Monday, July 6, 2015

Terminator: Genisys

When you find yourself on day 8 of your vacation in the South of France, a vacation in which you went on solo, and you realize that you are just about to send your friend back in Texas a text that reads "I know you're asleep back home but I just wanted to let you know that I really want to kidnap my beautiful waitress right now brbrbrbrb"; you know that it's time to return to something both wholesome and real. Oh, and for those who don't know "brbrbrb" is the international symbol for motor boating; the women in France are that unreal!

Anyway, I had already seen and reviewed Pixar's Inside Out and Minions doesn't come out until Friday, so naturally I turned to Khaleesi and The Terminator franchise to get me grounded again. We all know that the first two Terminators are classics and that the third one was actually a decent addition to the family, but by the time Christian Bale rolled around for the fourth one, it was time to finally put this story to bed for good. "You and me, we're f^% done professionally!"

But Hollywood is just like Tiger Woods, they just can't seem to let an easy layup pass them by; and I wasn't making a golf reference there. It's good that they brought Arnold back to star in the movie and that they also finally got an attractive woman to play Sarah Conner but for whatever reason Jai Cortney and Jason Clarke were cast in two pretty significant roles! When will these scrubs finally turn into the next Josh Lucas and find themselves starring in TNT's Coach Garropallo: Glory Daze? Who is coach Garrapallo you ask? Exactly, who the hell cares; just get them out of my favorite movies!

Clarke isn't bad, he's just doesn't have the charisma or screen presence that's needed to be a lead actor. He almost, ALMOST, had me wishing they had simply cast an older Edward Furlong to reprise his role as John Conner. Heck, why not just bring back Nick Stahl, even he would've been better as Conner than the scar faced franchise killer Clarke was (see his lame performance in Dawn of the Planet of the Apes).

In this movie, Skynet is somehow able to infiltrate the resistance and turn John Conner into a Terminator, an advanced T 1000 who can only be stopped by super magnetic items. He is actually able to do some pretty cool things when he's being shot, burned, or even almost magnetized to death but every time he comes back, you realize that he's simply turning into Jason Clarke again and you realize how lame of a villain he is. Couldn't they have just pulled Colin Ferrell away from filming the disappointing season 2 of True Detective for a few weeks to help save this movie?

And I don't want to waste any space on Jai Courtney but I clearly have to since he was a waste of space on my screen for 2 hours. He's like the last guy you pick up to fill out 5 on 5 on the basketball court, you just hope that he can play a little bit of defense and that he basically stays out of your way when it comes time to really play. So with that said, he should have been cast as one of the scrub soldiers who gets stomped on by the Terminators early on in the movie, just to satisfy those of us who actually appreciate good acting.

But no, they cast him as Kyle Reese, the guy who teaches and seduces Sarah Conner into having one of the lamest sex scenes that has ever been filmed on camera. Now granted Michael Biehn isn't the best actor that has ever lived but it was the 80's man, all you had to do was look cool while blasting a shotgun; and that's exactly what he did. Courtney wouldn't look cool if someone filmed him blasting a deuce in a toilet for 90 minutes, even if it was just an artistic take on his acting career. Actually if they got Terrence Malick (Tree of Life) to film it, I might just pop in; that's right up his alley.

I didn't hate this movie, it's just that its not any good! I was entertained for about 60-80 minutes of it, which isn't bad, but that's mainly because everything Arnold says and does is pure gold. There were some cool scenes of him fighting himself back in 1984 and he clearly thinks, and probably can for that matter, that he can still take out both Clarke and Courtney in real life. Emilia Clarke is decent enough as Sarah and she definitely easy on the eyes but when 50% of your main cast sucks, it just brings down the performances of the other half and the entire movie suffers.

There were some pretty cool graphics in the movie and some of the action sets were thrilling to look at, so based off of that alone, I will definitely check this movie out every time it comes on TBS on a Saturday afternoon. Sadly however, if you haven't seen the movie yet, I would strongly suggest that you wait until one of these Saturday afternoons before checking it out.

I rate this movie as WEAK!


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