I saw the trailer for Terminator Genisys several times in the cinema, online and during TV commercial breaks in the months leading up to it's release. Every time it ended I looked at my wife and pulled the "Meh", face. She mirrored my expression too. Everything in the promotional and advertising campaigns pointed to yet another Hollywood remake cashing in on a well known film property. Every truncated scene played like hyper active re visitations of the first two Terminator movie's greatest hits, but with interlopers portraying characters already established by other actors and yet here was Arnold Schwarzenegger reprising one of his most popular screen roles as the original T-800 infiltration cyborg. So was it a remake? Doubtful, with Arnie involved; if they intended to do that they would have recast that part too. So one had to assume it was a continuation of the original films, but with new "younger" people slotted in. I think they call it a soft reboot these days. J.J. Abrams Star Trek featured all new fresh faced participants to portray the Enterprise crew, but managed to find a way to write the original Spock, Leonard Nimoy into the tale, thus handing the baton over to the next generation of performers who will take up the mantle of these iconic roles in future films.
Normally, with a genre film of this type I would have tried to have made the first showing on the first day of it's release, but everything I'd seen and read about Terminator Genisys left me cold. July the 1st came and went and I still hadn't seen the fifth film in the franchise.
I scoured the net and noticed it was getting some very poor reviews across the board. (27% on Rotten Tomatoes) I found an interesting article by, Scott Mendelson contributor to Forbes who cited six reasons why this movie bombed; it can be found by clicking the following link here... Box Office: 6 Reasons 'Terminator Genisys' Bombed (In America). I'm inclined to agree with most of what he said yet my eventual review won't be passing a dour Judgement Day verdict on this film despite all the negativity surrounding it.
Before I type up my thoughts on the film I'd like to bring up those six reasons Mr. Mendelson talked about in his piece and discuss them further.
First off he mentions the bad marketing campaign despite the blessing of original creator, James Cameron. It's not the worst though; at least the Genisys advertising department put together and released enough promotional material before it's release date to let the general public know that another Terminator film was on it's way to a multiplex in the summer of 2015. Maybe some of it was poorly executed along the way, but despite it's flaws and clumsy handling people were made aware this movie existed. A truly bad marketing campaign is a nonexistent one and that has to be reserved for the film Dredd. That movie had zero build up in it's lead up to it's release. Dredd, stealthily played out in cinemas in America for several weeks then it was gone. I can't help feeling that a decent campaign with the full backing of the studio would have put it on every one's radar; this would have greatly improved it's box office takings and we would probably have had a sequel in the works already.
I don't buy Entertainment Weekly magazine, but I used to receive old copies of it from my sister in law for several years so I am very aware of it's layout and pictorial style. Mr. Mandelson pointed out how terrible the cast promotional photos were in the magazine so I had to do a search for them online so I could see just how bad there were. He was right, all the actors are in character costume; most of the shots depict them putting on their best angry face, shooting big guns in front of a drab background. I can't say I was surprised; this is pretty much the standard set up for an Entertainment Weekly photo shoot session. I've seen similar glib and uninspiring photos within the pages of this magazine in the past. Maybe if the big wigs at Entertainment Weekly arranged to send their photographers out to the sets and locations while these movies and television shows were in production the results would be more organic and less contrived.
He brings up the fact that director, Alan Taylor concentrated far too much on talking about his bad experiences working for Marvel Studios on Thor: The Dark World during the Terminator: Genisys press junkets rather than try to generate interest for the film he'd just completed. It's a pretty sad state of affairs when a "professional" can't put their sour grapes aside and concentrate on the task in hand. It's as if this project wasn't satisfying enough to take away the pains of the previous job, so how invested could he have been in it really? Shouldn't a director be really elated to have had the opportunity to work on such a legendary film franchise? To be fair to the man, I've only seen one of his interviews for Terminator: Genisys and in that one he only brought up the problem with the "creative issues" he had with Marvel and the trying time he had while directing Thor: The Dark World when he was probed by the journalist. These kinds of interviews are usually conducted in a cookie cutter sort of way. The names promoting the film usually the director and the actors, sit in a room for many hours answering preset questions that have been vetted by the studios public relations people beforehand. It's run like a well oiled conveyor belt providing a slew of entertainment media reporters one after another. They go in, have five minutes to "ask the questions" then leave only to be replaced by one more. Can you imagine how mind numbingly boring that must be? To know what questions you will be asked and have to give the same formulaic answer each and every time and make it appear like it's all natural and off the cuff? Maybe, Alan Taylor was simply exhausted and in a bad frame of mind when he went off script during that particular day of the interviewing tour. Having spoken to so many people in one day there was probably no contingency plan to limit damage control once all those outlets had their interview done and dusted and ready to go to print or air on the small screen. I'll cut him some slack, maybe he behaved perfectly after that minor glitch? Just a thought.
Apparently, there was even a tie in game at selected Imax cinema's around the country that was designed to be played while the movie was in progression. I don't think any movie studio should be creating app's for mobile devices that encourages the younglings to light up their screens in the auditorium while a film is playing. Isn't it bad enough that they text and check their social media pages on their phones every few minutes for the full running time and whole duration of the film without any consideration for anyone else who is...uh...actually there to watch the movie? Let's not give the digital junkies more distractions, please. I'm not opposed to some types of movie tie-in's, but when they undermine concentration and focus to this extent then what's the point of going?
I understand the thinking behind such ideas, it's the notion that interactive methods will "enhance" the theater going experience. For decades Hollywood has experimented with all kinds of screen formats, sound systems and 3D enhancement to draw audiences in to see their motion pictures. William Castle was the master of it. He utilized a variety of gimmicks with the technology of the time to ensure large attendances to all his B-Movies.
I'll highlight four of his most famous stunts. For Macabre he devised a plan where women pretending to be real nurses would to hand out $1,000 life insurance policies from Lloyd's of London to customers in case they should die of fright during the film.
On House On Haunted Hill he came up with the fancy name of, Emergo which involved a skeleton prop on wires housed in the ceiling of the theaters the movie played at and it would seemingly drop down and float around over the heads of the audience near the climax of the film.
Then he created the name, Percepto for, The Tingler. Castle's staff fitted small hidden electrical devices to a select number of seats in the movie house before the film was shown. Towards it's finale, there would be a planned break in the film making it seem to all in attendance as if the projector had broken down. Vincent Price would break the fourth wall and warn the audience members that one of the creatures in the film had escaped and was loose among them. The devices would then be activated to buzz at this point giving some lucky patron's hilarious bum tingles.
In 13 Ghost's he deployed his next amazing concept, Illusion-O, these were cardboard viewers that housed red and blue cellophane filters. These were given out to everyone who purchased ticket to see the film. The viewer gave you the option to see the ghost with the red portion or not see them with the blue part.
One can understand why Mr. Castle felt the need to go to such lengths; these were B-Movie flicks made on the cheap and aimed squarely at the teen demographic. Something with the Terminator name should not have to resort to such cheap devices like a game app. There are still a lot of elitist film critics out there who regard science fiction and horror movies as B-Movies, they just call them by different names these days like summer blockbusters of popcorn movies, but clearly, there have been some excellent sci-fi/horror genre movies made over the years that have risen above their B-Movie trappings and the original Terminator and perhaps it's sequel Terminator 2: Judgement Day are so well made with such a great story to tell that they have to be considered worthy equals in every way to films that are widely viewed as the great classics of the silver screen.
Secondly Mr.Mendelson brought up the bad reviews it received and how they said it was a "narrative mess, was a general bore, did little with its time-hopping scenario, and was a mere arbitrary franchise reboot with no major story twists beyond the big one that the trailers revealed." Not sure I accept this generalized consensus.
Are they talking about the same film I saw? I eventually made the decision to go and see it during the back end of it's opening week and went in with very low expectations, but I was pleasantly surprised with the effort. Surely these bad reviews Mr. Mendelson highlights for Terminator Genisys could be points that easily describe the fourth entry, Salvation? Maybe they just watched the trailer to Genisys and wrote a review from that because if I was tasked to do such a thing that's probably the conclusion I would have come to if that's all I had to work with. Like I said, the trailers were bad for this movie.
How can a film series involving timey, whimey, wibbly wobbly stuff, paradoxes, a multitude of possible future outcomes have a clear narrative? Isn't it apparent by now that the future in the Terminator universe is always in flux and fixed points in time can be constantly manipulated in a person's time stream possibly creating or destroying alternate universes both fixing and damaging what has already been established in each movie? If we're talking dodgy plot points, gaps in logic, unanswered questions and continuity errors; then yes there are, but they were also evident in the other movies in the series too which I will tackle in my comprehensive review following this.
I did not find it a general bore at all, far from it. If the two hours consisted of a bunch of Skynet AHK'S-Ariel Hunter Killer Drones and Goliath's, HK's-Hunter Killer Tanks fighting the last vestiges of the human resistance, with explosion after explosion, lot's of environmental destruction and a multitude of purple plasma bolts fired by both sides; then one could say that would be boredom personified; maybe McG, Michael Bay and all men with the emotional age of a ten year old boy would probably disagree with me on that one.
Thankfully, the makers of Genisys were not afraid to play around with the time travel concept and it was all the more fun for it; how people can say it did little with it's time hopping scenarios mystifies me; they must have been playing angry birds or some other shit on their mobile/cell phones; most probably multi tasking trying to type up their scathing reviews. This movie used more time jumping than all the other movies combined and yes the trailers and TV spots did spoil the major plot twist, but they had little time to reveal how the protagonists would successfully deal with said plot twist and how it all came to be.
If you love the original Terminator movie and are not a fanboy purist then I think you'll get a kick out of the way they revisited and recreated some of the most memorable and quoted scenes from that first film with the unexpected added twists.
The third and fourth reasons why Genisys failed to terminate the box office competition on Mr.Mendelson's list was down to timing and film classification ratings. He puts forward a compelling case. Indeed, this film had to contend with the release of Jurassic World and Inside Out. Both movies are more family friendly offerings with multi age group appeal whereas the Terminator has a reputation for containing lots of violent adult orientated material. The original Terminator, Terminator 2 Judgement Day and Terminator 3 Rise Of The Machines were rated 'R' when they were theatrically released. Then it was decided that more money could be made off of the next installment, Terminator Salvation if it catered to a wider and younger audience so they set out to create a product that would secure a PG 13 film board rating. Salvation retained the usual action set pieces everyone expects from this series, but the obscenities and scenes of a sexual nature were discarded at the scripting stage of the process. The violence was softened, with less attention to the cause and effect of physical blows and damage on the human body meaning there was very little blood and zero gore in any of the scenarios. Despite the toned down nature of this outing, the general public still regards all these films as inappropriate entertainment for children. The same decision was made to make Genisys a PG 13 too. This may well have alienated the older long term fans who were not up for another kid friendly "killer cyborg" excursion and one has to wonder how big of an audience could be out there for a film that's relies on the spectators knowledge of the 80's and 90's Cameron versions which were made long before the desired PG 13 age groups were even born. It's true, Jurassic World also had the advantage of hiring the very popular and likable Chris Pratt as their lead actor who was enjoying universal fame and critical acclaim off the back of his stand out role as Star Lord in Guardians of the Galaxy.Inside Out released on June 19th, 2015 is a 3D computer-animated comedy-light drama produced by Pixar Animation Studios and released by Walt Disney Pictures. This is the company who has found the secret formula to make massive hits all the time such as Toy Story, Up, Finding Nemo, The Incredibles, Wall-E and so on and so on, this was always a guaranteed hit considering it's historical pedigree and the colourful, attractive characters kids adore.
I think there is another component at play here. The insipid and uninspired Jurassic Park III (50% on Rotten Tomatoes) was launched on July 16th in 2001; the fourth installment Jurassic World was released on June the 12th, 2015 making that a 14 year gap between the two. Movie goers benefited from the longer span of time between chapters thus cleansing the palette and erasing any bad memories one may have had from the past effort. The fourth Terminator movie, the dull, noisy and vacuous Terminator Salvation (33% on Rotten Tomatoes) was released on May 21st 2009. This has only given people a six year respite between that misstep and Terminator Genisys playing in cinemas now. There was also a lackluster television series in the interim gap called Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles which also served to weaken the brand further. It's very possible that the constant recasting of the characters and bland direction the show and Salvation took weakened the myth of the story and bred Terminator fatigue in most peoples minds.
For his fifth and sixth points, Mr. Mendelson factored into his equation that the public weren't chomping at the bit for another Terminator movie and Schwarzenegger was not the box office draw he once was anymore. I'll somewhat concede to those two points he made. It's highly possible the public and the fans alike have been burned out by the subsequent decline of the Terminator brand, I know I have. Having said that, the strong box office numbers of Jurassic World prove that an old film series can make very good numbers even if the audience weren't salivating at the mouth for another one. Strangely enough the inclusion of Arnie in Genisys actually made this one feel like a proper, genuine Terminator movie. Unlike, Salvation which used a variety of practical and visual special effects to have his image do a non speaking cameo. I can't speak for anyone else, but it's become apparent to me that Arnold is an asset and an essential part of the Terminator movie franchise despite his fading star power pull and what many would say his limited acting abilities; I would go as far as saying he is the connective tissue that holds these stories together whether he's playing a bad or good cyborg in the films. Can other stories be told without him involved? I guess they can, in fact something happens towards the end of the film that gives future installments some wriggle room to pass on the Governator if they so wish. A new direction would have to shake things up significantly so that there was no reliance at all on Sarah Connor, John Connor, Kyle Reese and the T-800 characters; maybe all the time tampering could eventually screw things up so much that they are wiped from existence altogether (seems unlikely if it's true, Genisys is part one of a planned trilogy) or Skynet becomes sentient beyond any preset "Judgement Day's" we know of and comes online in a far flung future, but I think we already had those movies they were called The Matrix, Matrix Reloaded and Matrix Revolutions.
What did I personally think of the film? My review will follow.
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