Terminator Genisys

Terminator Genisys

Summary

When John Connor, the leader of human resistance, sends Sgt. Kyle Reese back to 1984 to protect his mother Sarah Connor. A unexpected turn of events creates a fractured timeline for them all, so Reese finds himself in a new and unfamiliar version of the past, where hes finds himself with unlikely allies like the terminator guardian who protected Sarah Connor her whole life and unexpected enemies, which turns the old mission in to a new mission. 

Thoughts & Experiences

The Mission

The mission is revealed at the beginning of the movie as we see John Connor lead his human resistance force to take down the so called 'Skynet'. Skynet is artificial general intelligence that has spread in to millions of computer servers around the world and realising the extent of its abilities, the creators tried to destroy it. As Skynet wanted to stay active to keep on evolving, all human race had to be wiped off the planet by Drones, servers, cyborgs, satellites, war-machines and Terminators. 

John Connor knew exactly where Skynet would be hidden and so he leads his men in to a deadly mission to destroy it. The human resistance finally take down Skynet but they are to late as they have just sent a Terminator back in time to 1984 to change the course of time, so Skynet is able to self preserver itself in the future. Skynet's plan is to kill Sarah Connor,  the mother of John Connor so he has no existing memories to be able to fight against Skynet in the future to come. 

John realises that they are to late and knows the exact plan of Skynet and its mission to kill his mother to prevent any further resistance against Skynet. Once they know what they have found and what they maybe able to do, which is go back in time with Skynet's machine and try and stop the Terminator from killing his mother. A bunch of his human resistance team step up and offer their service to John, to go back in time and Save Sarah Connor. Kyle Reese, John's right hand man also offers his service but John asks him why he should pick him over the other men, Reese tells John that he knows Sarah on a personal level on from what John has told him about her and so he allows him to go on the mission. 

Kyle Reese is already to go and set himself inside the Skynet time machine, where everyone is gathered around and witnessing his brave service that he is doing for John. When Kyle Reese is seconds away from being blasted into the past he see's John get attacked from behind by a human evolved Skynet and says to John "You didn't think it would be that easy, did you?" Its already to late for Reese to react to, he starts to have memories that he hasn't had before of Sarah Connor and information about Skynet. 

It didn't take long to know the concept of the story line and the mission of John's and Kyle's mission to save Sarah Connor. If you have seen the original movies back in the 80's you will have a better understanding of the story but i will try and break it down for you new terminator fans out there. 

So in the first movie 'The Terminator' a cyborg robot (Arnold Schwarzenegger) is sent back from 2029 to kill Sarah Connor who has not yet gave birth to John Connor and Kyle Reese is sent back from the cyborg war to save her. Now in the 2nd movie 'Terminator 2: Judgment day' an identical cyborg is sent back but only this time his mission is to protect Sarah Connor from a more advanced cyborg made out of liquid metal. In the 3rd movie 'Terminator 3; Rise of the machines' a cyborg is to protect John Connor to save him from a nuclear attack. 

In the new movie 'Terminator Genisys' its a different perspective on all 3 movies and glues them all together so it makes more sense in a way, but the mission that Kyle Reese is about to embark on changes the last 3 stories as he changes the course of time with the new mission in this movie. 

Los Angeles 1984

The cyborg machine that Skynet just released back to 1984 has just landed in Los Angeles and has made its presence towards 3 local hooligans that think hes some kind of joke, since he s butt naked and commands them to give up their cloths for him. Before things could of got out of hand they are interrupted by another Terminator but this time its the one that protects Sarah Connor, "You won't be needing any cloths...I'v been waiting for you" says the Terminator who is slowly walking towards the naked version of himself with a shotgun in both hands. 

The 3 hooligans run away as the shotgun starts to fire at the cyborg, who is now running towards the gunmen and make contact with metal fists thumping each other but with no physical damage is done to either of them. The naked younger version Terminator is getting the better of the more experienced one as he beats him relentless and part of his body starts to malfunction, disabling him from moving as the Terminator walks over to finish him off. A sniper rifle shot comes in an shoots the terminator which shuts him down for good and The terminator gets up from his malfunctioning episode to give his savior the thumbs up, who is looking through the scope of the gun that killed the Terminator. 

Woaah! The first Easter Egg of the movie as it takes us back to the original Terminator from the first movie in 1984. The young Terminator that was supposed to kill Sarah Connor was quickly shut down as they predicted it, not like the first movie where it took time to kill the terminator. I think the course of time has now changed as we see the results turn out much quickly and differently for the Terminator and so Kyle Reese has a different job on his hands as we find out later on.

Kyle Reese has been transported back in time where he wanted to be, after a horrific vision of seeing John get attacked as soon as Kyle left. Kyle is now being chased by a police officer as soon as he lands in a dark ally, while he fastens up his trouser zip.  He gets chased down the ally and attacks the police officer to take his gun off him and when Kyle asks him what date it is, the police man turns his arm in to liquid metal and swings for Kyle but Kyle shoots him and runs off as the police cyborg regains his strength and begins to chase him again. 

Credit to Paramount

Kyle got himself into a cloths shop and is down on all fours as he lurks around the shop, hiding from the cyborg that just tried to attack him. The cyborg is walking around the shop glancing over the top of the hanging cloths and finds Kyle is a photo booth, stabbing both metal arms through the booth to hopefully pierce Kyle in the process, but misses both times. Kyle then runs out of the booth but shortly stops as two normal police officers are now on the scene and arrests Kyle for braking in the cloths store.

When the two police officers arrest him, Kyle tries to explain what just happened and they're all going to die. The three of them walk off but one of the officers gets stabbed in the back by the cyborg and swings for Kyle, with the other policemen shooting all of his bullets in to the cyborg, with no damage done. The policeman un-cuffs Kyle, shoots at the cyborg once more with the usual outcome and the policeman says "we're screwed aren't we?" but then a huge truck drives through the store, pushing the cyborg yards away and its Sarah Connor. "Come with me if you want to live!" she says towards Kyle and Kyle gets in the van with the cyborg sprinting after them both.

The metal liquid changing cyborg is right on their tale as he finds out where they, attacks Kyle and Sarah when they're talking in the back of the van and they both shoot all their firepower towards the cyborg who is now in mid air, jumping towards the van. He clings on the end of the van with his two metal arms but gets shotgunned off and blown up by a grenade launcher that Kyle has just shot, blowing up the car with the cyborg along with it. 

So that's two original Terminator movies that have happened in the same process as each other, while Kyle Reese has no clue what is going on because it wasn't part of the mission. Sarah Connor explains to Kyle that the time line changed and they might be able to stop judgment day from happening. 

I liked how they played the two iconic scenes from two of the first Terminator movies, with the two villains reappearing to kill Sarah Connor but shut down as quick as possible since the course of time has changed the original plan. I was also amazed how they adapted some scenes from the old movies to the new version of Terminator which gave it that same feeling many years ago as it does now. 

As for the T-1000 metal cyborg, i was pleased with how they used a new actor for the character cyborg and how well it turned out and how accurate it was to the original movie. I don't know why they didn't include old movie scenes for this character as they did for the first Terminator but i'm sure they had good reasons to have a different actor play the cyborg. 

San Francisco 2017

While Kyle and Sarah stop the T-1000 cyborg in a hatched  out plan by Sarah & Pop's (Terminator  who protects Sarah) to take down the cyborg so herself and Kyle can travel forward in time, to stop Skynet from setting off a nuclear attack that is called judgment day. Pop's sets the time and location to San Francisco 2017, where Skynet is being created and where they must both destroy it. They both land in a middle of the high way where the two are arrested by policemen and where an older version of Pop's has spotted them. 

The two of them are taken to the hospital to get examined since they did both land from out of the sky and they both get a pleasant surprise from John Connor as he enters the room to greet them both. John helps them both escape the hospital to the underground car park and Pop's is close by as he has his suspicions of John Connor appearing from no where, to save the time travelling couple. Pop's goes to the camera room to locate the three of them and destroys the room on his way out to find them.

John Connor has now got them both out of the hospital and Kyle Reese finds out the truth, the truth about being the father of John Connor. As he takes this to a surprise, Pop's turns up and starts shooting John with his shotgun, while Sarah points a gun at Pop's to stop shooting and to let Kyle go as he is strangling him. John surprisingly gets up from being shot and heals himself with a genetic upgrade when Skynet attacked him before Kyle took off. John explains to them all that he was sent to 2014 to create Skynet and to plan out the nuclear attack with Genisys, the company that is building Skynet. 

Well that wasn't obvious at all, was it? That John Connor wasn't actually John Connor. I thought it was Skynet pretending to be him and used Johns body to hide his true identity, i'll just say i was partially right because it turned out not to be the usual John as we seen in the beginning of the movie. 

After the explanation from John and his future plans with Skynet Genisys, the Terminator Pop's then defends him off from attacking Kyle and Sarah but the two of them help Pop's to trap him in a magnetic machine used in the hospital. I loved this scenes as we see the very old and very new machines battle it out through the hospital as they crash through walls as if they were nothing, to finally escaping the hospital to make a new plan to stop John from turning on Genisys. 

A New Plan

Sarah, John and Pop's drive to the underground tunnel where Pops has been residing, waiting for Sarah and John to arrive to the year of 2017. They stack up on as much ammo as possible while in the tunnels and make a new plan to stop john, but when everything seems quiet in the tunnels, John decides to turn up to an uninvited party. He then chases the three of them out of the tunnel, who now driving a school bus across the San Francisco bridge. John nearly kills the two of them as he flipped the bus and crashing it in to the sea below but unfortunately he fell in with the bus as the Terminator grabbed the two of them when the bus collapsed in the sea and Sarah, Pops and John get arrested on the bridge.  

Things go as normal when they get questioned by police, as any police investigation would go but John is in the mix and attacks the Terminator in the process of his questioning. After the Terminator stops him, they all gather their thoughts and reassemble their plan as they gather more ammo for the deadly mission ahead of them, which is to go to the Genisys tower to destroy Skynet from being created.

The four of them make their way to the building where Skynet is, and they barely make it in one piece as they battled it out in the middle of the sky. They land where John crashed his helicopter, which is right next to the building and they all go inside, who are then greeted by a young version of Skynet and John. "not enough bullets in the world can stop me" says John and outcomes from the distance is a large metal spear that pieces and electrifies John to the wall, "John Connors talks to much" replies the Terminator. 

I thought the bridge action scene was average and expected as i'v seen this type of scene in a dozen of movies before and it was unoriginal to come up with. Also when the bus is about to fall in the water but with the characters still inside, the bus collapses around the characters who are hanging on by the Terminator and the bus falls in the water with out them attached to it. 

The helicopter scene was good because it was an original idea and i liked the movement they had the helicopters do, when the helicopter carelessly falls of the hospital roof and gradually fly's from off the ground before crashing. Also the part where they had to get above John's helicopter by circling from underneath the San Francisco bridge to have a clear shot for Sarah's sniper rifle and for the Terminator to crash through his helicopter. 

Sarah, Pop's and John have located the heart of Genisys and split up to plant explosives on the servers that are connected to Skynet, who will upload the nuclear codes in to the servers with in 11 minutes of their time. In the process of planting her bombs on the servers, she gets caught by John and chucks the remote detonator to the Terminator but he is unable to press it because he is programmed  to protects Sarah, not kill her. The only option is for Kyle to take the detonator from the Terminators hands to do it himself and when hes about to grab it, John jumps down and destroys it before Kyle can get to it. 

The Terminator and John fight it out for the very last time through the Genisys building as Kyle and Sarah try and find away in because Skynet has locked the doors to stop them from helping Pop's. They finally brake loose from inside one of the rooms by exploding the explosive against the wall. With the Terminators arm and half his faced ripped off, he is nearly on his way of extinction as John is getting the better of him in every way but Sarah and Kyle come to his rescue, with Sarah with the shotgun and Kyle with the Terminator's arm who he smashes John with. With the distraction from getting hit from each side, the Terminator picks him up with his last surviving arm and puts himself in the unfinished time machine.

The Terminator orders Kyle to activate the machine because it will blow up, destroying John and himself. Sarah finds it hard to come to terms with this as he has protected her, her whole life and finally accepts his fate to save the rest of the world by destroying himself. Kyle activates the machine with John struggling to get away but is unable to and Pop's gives Kyle some last orders before he goes, "Kyle Reese, protect my Sarah" and presses the button and the two of them run to the bomb shelter with in the building, blowing up the machine that would of killed millions of people. 

Conclusion

I'm not a die hard Terminator fan but have watched the original movies and understand the concept of the story, even though it can be confusing. if you haven't seen the original movies you will find it hard to know what Terminator Genisys is about but its not that crucial to watch the older Terminator movies, you will just need to use your brain and imagination much harder to fully understand the story. 

The overall movie was a worthy contender for the Terminator franchise and there wasn't to many cheesy moments to think back to the older movies, it was original in some ways but i thought some of the action scenes could of been improved, like the bus scenes i spoke about earlier in the post. The Fx and graphics were outstanding on how they transitioned old scenes from the older Terminator movies, for example we see the young version of Arnold Schwarzenegger when he first appeared in the franchise that made him famous, and merged it in to the Terminator Genisys story.

The characters couldn't of been any better or worse as we've seen from the past movies that they go through different actors to play the roles of Sarah Connor and Kyle Reese, so why would this be different? Unless you want to see the original actors play the roles but they will be all old and out of dat! My conclusion for the movie is you should watch Terminator Genisys but don't get your hopes up as it was all built on hype but if your a die hard Terminator fan then i think you would absolutely love this movie.

Discussion

1. What did you think of the overall movie?
2. What did you think of the story?
3. Did the story suit the rest of the Terminator series?
4. What did you think of the Actors/Characters?
5. What was you favourite scene? & Why?
6. What was you least favourite scene? & Why?
7. Should they of made this movie or not? & Why?
8. Could this be the best Terminator out of the Franchise?
9. What is the best Terminator movie? & Why?
10. What did you think of some of the Easter eggs from the old movies?