Terminator Genisys

This film should be more on-point than ever, since technology has taken over our lives. But rather than actively antagonizing us, technology simply allows us easy ways to indulge in laziness and cruelty.

To watch Genisys is to see the franchise become a figurative embodiment of the Terminators themselves: convinced of its own superior vision of the future, it tramples upon the dusty skeletons of the forefathers it's slaughtered to achieve it.

The Terminator franchise has forgotten what made The Terminator and Terminator 2 so great.

It is a return, of sorts, to the 1984 original, unnecessarily complicated by so many time twists and warps that even an ardent fan of the franchise must admit reluctantly that its future is behind it.

Part of what makes Terminator Genisys so pitiful as an evening out is that all the actors do over and over again is tell us why they're in a particular scene and why the movie exists.

Think Abbott and Costello Meets Terminator. Think Terminator & Robin. Think, in other words, the point at which a franchise subsides, perhaps finally, into self-parody.

As flashy as it is with tremendous and eye-popping special effects, it has created an extremely convoluted mess of merged timelines and revisionist storytelling that treads all over what made the 1984 original and superior 1991 sequel so great.

I found this fifth film genuinely unwatchable.

A ‘Terminator’ film brings with it certain high expectations (from some audiences), and “Genisys” doesn’t meet them.

Like many entries in the series, Genisys replaces strong storytelling with fast-paced chases, explosions, shootouts, and special FX.