Terminator Genisys: You Know What? I Liked It

With 2016 coming to a close, I thought it was long past time that I saw - and reviewed - Terminator Genisys, released in 2015, the 5th movie in the Terminator saga, in which a lot of the action takes place in early 2017.

The movie did ok at the box office, better worldwide, but not enough to be fast-tracked by Paramount for sequels, which nonetheless may be still be made.   It was panned by many critics.  I had lots of problems with it, but also thought it had some redeeming elements.   I loved the first two Terminator movies, the third almost as much, and enjoyed the fourth (though a lot of people didn't - enjoy the fourth, that is).  I also enjoyed and reviewed the television series. See the links below.  All told, given this history and the bright parts of Genisys, I'd definitely like to see more sequels.

Here's what wasn't so hot in the movie:  A lot of the dialog is ridiculous, such as Sarah Connor saying "bite me".   A lot of the acting - including Emilia Clarke from Game of Thrones playing Sarah - was nothing special, either.  She was no Linda Hamilton or Lena Headey (TV series) in the role.

Here's what I liked: Arnold Schwarzenegger reprising his Terminator role, in fact as a young, middle-aged, and old version of him/itself.  He did this with just the right mix of seriousness, wooden style, and humor - including a smile he is trying to convey, to make himself seem more human, but which only makes him more frightening, right in the uncanny valley.   The plot around this Terminator is good, too.

And the same for the overall storyline.   There's respect for paradoxes of travel to the past, attempts to explain how someone could remember a history which his or her action had eliminated, and some good twists regarding heroes and villains.   And the Genisys being Skynet, drawing a connection between our social media giants and the emergence of Skynet, was a nice touch, too.

J. K. Simmons also was excellent as an older detective who had an encounter with our heroes when he was a young cop, and  Jason Clarke as John Connor was pretty good, too.

So, yeah, I'm down for another movie or two or more.  Emilia Clarke says she won't be back - sorry, but she's much better in Game of Thrones.   Our growing 24/7 immersion in social media - which I actually think is mostly a good thing - makes the Skynet story, especially now as Genisys, more relevant than ever.  Hey, maybe my enjoyment of social media is part of the very problem that made our species so vulnerable to Skynet.   But I'm not worried - as long as there's a good Arnold-Terminator model on hand to help us out.

See also Terminator Salvation: A Compelling Time Travel Story Nonetheless

and also my reviews of The Sarah Connor Chronicles 2.1 Cameron's Back ... 2.2 Firing on All Cylinders ... 2.3 Who, Truly, Is Agent Ellison? ... 2.4: Meet Allison ... 2.5: Unpacking the Future ... 2.6: Terminator Mom, Human Daughter ... 2.7: The Saving Robbery and Cromartie ... 2.8 Perspectives and Death ... 2.9: An Idiot's Guide to Time Travel in The Sarah Connor Chronicles ... 2.10: Riley Lashes Out at Facebook ... 2.11: Cameron Meets A. E. Housman and Andre Bazin ... 2.12 Sarah Connor Chronicles in Triple Time ... 2.13: Space, Time, and Blogging in The Sarah Connor Chronicles ... 2.18: The Sarah Connor Chronicles and the Life of Riley ... 2.20: Sarah Connor vs. Death in Two Forms ... 2.21: Profound Lessons from a Kidnapping in The Sarah Connor Chronicles ... The Sarah Connor Chronicles Season 2 Finale

And from Season 1: The Sarah Connor Chronicles 1 and 2 ... 3 ... 4. A Robot Primer ... 5 ... 6 ... 7 ... 8-9
 
time traveling a little further back in history ...

Game of Thrones Begins Greatly on HBO

Game of Thrones began tonight on HBO.  It's adapted from George R.R. Martin's work.   I reviewed his novel set in this world back in 1996 - see the link to my review below - and enjoyed it.  But I'm going to review this series in its own right, and try not to let what I know about the story influence me overly, though it no doubt will.

Here are the basics of the complex, powerful plot.  King Robert - of the Seven Kingdoms, in a place much like medieval England - wants Ned Stark, Lord of Winterfell, the northern kingdom (he's also Warren of the North) - to become his "hand," or right-hand man.   Stark has five children, and a bastard son.  Before the first episode is over, the King's brother-in-law - brother of the Queen - will push Stark's youngest son out a high open window, because the boy saw the brother-in-law schtupping his own sister, the Queen (good to see Lena Headey of The Sarah Connor Chronicles and The 300 in this role).

Here, let me mention that there's lots of fine female nudity in this episode - and I presume series - if not quite as good as yet as on HBO's  Rome, I'd say better than Showtime's The Tudors.  And there's also a lot of love-making - to be genteel about it - and the characters talk about it a lot.   And, so far, they mostly seem to do it the really old-fashioned way, from the back.   I say mostly, because the Queen's other brother, a dwarf, is seen in bed with a bevvy of beautiful, procured women, and it's not clear how they did it in bed.

Meanwhile,  speaking of nudity, love-making, and politics, beautiful Daenerys is across the sea - in the equivalent of Normandy - and obligated by her brother to marry the young King of a fierce horsemen people, much like the Huns or the Mongols.   She's Tagarian, and her brother yearns for the throne now occupied by Robert.  A few years before the start of our story, the pair were driven from the Seven Kingdoms, when the King and his supporters swept the Kingdoms of Tagarians.

There's also a supernatural facet to all of this.   There are fossilized dragon eggs on the mainland - Daenerys gets one as a gift for her wedding.  And north of Winterfell is a wild, mystical, deadly land - north of the wall - peopled or zombied by "white walkers" (some kind of cold humanoid demons) and replete with dire-wolves.    Six of these baby wolves are now in the hands of Stark's children.  They - the wolves - grow up fast.  And one has seen Bran,  Stark's youngest son, pushed out of the high tower...

An altogether excellent start of what promises to be a superb series.  I'll be back here next week with more.


5-min podcast review of Game of Thrones

See also A Game of Thrones: My 1996 Review of the First Novel

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The Plot to Save Socrates

"challenging fun" - Entertainment Weekly

"a Da Vinci-esque thriller" - New York Daily News

"Sierra Waters is sexy as hell" - curled up with a good book

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The Sarah Connor Chronicles 2.1: Cameron's Back

We knew, of course, that beautiful Cameron could not have been dead at the end of last season. In the Season Two opener, tonight, we find that she's survived - but not exactly intact.

She's limping, but, worse than that, the good part of her program, the Terminator override in her chips, has been stunned into silence by the exploding car. Which means, Cameron is just another Terminator now, bent on killing John Connor.

Which she almost does, in a gut punching first scene. When John and Sarah finally get the drop on her, after all kinds of other bruising sequences, Cameron pleads with John not to kill her - saying she knows John loves her and she loves John, and she's back to normal.

Was she lying? Well, not about being back to her good self. We see this when she doesn't kill John, and we see that her interior override of the bad Terminator program is back in play.

And the love? Well, whatever Derek Reese may say, I'm thinking Cameron may really be now feeling some love for John, as another result of her recent explosive experiences...

Meanwhile, it's good to see Lena Headey, Summer Glau and Thomas Dekker back in action. And Richard T. Jones as Agent Ellison, too.... I think there's a lot more to why Cromartie left him alive.

See also 2.2 Firing on All Cylinders ... 2.3 Who, Truly, Is Agent Ellison? ... 2.4: Meet Allison ... 2.5: Unpacking the Future ... 2.6: Terminator Mom, Human Daughter, Questions ... 2.7: The Saving Robbery and Cromartie ... 2.8 Perspectives and Death ... 2.9: An Idiot's Guide to Time Travel in The Sarah Connor Chronicles ... 2.10: Riley Lashes Out at Facebook ... 2.11: Cameron Meets A. E. Housman and Andre Bazin ... 2.12 Sarah Connor Chronicles in Triple Time ... 2.13: Space, Time, and Blogging in The Sarah Connor Chronicles

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The Plot to Save Socrates

"challenging fun" - Entertainment Weekly

"a Da Vinci-esque thriller" - New York Daily News

"Sierra Waters is sexy as hell" - curled up with a good book

more about The Plot to Save Socrates...





Read the first chapter of The Plot to Save Socrates .... FREE!




Reviews of Sarah Connor Chronicles, Season One: The Sarah Connor Chronicles 1 and 2 ... 3 ... 4. A Robot Primer ... 5 ... 6 ... 7 ... 8-9: Terminate with Puzzles, Surprise, and Soul

The Sarah Connor Chronicles: 1 and 2

Well, I wasn't going to watch and review it. I didn't want to disrupt my recollection and appreciation of Terminator 1 and 2, which I thought were superb, or even Terminator 3, which I also enjoyed. That, and I don't think movies shrink very well to the television screen. For every Stargate and Buffy, in which the television was far better than the movie, you have tens of Alien Nation, Blade, Animal House, Dirty Dancings.

On the other hand, the Terminator stories are about time travel. And that, as readers here know, is a pretty big hand, for me. And I heard some good things about The Chronicles...

So I saw the first two episodes on Fox's On Demand online website last night.

And I thought they were excellent. The pilot, in fact, is one of the best hours of television I've seen in the past few months - meaning, it's right up there with the best of Journeyman and The Wire. And the second episode was powerful and appealing, too.

The story in The Chronicles starts after T2. Sarah, played by Lena Headey (of 300 fame), is living quietly with her fiancé and son John in the midwest. One of the problems with any remake is new acting talent playing a character whose face and mannerisms belong to another. It's still hard to imagine anyone other than Linda Hamilton as Sarah, but Lena Headey's performance is strong and convincing.

The Sarah Connor Chronicles also has lots of nice attention to detail. Sarah's fiancé - Charley Dixon - is played by Dean Winters, who looks a lot like Kyle Reese/Michael Biehn. Makes sense that Sarah would be attracted to the same kind of man.

There are some fine jolts in the plot, which I won't give away in this review, except to say think more Terminator models and, of course, time travel - but done with surprise and panache.

And Lost fans - Penny (Sonya Walger) has a continuing role in the Chronicles! I hope she hasn't given up searching for Desmond, but she's certainly better off without that cold fish she was married to in Tell Me You Love Me.

I'll be watching The Sarah Connor Chronicles on Fox, reviewing them right here on Infinite Regress, and after giving you a chance to see the first two episodes (which play nicely on Fox's web site), I'll start discussing significant plot elements with spoilers in the reviews - that will be later tonight, after I see Episode 3 at 9pm.

It's good to have The Terminator story back on the screen. It always had a unique blend of mostly breathtaking action and a sprinkle of winning humor. The Chronicles has that, too.

In one telling scene, a bad Terminator is about to smash into a bank. He notices lots of police, bristling with weapons, out front. His screen quickly sizes them up, and we see a brief advisory - "no threat".

The police are no threat - that's the kind of thing I like to see in a story...

See also The Sarah Connor Chronicles 3 ... 4: A Robot Primer ... 5 ... 6 ... 7 ... 8-9: Terminate with Puzzles, Surprises, and Soul

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The Plot to Save Socrates

"challenging fun" - Entertainment Weekly

"a Da Vinci-esque thriller" - New York Daily News

"Sierra Waters is sexy as hell" - curled up with a good book

more about The Plot to Save Socrates...





Read the first chapter of The Plot to Save Socrates .... FREE!