I really wanted to like this (despite waiting for it to arrive on Netflix). But this was groan after groan. Opening with a completely cliché sequence which feels like the obligatory scene where we learn that Reese and John are buddies, in which Reese complains about all the killing he has to do... Killing? Does gunning down machines count as killing now? That is followed by a battle sequence that takes place over-top of a voice-over war speech John gives his troops ala Braveheart/every other war movie out there.
I will admit that it is a cool concept to learn a little bit about the mechanics of how the time travel works, but it is a little lost when you are watching an entire battalion of soldiers staring awestruck at their naked companion.
Once we bounce back to 1984 there is a lot of "WTF"ery to get through as we see a crappy-looking CGI version of young Arnold re- enacting the original movie alongside actors who appear to have not seen the original - when suddenly, an aged Arnold arrives and picks a fight with himself.
Meanwhile Reese is going through the motions of the original which are now suddenly interrupted by an Asian version of the T-1000, only to be rescued by that aged terminator alongside Sarah Connor.
Breathe. Yes, by this point I was extremely confused as to what was happening. But Sarah tries to explain it, while addressing the aged Terminator as "pops" because clearly "Kingdom of the Crystal Skull" taught the filmmakers nothing about pointing out how old our childhood heroes are getting. But before she can clear things up the T-1000 attacks and uses his liquid metal to revive the young Terminator - who for some reason attacks Reese instead of his actual target??
What continually took me out of the movie was the fact that it is kind of a reboot, kind of a remake, kind of a sequel, so most of the cast made me question what I was watching - Emilia Clarke being the one exception; I actually bought her as Sarah.
By a happy coincidence the heroes find themselves in a tunnel that has magical acid in the pipes... magical in that it melts the T1000's skeleton but not Arnold's.
The next nice convenience is that with this altered time-line, Reese and Sarah can hop into the future - which just so happens to be our time, and Arnold can now look even closer to his actual age. Not contrived at all.
With all of the confusion mounting up, the film seems to do it's best to either punch you in the face with action scenes or grind to a halt with boring scenes that explain nothing of the plot. Although we are constantly reminded that these two have to "mate", which on one hand was bold, but the fact that the actors have zero chemistry didn't help anything.
So to add to the confusion, John makes an appearance in 2017 - apparently having travelled back from the future even though he was attacked when Reese left, and despite history being completely altered he still has scars on his face, but actually turns out to be a terminator in disguise, but not a normal terminator, a new kind that is also John at the same time. This mess is what I was busy trying to figure out while the movie wanted me to think about this Genysis thing which is like an IOS-artificial intelligence hybrid.
So it turns out that the heroes have coincidentally landed exactly 24 hours before skynet becomes unstoppable, which of course makes one wonder why evil John helped them escape the police in the first place. But not to worry, rather than giving a sensible explanation we get treated to yet another fight scene.
So while it is seemingly a Terminatorish thing to do, having the good guy suddenly now the bad guy, that goes down the drain when things happen like the following scene where we learn that John is attempting to make a time machine... the same type of time machine that Old Arnold managed to make-shift back in 1994 on his own. It seemed like they were also working on T-1000ish robots, which is kind of stupid seeing as the original model (Arnold) has not even been developed yet.
At about this point in the film I was asking a zillion questions - like who turned John evil and why, and what their plan is? What is the good guys' agenda? and of course How much longer is this movie?
But those questions were not be answered as it was more important to bore us. And now that Reese learns he is John's father we have the worst premise ever which is that two unlikeable characters know that they have to get together. On top of this, we have the situation that John now wants skynet to rule the world despite the fact that he (albeit in an alternate reality) is the leader of the resistance that fights them - making his motivations very bizarre.
What follows is action scene after action scene, each one more boring than the last, until it crescendos in a monstrosity of ridiculousness, where somehow the time machine that the terminators were sent in now destroys them along with everything else in it's path - except Sarah and Reese of course.
And the denouement is no better, with an upgraded Arnold reappearing, Sarah approaching young Reese to introduce him to his older self to tell himself something that is no longer relevant in this time-line. This movie is just.so.stupid. It's an insult to James Cameron.
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