOTAGE.

letter grade:  B-