The Most Polarizing Terminator Reboot Was The Perfect Nostalgia Trip
It's time to give Genisys a break.
Despite the existence of six films, two TV series, and countless comic books, fans of the Terminator franchise can really only agree that the first two movies are great: the original film from 1984 and the immortal sequel, T2: Judgment Day. In terms of the debate for the third-best Terminator movie, it can quickly feel like a race to the bottom. While the recent anime series Terminator: Zero reinvented the franchise perhaps better than ever, it’s not quite a true sequel to the first two films. Essentially, selecting the third-best Terminator movie requires a strange mix of both overt nostalgia fan-service, and something that feels a least a little bit new.
And, it’s for this reason that the often-derided 2015 film Terminator Genisys is, in fact, the best Terminator film in the franchise in the 21st century. That’s because this movie actually understood the assignment of a Terminator sequel more than any of the other reboots and continuations combined.
Despite having a subtitle that sounds like a discontinued Mountain Dew flavor, Terminator Genisys is, at least on paper, the perfect kind of sci-fi nostalgia reboot, because it combines smart recastings with overlapping timelines. Fans can argue with the execution and the ethics of tampering with the established timeline too much, but, like the 2009 J.J. Abrams Star Trek reboot, the basic concept of Genisys gets to have it both ways. Yes, this is a reboot of the original Terminator timeline, but it’s also its own thing too.
Starring Emilia Clarke as an alternate version of Sarah Connor (originally played by Linda Hamilton), as well as Jai Courtney as the time-traveling Kyle Reese (originally played by Michael Biehn), Genisys essentially gives us a different temporal front in the ever-raging time conflict between the human resistance and the evil A.I. known as Skynet. Except, in this version, Skynet creates an alternate version of itself called “Genisys,” which, in a timey-wimey move, is embodied by none other than Matt Smith.
Even before we mention that Arnold Schwarzenegger returns as more than one T-800 in this movie, the cast is clearly stacked. Clarke’s take on Sarah Connor is wonderful and refreshing, and today, is a reminder of how her talents were underused in both Solo (2018) and Marvel’s Secret Invasion (2023). Terminator Genisys showcases Clarke at her best, both as an action badass, but also as a real person with conflicting motivations and complex feelings. Not a lot of this comes from the script, by the way, but rather from her nuanced performance.
Schwarzenegger’s return is a welcome one here, and it’s very relevant to note that in the previous film, 2009’s Salvation, he basically didn’t appear at all. While that film gambled on the idea that audiences might actually want to see the battle between Machines and humanity in the future, Genisys smartly pivots back to the safer premise of the conflict before the apocalypse: the machinations of Sarah Connor.
And, like T2, Genisys recycles the idea of a T-800 being reprogrammed as a good guy, allowing Arnold to play a more grandfatherly version of his deadly cyborg. And, in a very memorable time travel scene, this conceit also allows Arnold to fight the younger T-800 from the original film.
Emilia Clarke and Arnold Schwarzenegger in 2015. What if we said these two were actually great together?
In essence, Genisys was the Alien: Romulus of its time. A soft reboot of a beloved sci-fi franchise, which was playing the hits from that franchise, with younger actors filling in familiar roles and playing out familiar tropes. The criticism leveled against the movie at the time is that this gave everything a kind of been-there-done-that feeling, a sort of paint-by-numbers Terminator that didn’t offer anything new. Again, the same could be said of Romulus, and I’d be willing to bet that if it had come out in 2015, the reviews would have been poorer than today.
The point is, Genisys is an easy layup in regard to sci-fi nostalgia, akin to Ghostbusters: Afterlife or literally anything that is a continuation of a 1980s sci-fi/fantasy property. It wasn’t particularly brilliant or innovative, but even today, Genisys has what its successor, Terminator: Dark Fate, lacked: a sense of humor and fun. Despite the horror elements of the first film, the Terminator franchise works best when there’s a bit of winking at the audience about the basic set-up. T2 is full of hilarious moments, and Genisys smartly remembered that a lightness and warmth to this concept is what makes the whole thing watchable.
Terminator Genisys wasn’t the sequel that anyone wanted to needed. But, when it comes to the unrealistic demands of fans, it was very much the Terminator sequel we deserved.
