Terminator: Genisys

Do you trust me? Have I earned any goodwill from people reading my reviews? Do people who follow me understand I take various unpopular stances not because I'm a contrarian and enjoy giving other people the business, but that my opinion of what makes a good movie or television show is sincerely different than other people's? I'm not lying to you to sound edgy or being an opposing viewpoint to gain notoriety and negative attention. I just see things a little differently is all.

I loved this movie. I have not seen Dark Fate yet, but of the five Terminator films I have seen, it's my favorite, and the only one besides the second I loved. I understood instinctively the messes they were playing around with by making John Connor the Big Bad, and how badly that would hit actual fans of the franchise who love and cherish it. I guess because I'm not one of those fans, what the film did isn't it killing a sacred cow for me. It's basically positing something that is evident to me: If John Connor didn't exist, neither would SkyNet.

I want to be fair to detractors of this film. I personally think the notion that John's allegiance was changed due to being infected by SkyNet IS convoluted and unnecessary. If I were permitted to do a final pass over the script I'd take all that out and make John the Big Bad for a much more simple and selfish reason: If Judgment Day doesn't occur, he is never born. So he orchestrates the destruction of the human race to ensure his own survival. And damn it, I wish the film had done that. Simplify Simplify Simplify. But even though they didn't do that, it's still my favorite of the films for a lot of reasons.

I heard the director was unhappy with it. James Cameron was unhappy with it. Emilia Clarke was unhappy with it. I'm not going to dismiss their stories of what a bad experience working on this movie was. What I will say is I responded to their efforts, and what they suffered through to make is not a film I will just dismiss. I loved it.

Why do I love the film? I looked on Wikipedia to see what the common complaints were and the biggest one I saw is that it's supposedly a "retread". I think it's the most different of the films actually. First of all, I will argue it's the only one that really tries to have fun and allow the viewer to enjoy it. There are definite appealing elements in the second one too, but for the rest, they are unendingly grim bummers and no fun at all. And maybe I only notice it about this because I just came off watching The Sarah Connor Chronicles which was over 30 episodes of being a nonstop bummer. The mugshots, Arnie's smiling, J.K. Simmons as O'Brien, there is fun to be had and this movie is an actual pleasurable experience rather than a punishment.

And if people want to complain about the PG-13 rating, I believe that with the exception of the first film with its sex and nudity, none of the other films deserved an R rating. None of them. Every bit of violence you could see in the first three films is something you could get away with on a primetime broadcast TV rating of TV-14. Easily. Hannibal on NBC wouldn't bat an eye. So I believed essentially the second and third films are really rated R for cursing. You want to tell me how much the PG-13 rating waters things down? Because I don't think those movies deserved R ratings to begin with.

And I suspect people who know me from both my reviews and my comic will understand this next thing: I like that the movie is the only one besides the second that says the future isn't written in stone and that it says our destinies belong to US. Critics call this film a retread? Name another Terminator project where Kyle Reese survives and is given a fairytale ending with Sarah, and Arnie's Terminator is permitted to win and survive too. We've never seen any of those things before. How is the fact that the movie treats the characters as if they want to fight destiny anything like the other films where at best the characters there are resigned to it instead? Based on my frequent compliments of fiction talking about free will and positive behavior choices, can you perhaps see why I'd dig that, especially more than the other films? Doesn't that seem consistent at least with other stuff I've liked and given a positive review to?

I really can't overstate what a depressing experience watching The Sarah Connor Chronicles was. The last TV show I binged that bummed me out that much was probably Dilbert. That's how soul-crushing it was. Week in and week out it is reiterated that Cameron is a heartless cold-blooded machine who does not actually care about the Connors and is only on their side because her programming forces her to be. After two damn seasons of that, can you possibly understand why it matters to me Pops tells Kyle to "Take care of My Sarah," or that Kyle comes to the conclusion that he loved her? And people will scoff that's outside of the franchise, and what it tries to say. But who said I actually liked what the franchise said before this? Who says I can't enjoy a different viewpoint in the franchise more?

I am very sad the creators of this movie look back on it with sadness and feel it is a failure. I do not share that opinion. Maybe if James Cameron wants to tell us he only said nice things because Arnold was his friend, maybe not deliver a movie with script as reprehensible as Avatar's was. Avatar is beloved. I don't understand it, but I accept a movie I loathed actually moved other people besides me. Is it too much to ask for people to understand that this movie that got nothing but negative press from critics and even the people who made it, actually struck a chord with ME? *****.