The Terminator is my favourite movie of all time so although I was excited to see Terminator Genisys, I wasn’t expecting much. So when Dougie and I went to see it yesterday, I couldn’t believe how giddy I got at times. The visual recreations of the T-101 and Kyle Reese’s arrivals in 1984 were absolutely spot on; the naked Terminator’s conversation with the punks and even Kyle Reese’s momentary stop in the department store to grab a jacket and the exact same pair of Nike running shoes he wore in the original film. They got everything right, including the dialogue – and I should know, I’ve seen The Terminator enough times that I’ve practically memorized every line.
As for the cast, Emilia Clarke is no Linda Hamilton (hell, she’s no Lena Headey, who was superb in The Sarah Connor Chronicles) but she did do a decent job playing the Sarah Connor in this timeline. Arnie was at his best, as an aging T-101, who at one point admits he’s old but “not obsolete.” And Jason Clarke was a pretty bad-ass John Connor (although I loved Nick Stahl’s haunted version of Connor in Terminator 3: Rise of The Machines).
It’s really too bad Sam Worthington was in Terminator Salvation (although he was the best thing about that film) because I think he would have made a much better Kyle Reese in Terminator Genisys than Jai Courtney, who was pretty innocuous. To be fair though, no one will ever embody the character of Kyle Reese like Michael Biehn did. That man was just smoldering hot in The Terminator.
When I saw the trailers for Terminator Genisys, I was convinced the J.K. Simmons character was going to play Dr. Silberman, the criminal psychologist who tormented Sarah in the psych ward in Terminator 2, originally played by Earl Boen. But as it turned out, he actually plays a policeman who witnessed Reese’s fight with a T-1000 in 1984 and shows up again at the police station when Sarah and Kyle are arrested in 2017. And yes, they jump from 1984 to 2017 in a time machine.
Another awesome addition to this film was that in 2017, Miles Dyson’s son Danny becomes an unsuspecting tool of Skynet.
I loved most of the twists and changes in the alternate timeline, even if some of them made little sense. A lot of critics have panned this film but from the perspective of one of the biggest Terminator geeks on the planet, I can tell you that I can’t wait to buy the Terminator Genisys Blu Ray when it’s released so I can watch it all over again.
