Terminator Genisys (2015)

Yeah, redletter panned the shit out of it. Many lols to be had on that ep of half in the bag.

I love when they cut to the directors doing press about how artistic their movie is. "The movie opens. It's a dark room. The audience starts to see terminator stuff. They're like, "Yeah. I know what this is!"."

Go back to doing oceanography research, Mr. Cameron. You're doing good work there.

etchazz_sl said:

I'm shocked it made that much. A 75 year old terminator with a shitty new plot twist. This movie tanking had nothing to do with Women's World Cup or 4th of July. Most people are just smart enough to stay away from an on screen abortion.

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You're giving the general public wayyyyyyyyyyyyy too much credit.

We need an official rating chart based on 5s. Like ?? > ?? > Terminator 5 > Transformers 5 > Die Hard 5

Well Harry Potter 5 and Star Wars 5 are both better than those. We'll have Toy Story 5 in another decade I'm sure, and it can't be worse. Not sure where Fast Five fits in (Fast and Furious). Those movies are bad in a good way, and they don't try to be better than they are.

Honestly, despite all the flaws, if this movie had been rated R i'd be saying it was almost as good as the original. PG 13 violence is just too sanitized, especially since this one was set before Judgement Day. PG 13 didn't detract too bad from Salvation, but it's so glaringly obvious in this one when there's no mess or blood splatter when the T-1000 impales a cop, or Nano-John guns down a room of cops.

Thinking about it more if you took an axe to a bunch of the scenes where Kyle Reese and Sarah Conner have dialogue and trim 20-30 minutes off the run time it would probably be solidly in the "good" category. The whole thing is really held down by all those scenes of those two talking to each other. Every fucking time those two start flapping their gums any momentum that has been built up dies a miserable little death. The characters know what is going on, the audience knows what is going on, just go go go.

I saw Genisys yesterday. I was really pumped to see Arnie reprise his Terminator role again, but this was just so 'meh'.

I think my biggest disappointed was in the action scenes. One of the things that define Terminator movies (at least in 2 and 3), is the over-the-top destruction wrought in the action scenes. Other than the bus scene, this movie didn't really have any. At least none that really stuck out in my mind. T2 you had those awesome semi-truck sequences, helicopter (yeah Genisys had a helicoper chase too, but was whatever), and the awesome battles at Cyberdyne and the steel factory. Even T3 had the crane ripping apart downtown which was cool as hell.

I didn't care for Emilia Clarke as Sarah Connor. Physically she is too "soft" looking. This version of Sarah probably should have been hardened like the Sarah in T2 (and, remember, Linda Hamilton had buffed up for that movie).

The Doctor as Skynet was dumb (and why even get Matt Smith? He had like two minutes of screen time. Any random scrub actor would've sufficed). And once again the writers anthropomorphize something that shouldn't be. An AI wouldn't render itself as a child -> teenager -> adult. I hate when they do that shit.

Other things that didn't make sense (or I didn't pick up on).

* Why was judgement day pushed to 2017? What would have changed to make 1997 not happen? If Skynet was actually smart, it would teleport a team of terminators to the year 1600 and get a nice head start.

* Why would Cyberdyne, who is working on a multi-connected app for your phone, be building a god damn time machine? Do you realize how much that would cost to build in what's just a couple years from now? Insane.

* If timelines are immutable, then why bother? Any changes in the past doesn't affect the current future so who cares? Other than,I guess, making sure that "some version" of Skynet or Sarah/John Connor always exists somewhere? This series made more sense if we assume a single timeline universe.

Lastly, if you destroy Skynet "once and for all", then hey you two (Kyle and Sarah) don't need to fuck. So stop complaining.

ShakyJake_sl said:

* Why was judgement day pushed to 2017? What would have changed to make 1997 not happen? If Skynet was actually smart, it would teleport a team of terminators to the year 1600 and get a nice head start.

* Why would Cyberdyne, who is working on a multi-connected app for your phone, be building a god damn time machine? Do you realize how much that would cost to build in what's just a couple years from now? Insane.

* If timelines are immutable, then why bother? Any changes in the past doesn't affect the current future so who cares? Other than,I guess, making sure that "some version" of Skynet or Sarah/John Connor always exists somewhere? This series made more sense if we assume a single timeline universe.

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Judgement Day was pushed back in T3 too, it didn't happen in 1997, it happened July 24, 2004. In TSCC, the year is 2007 and Judgement Day still hasn't happened yet. One of the major themes that was established in 2-3-TSCC is that Judgement Day is sort of inevitable, all they could do was keep pushing it back. Which suggests that despite what they've accomplished in this latest movie, Judgement Day is still coming. As for the whole 'why not teleport farther back in time' that's a question you just can't answer when time travel is involved. At best, you can say that if Skynet interferes too far back, they may inhibit the conditions necessary for Skynet to be developed.

I imagine that Cyberdyne didn't know it was a time machine, and Nano-John had led them to believe it was related to the Genisys project. As to why Skynet would want a time machine handy, I don't think that even needs much explanation.

Well I imagine when the time travel started, they didn't know the timelines were immutable. In fact, it's possible that nobody in the future realizes that the timelines are immutable, they just think X failed and they need to send back yet another terminator/human. I think only someone who actually reached the future from the past after having been in a previous future would know how the timeline deal works.

They had a piece of dialogue with junior CEO about the time machine. What do we want? time travel. When do we want it? it's irrelevant.

ooooh. I was waking a camrip without the best audio and I didn't hear what he said when he said time travel, so I assumed it was just something to do with genisys, I didn't realize he knew it was a time machine.

Thought the movie was alright. Arnold is still a bad ass, but the movie was just too safe in every respect. It just felt like fan fiction to me. Movie is definitely not terrible like the Aliens/Predator franchise, but it is also pretty forgettable.

Cameron is really the only one that can continue the story at this point if it's not in a longer format such as a TV series.
It's pretty much a reboot of the IP that I really could care less about seeing any more of.

Judgement day wasn't 1987 because there was no terminator arm/chip for Dyson to research. Same reason it was pushed back in T3.

Plus, Skynet has likely figured out that it stands a better chance of winning with 2017 tech than 80s tech.

That's a theme heavily explored by Person of Interest. You don't even need killer robots for an AI to rule the world.

The most interesting thing to me in the whole movie is who sent Pops back to stop the T1000 that was sent back to kill Sarah as a 9 year old. Presumably that person is from a future that is now divergent, which means we'll never find out who sent Pops back to save her unless that person travels back themselves. But how did that person know to send someone back to save Sarah in the first place? Was it just part of the same chain of action and reaction that caused the first three movies, or did something more significant happen this time?

What if Pops was sent back from a future where Sarah had been killed as a child? In that case, the only being who could have known of Sarah's significance to the timeline would be Skynet itself. Perhaps Skynet's ultimate victory in that timeline is flawed and imperfect because without John Connor to form the resistance, Skynet's easy victory made it fail to evolve to its full potential.

or something

I think they purposely left stuff like that open to have places they could take the sequels.

Lightning Lord Rule_sl said:

Half in the Bag Review

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Even better:

ShakyJake_sl said:

The Doctor as Skynet was dumb (and why even get Matt Smith? He had like two minutes of screen time. Any random scrub actor would've sufficed). And once again the writers anthropomorphize something that shouldn't be. An AI wouldn't render itself as a child -> teenager -> adult. I hate when they do that shit.

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Gavinmad_sl said:

The most interesting thing to me in the whole movie is who sent Pops back to stop the T1000 that was sent back to kill Sarah as a 9 year old. Presumably that person is from a future that is now divergent, which means we'll never find out who sent Pops back to save her unless that person travels back themselves. But how did that person know to send someone back to save Sarah in the first place? Was it just part of the same chain of action and reaction that caused the first three movies, or did something more significant happen this time?

What if Pops was sent back from a future where Sarah had been killed as a child? In that case, the only being who could have known of Sarah's significance to the timeline would be Skynet itself. Perhaps Skynet's ultimate victory in that timeline is flawed and imperfect because without John Connor to form the resistance, Skynet's easy victory made it fail to evolve to its full potential.

or something

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To reply to both of these at once, I assume Matt Smith was cast for sequels. With the post credit scene showing that skynet lived, I don't think that they people that sent Pops back are no longer in existence, I think they are the ones that set all this shit up, I imagine they are the ones who are fighting the war against the current Genysis Skynet.

The terminator movies always seemed to have divergent timelines with various judgement days, centered around the nexus of 1984. Cyberdine into Genysis pushed Judgement day back and the new future pushed the nexus back to whenever Sarah was 9, setting up whatever plot points they want to nonsense into the sequels, assuming it gets one or more. John said that he, Sarah and Kyle's mating, and Judgement day are all things that time/fate/the universe wants to have happen and now Sarah and Kyle are in 2017, so I assume judgement day is now sometime around 2035 or later.

Time travel mixed with a predetermined fate is fun.

Angerz_sl said:

To reply to both of these at once, I assume Matt Smith was cast for sequels. With the post credit scene showing that skynet lived, I don't think that they people that sent Pops back are no longer in existence, I think they are the ones that set all this shit up, I imagine they are the ones who are fighting the war against the current Genysis Skynet.

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I missed the post credit scene, but I didn't say they are no longer in existence, I said they're in a divergent timeline. According to the way time travel works in the Terminator universe, they would have to first travel back in time to the nexus point that caused their timeline to diverge, in this case the nexus for that timeline is, presumably, the attempt to kill 9 year old Sarah(or successful killing in my theory). Once they traveled as far back as that nexus, they could never return to their own timeline because now they're stuck back in the main timeline. TSCC actually kind of hinted at this when Derek Reese and Jesse Flores have memories from their time in the resistance that don't match up, because he came back before she did. So the Jesse Flores that came back to 2007 was not the exact same Jesse Flores that Derek left behind in his 2027.

*edit*

Being able to travel through divergent timelines at will would basically make you a godlike being, sort of like walking through Shadow in Zelazny's Amber series.

I figured it was/will be Kyle or Sarah that will one day send Pops back to save Sarah, in the same vein that Kyle told Young Kyle to reveal the skynet/genesys connection via personal affirmation to his alternate self. Also the same way Sarah remembered to do the hand line thing to Kyle so he could do it back to her and prove his validity. I don't think its going to be that complicated and will end up being "new" john Conner who will be born from this new timeline and did the EXACT same thing he did in t2, just to 1970.

Why was pops mind wiped then? maybe not to confuse himself with details from a timeline that would no longer exist, now that we(they) know more about time weapons. However the simpler reason was he was reprogramed and the new programmer simply did not provide the information.

Gavinmad_sl said:

Being able to travel through divergent timelines at will would basically make you a godlike being, sort of like walking through Shadow in Zelazny's Amber series.

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The flip side of that is you can only go forward (in making new timelines, not time itself) and seems like no way to go back to your old timeline. Your going to be constantly in a episode of Sliders/quantum leap with no chance the next leap is the leap home!!