3 out of 5

Directed by: Alan Taylor

Landing somewhere between the fun camp of T3 and the over-seriousness of Salvation, Genisys actually manages to surprise by coming up with a valid – if time-travel twisty (inevitable, given the series) – avenue to explore for a fifth entry.  Had it simply embraced this and run with it – which it does for the solid initial chunk of the film – it could’ve maintained momentum for its 2 hour runtime.  Instead, though, writers Laeta Kalogridis and Patrick Lussier seem to want to pause every thirty minutes or so to justify what they’re doing: the movie’s place in the legacy; it’s faith in its characters – and then to balance this patter they’ll (filtered through Alan Taylor’s vision, anyway) jump directly back to a been-there done-that action sequence to wake us back up.  Taylor seems aware of the staid nature of today’s action audiences, though, and that this isn’t a Marvel movie or the newest epic so there’s no need to pretend like you’re going to blow us away, giving these sequences a light-footed, breezy approach.  Yes, you can sleep through them if so desired, but they’re choreographed and shot well; they’re neither lazy or hyper-edited – they’re practical, which helps the movie to continue moving forward.

The biggest problem the flick faces in its final sequence is in having to up the ante by giving us another Terminator model.  The timeline jumping about, while maybe frustrating to anyone who wants to maintain some “pure” version of this story, works, and more creative minds might’ve spun this into the main problem our leads – Jai Courtney’s Kyle Reese, Emilia Clarke’s Sarah Connor, and, of course, Arnold – have to combat, with spoiled timestreams collapsing onto one another or something (again, not original, but in keeping with the sort of bonkers zaniness with which the film starts out).  Instead, though, we’re given a Big Bad, and it’s… hard to allot this particular Big Bad any more Big Bad status than the other T-advancements our original T-800 has faced.  A similar criticism applies to the pre-Skynet Genisys, which, in the film’s near future of 2017, is a new “operating system” which will unite everyone’s devices in an apparently wholly desirable way.  Firstly, we’re sort of there already, so it seems a little dated, and secondly, there’s nothing new under the sun to explore with the “machines take over” concept.  Again, to Taylor’s credit, he doesn’t dress up any of this and just tries to keep our trio in motion.  But the film definitely feels the weight of needing to arrive at a conclusion sooner rather than later as the (essentially film-long) chase stretches past 90 minutes.

Wrapping back around, though, Genisys is much better than it could’ve been, and for all its falling back on genre cliches structurally, it actually does feel enmeshed in the Terminator world moreso than T3 or Salvation.  It’s entertaining on the whole, and knows to just shake its head and plod forth most of the time.  There’s hope that there’s an even greater sequel out there if the series’ writers can relax, feel like they’ve earned their audience, and not have to constantly explain to us why all of this is so important.