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Thursday, November 26, 2015

#JustaQuickiePlease: Terminator Genisys Review


Is the fifth time a charm?  Alan Taylor, director of Thor; The Dark World, was hoping so with this latest installment of the Terminator franchise.   Arnold is back, as promised ad nauseam, this time playing the T800 version of his infamously iconic incarnation; and yes they have a rationale for his obvious aging.  In fact, Taylor manages to explain almost every nuance and anomaly of his rebooted timeline with some degree of credibility.  So, as far as sequels go, or pentequals, and yes, I just made that up, he is able to take a done to death idea, which seemed utterly inflexible in its cemented mythology, and create a semi-unique take revisiting many of the quirks that made the first two so awesome while fabricating a new canon of his own.   But that is where the good ends and the bad begins its T1000 style pursuit.   The acting is stale and tiresome with any attempt at recapturing the humanity of T2 an epic fail.   Arnold tries to duplicate the charm of his T2 persona but never remotely delivers and, in the end, merely becomes a three-dimensional caricature of himself.  And although the effects are visually stunning and imaginative, the absolute ludicrousness of some of the action sequences makes it feel more like a well financed Wylie E Coyote cartoon.  I mean, I need at least hint of science in my science fiction.  Finally, despite a rather impressive twist, which was revealed before the movie's release on its poster, smooth move Hollywood, the story does drag and become weighty with the overabundance of theoretic possibilities regarding time travel.  It is complex as it answers some questions while leaving some rather large, important ones confusingly untouched.  Then again, I guess we have to leave something for Terminator 6: Arnold's Third House Payment.  2 out of 5 Kernels: Even Skynet has to be bored with the whole thing by now seeing how every facet of any entertainment value has now been effectively terminated.

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