Terminator Genisys

It's summer, and it's time for franchiseland! You know, the place where one film, back in the day, makes a truck load of money, and seemingly every other year a new installment of the franchise is born in hopes that it will make even more money than its predecessor. The list of different franchises is actually too long to mention, but suffice it to say that this form of filmmaking isn't going anywhere as long as they keep that gravy train rolling. Toot! Toot! When I saw my first poster of "Terminator Genisys", I figured that this franchise had finally died, since that the last installment was longer ago than most wait. But, no, they had to make yet another one.

When John Connor (Jason Clarke), leader of the human resistance in 2029, sends Sgt. Kyle Reese (Jai Courtney) back to 1984 to protect Sarah Connor (Emilia Clarke) and safeguard the future, an unexpected turn of events creates a fractured timeline. Now, Sgt. Reese finds himself in a new and unfamiliar version of the past, where he is faced with unlikely allies, including the Guardian (Arnold Schwarzenegger), dangerous new enemies, including Cop/T-1000 (Byung-hun Lee) and an unexpected new mission: to reset the future by launching a massive final offensive against Skynet (makers of the machines) in Los Angeles. First of all, can they achieve such an undertaking, and secondly, will it even do any good toward the end that they are planning to achieve?

Others to round out the cast are J.K. Simmons as O'Brien, Dayo Okeniyi as Danny Dyson, Matthew Smith as Alex, Courtney B. Vance as Miles Dyson, Michael Gladis as Lt. Matias and Sandrine Holt as Detective Cheung.

Can you believe this franchise has been around around since 1984 with the original "Terminator"? Then there was "Terminator 2: Judgment Day" '91, "Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines" '03 and "Terminator Salvation" '09. This particular installment was directed effectively by Alan Taylor ("Palookaville" '95, "Kill the Poor" '03, "1%" (TV Movie) '08, "The Wonderful Maladys" (TV Movie) '10, "Thor: The Dark World" '13) plus a ton of episodic TV. This one certainly had that same feel as James Cameron's original in 1984, and feels like these characters were so familiar even though all the roles were played by different actors, with, of course, the exception of Schwarzenegger. It was written by Laeta Kalogridis and Patrick Lussier based on characters created by Cameron and Gale Anne Hurd. This is basically where the problem is with this. Even though these guys have a fair amount of writing experience, especially Kalogridis, this script simply had areas that seem to meander a bit too much and once they delved into the concept of a fractured timeline, the story got a bit convoluted in places. Certainly when one is taking an idea of time travel, the time paradoxes can run amok, but when you double that with a fractured timeline--a skewed past, if you will, it just can get even more bogged down. The ending was finally made clear, however the journey in getting there was exhausting. Does the end justify the means? In this case, I'd say not. Of course, the visual effects predominantly by ILM (Industrial, Light & Magic), Double Negative and MPC (Moving Picture Company) were seamless, but that's obvious before entering the theater.

And for all you Terminator freaks out there, if you really get into this installment, but you don't want the fun to end, who knows, T6 could be right around the corner. If you see this, you gotta see it on the big screen, or it will lose everything on a DVD or Netflix with it looming large and in a nifty 3D format. Break out the popcorn!

Out of 4 Stars: 2.5                                      Rated: PG-13                                   126mins.