In the beginning there was a classic film made called The Terminator, Legendary Director James Cameron announced himself on the scene with this and followed it up with arguably the best sequel ever made in ‘Judgment Day’. The biggest movie star in the world of the 1980’s Arnold Schwarzenegger – so big Microsoft Word even can spell check it for you – starred as its leading man/robot and… it was good.
In 2004 and 2009 an executive somewhere decided to try and stretch the series thin by making 2 more sequels, Terminator 3 and Salvation, respectively, and in my opinion, that should have been the end of it. Unfortunately Arnie’s pockets are thin post his tenure at the Governor of California and now in 2015 here we go again, as famously said himself ‘I’ll be back’. And he wasn’t lying.
In a sort of reboot set within the same universe – and if that makes no sense blame the writers not me – Kyle Reese, now played by Aussie actor Jai Courtney is sent back to 1984 to protect Sarah Connor as her son John is the key to resistance winning the war against vicious, intelligent super machines in a post apocalyptic 2029 future. When he arrives however, he finds that the T-800 cyborg he needs to stop has already been terminated by a more seasoned (aka old looking) Arnie as ‘Pops’ – Sarah Connor’s guardian of the previous 20 years, re-programmed to protect her rather than kill her.
This throws into a skew of timelines of the past and future as clearly someone has been tampering with fate, and its up to Kyle, Sarah – played by Danerys from Game of Thrones’ Emilie Clarke – and Pops to shut down the corporation responsible for the impending doom in Cyberdyne which will eventually become ‘Skynet’ and stop Judgment Day from ever happening, which is the moment the machines turn on humanity, launching their own missiles on themselves.
Honestly and candidly, this is not a good movie. It ticks the right amount of boxes for epic visual effect stunts and a nice epic, deep soundtrack but decides to then leave script writing and character development to the wayside. Everything feels kind of ajar, like they were almost there on so many levels but continue to disappoint throughout. Throwbacks to old catchphrases, old plot lines and starring an old Arnie just don’t deliver.
The performances felt like placeholder characters to drive the narrative harking back to the original films and the storylines set up back then; overall it is recycling the best bits of Terminator 1 and 2 but doesn’t get up to par in its attempts. No sense of real danger and halfhearted attempts to setup suspense, say hasta la vista to the magic of the series because it’s all but extinguished.
Yet for the two whole hours I couldn’t seem to turn away, the action was stimulating enough to keep me there, rendering my brain completely off. A popcorn flick by all definitions – 5/10.
Rating: 2.5 Stars
