Terminator Genisys Review
RYAN: Terminator Genisys is the new, huge summer blockbuster for the 4th of July weekend, 2015, and it’s my first Terminator movie so I’m thrilled to review it as a stand alone film. But I’m equally thrilled to have Michael Weiss join me for the review because he has seen all of the Terminator films. I really enjoyed this film because it’s just a great action movie. It’s a great sci-fi movie with some good performances and the story is smart. You have to pay close attention to get it all, but it’s not difficult to follow if you do. And it has a really great theme about cyber-connectivity in our lives and social networking and the sort of terrorism that could come of it all one day.
MICHAEL: This film is cyberpunk, a subgenre of science fiction; which is when you mix post-apocalyptic circumstances with action, technology, sci-fi and robots in this case… and time-travel.
RYAN: Yes cyberpunk is a sci fi movie that takes place in the future with “high tech and low life” where big technology basically cripples society: Blade Runner, Robocop, Strange Days are some examples. So did you like it?
MICHAEL: I loved it. I thought as a Terminator fan, it hit on all the right marks. Almost distractingly so to the point where you’re looking for these cues all the time, like the catch phrases, like, “I’ll be back” and “Get out” and “Come with me if you want to live”.
RYAN: And a couple times you reached over to me and said, “This is almost like an exact replica of an earlier film,” so you noticed things, as a fan of the franchise, that I obviously didn’t get. I did like the performances. It’s so fun seeing Arnold, the former Governator, on the big screen. Obviously the role doesn’t require much, he’s relatively devoid of emotion. But he deadpans perfectly.
MICHAEL: What’s interesting is that a lot of people were criticising his age the second they announced this movie. But they came up with a way to get around it. They mentioned something about aging organic matter that the Terminators were covered with that aged into old man Arnold; but I mean, in this film his character takes place in a few different time periods and you get to see him age as well.
RYAN: The younger CGI Arnold looked like a Sims character.
MICHAEL: But the effects are much improved over the last one. And they very specifically modeled it after what he looked like in the first movie. So that was cool. And it was a way to tie it all together with him looking older. But it was interesting because he plays three or four different roles if you include that.
RYAN: Jai Courtney has got to be in the best shape of his life. No complaints seeing that man shirtless. And also seeing him play a good guy, as opposed to the nasty guy he plays in the Divergent series, is cool.
MICHAEL: He was good. Emilia Clark, who played Sarah Connor, was actually quite good. She wasn’t just a Linda Hamilton look-alike.
RYAN: The effects were fantastic. There were some really cool action sequences that were fresh and and most of them had to do with the effect of this “liquid metal” that looks like mercury. The way the characters could move, made out of that material, was just sick-cool.
MICHAEL: That was what made Terminator 2 so groundbreaking. The effects of the T-1000 were like the liquid metal one. The character in this movie was almost like the T-1000 mixed with Transformers.
RYAN: Will you explain how this is an interquell?
MICHAEL: It takes place before, during, and after the first film. It really resets the timeline. But it repeats a lot of the things that made the other ones successful and so appealing. It’s certainly a reboot – along with the original main man Arnie.
RYAN: I don’t know how or why but Paramount has already greenlit a trilogy for this reboot, there’s going to be a part two in 2017 and three in 2018.
MICHAEL: We’ll see how, but the “Why” is because the production company – if they don’t produce these movies by then – they lose the rights to make these movies.
RYAN: There’s a romantic sub-plot I enjoyed. There’s really only one female character, Sarah Connor. And I love that we see her slowly trusting a man and in reverse we see a man slowly falling in love with and trusting her. So I like that play and it won’t necessarily bring in a female audience to this film, but it’s nice for those who do want more of an emotional balance.
MICHAEL: There were a lot of emotional moments with Arnold too.
RYAN: We saw it in 3D at the Navy Pier IMAX in Chicago and it’s great on the huge screen. For a 3D conversion, it was very good… much better than most. There was depth and things flying out at you… everything you want from a 3D experience.
MICHAEL: The 3D was seamless and awesome in this movie through helicopter blades, broken windows, smoke, things that can barely ever be done with 3D. This definitely didn’t look like a post-conversion.
RYAN: While it’s certainly one for the Fan Boys, I liked it too. It’s a fun summer action film on the big screen.
