Review: "Terminator: Genisys".

My girlfriend fell asleep, the dude across from us started checking his watch, people began to leave early, and nobody clapped at the end. Suffice to say: "Terminator: Genisys" left a very, very bad taste in my mouth. Take note: If a studio wants to revitalize a brand, going the "Jurassic World" route is usually the best of options. Unless the preceding projects were horrendous to the point of uncompromise then there's absolutely no reason to erase an entire previous franchise, especially when what you're attempting to replace the old franchise with is nowhere near as substantial as the old series was.

"Genisys" performed an absolute clinic in lazy writing, bad acting, rushed mythology, and approximating old tropes from it's source material with the sole hope of drawing older/familiar audiences in with it's brand name. The strengths seen in the original series of exploring ethics and morality, juxtaposing cold robotic steel with warm human hearts, and the symbiosis between the past and present are long abandoned and far gone in "Genisys"; Where James Cameron's Sarah Connor wrestled with the idea of matching the ruthlessness of a Terminator to protect her only son, Alan Taylor's Sarah Connor doesn't even flinch when the time comes to erase her child from existence. Where James Cameron's Kyle Reese suffered with the PTSD of post-apocalyptic California, Jai Courtney's Kyle Reese travels to 1984 as if it's a stroll in Central Park on a breezy Autumn day.

With cheap quips like "RULE THIS!" and "Hi, nice to meet you. Now get out!" and a cheesy mugshot montage scene set to the tune of the "Cops" theme song, "Terminator: Genisys" occasionally feels more like a lost "Police Academy" installment than an installment in the "Terminator" mythos, famously noted for it's philosophy, heart, and substance as equally as it's groundbreaking action sequences. Getting many details like original characters' ages and birthdays wrong and omitting important character arcs like John's family with Katherine Brewster, this installment of "Terminator" was so lazily written that it didn't even attempt to follow Kyle Reese's account (from "The Terminator") of meeting John Connor correctly.

Unlike myself, while most fans of Cameron's first two films aren't fond of "Rise of the Machines" or "Salvation", there's no denying the fact that those two sequels didn't at least respect the legacy of the first two legendary installments. And in the case of the critically-acclaimed "Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles" television series, that effort both faithfully and exponentially expanded the mythology of the franchise while remaining faithful to the Cameron vision more than anything else did since the 1991 masterpiece "Judgment Day".

With absolutely nothing going for it from start to finish, I couldn't - in good conscience - recommend this movie to anyone. It's time to let the franchise die and I, for one, will assuredly not include this latest effort into my version of the "Terminator" mythology. For anyone looking for a great and meaningful conclusion to the "Terminator" story, I highly recommend J. Michael Straczynski's "Terminator Salvation: The Final Battle" to do the job for you instead of "Genisys".

My Rating: 2/5.