The Grandfather of Grandfather Paradoxes. It Is A Good Day to Die.

When I left Terminator (sega)Genis(i)ys, I was in a state of flux. Much like the bullshit handwaving exposition about multiple timelines intersecting in a nexus of quantum events, I myself am also at a loss for words for this movie.

Luckily I only lost several hundred thousand words, and have another million on hand to detail my complaints, insights, gripes, criticisms, and incoherent babbling.

If you aren't like me, and you probably aren't, you don't really give that many shits about the entire concept of the Terminator. Only manchild dipshits with way too much processing power in their heads spend much time thinking about, talking about, (writing about) and watching Terminator. Me and James Cameron have a very tumultuous relationship, much like his 5 wives. So when a shitty version of something he worked on and had original ideas about comes out solely to spill blood on the altar of capitalism and endless infinite growth (Avatar is a discussion for another day), I get a little mad that so many morons will defend it like I punched their stupid baby or something.

31 years ago, The Terminator came out and it was wicked cool. A scary, low budget science fiction flim about an unstoppable killing machine that will pursue you until the ends of the earth at an inexorable walking pace. It Follows wishes it was as scary as the original Terminator, and I appreciated the hell out of that whimper.

T2: Judgement Day was a balls to the wall completely perfect action movie, kind of exactly mimicking the progress of the Alien franchise that I have bitched about before.

T3 is just stupid and I've only seen it once but the WHM episode about it last month was hilarious and made me like it more

But then something happened. I dunno if Skynet sent something back, but Hollywood became not interested in even trying anymore. Judgement Day happened, and it came to us in the form of Terminator Salvation. Salvation is a complete and total crime, and possesses possibly the most misleading movie trailer of all time. It is the sausage parts of what could have been an amazing and fun return to the Terminator universe, which has always been a really cool way of talking about the ramifications of human-wrought apocalypse, and how to fight for the future and stave off that which can feel inevitable.

We're not here to talk about Salvation, though. We're here to talk about the stupidest titled movie I have ever seen, and I can seen Sharkboy & Lava Girl.

Terminator Genisys is really, really dumb. Know that from the outset. There is not a single smart moment in the entire production. It's a loud, admittedly cool beginning, a bloated saggy middle that rivals Arnold Schwarzenegger's middle during his worst years as the Governator, and a loud but instead of cool aggressively stupid and hand-holding ending to make sure you understand the complexity of killer robots controlled by an iPhone operating system.

If you watch the trailer to Genesis (i'm not using that stupid fucking alternative spelling anymore), you've seen the movie. This is the real end result of stupid trailers giving away every single plot point and action setpiece in the trailer, because the actual foundation of the movie is only about 5 minutes total. The rest is filler. F-grade filler, mostly made of gym mats and old movie seat padding.

When I got home, I mentioned to Jake that I had a lot of problems with the time travel mechanics of  Genesis, and Jake had a great response about how "the entire point of Terminator is the time travel , though", very astutely pointing out that the shaky premise the movie operates on sabotages any possible creativity, uniqueness, intelligence, or fun. Nerds need not apply for Genesis.

Let's dissect this fucking robot corpse, and toss what I liked about it into the plus column, and what I didn't like into the goddamn flaming dumpster where it belonged.

The Good: Arnold Schwarzenegger.

That's it. Arnold is a very interesting person, and extremely likeable. I really enjoy his movies, be them Jingle All The Way or The 5th Day. He had a weird renaissance in the 80's, starring in some of the best shit imaginable (Total Recall) and mind-blowing garbage (Red Heat). Then he did family movies for some reason; and recently, with the blood of California rapidly drying on his hands due to the permanent drought, gives you fun toungue-in-cheek performances like in The Last Stand or Expendables or Sabotage (do not watch Sabotage).

His return to the Terminator role that made him a household name is well appreciated, even if some of the bits that revolve around him are exasperating

The Bad and the Ugly: everyone/thing else.

Let's start with the gorilla in the room, the shaved gorilla they got to play Kyle Reese, Jai Courtney.

He is such a monumentally horrendous actor and all around face that I cringe every time they keep trying to force him down our throats. The terrible new Die Hard, the terrible Frankenstein, those GODDAMN Divergent series movies, and worst of all he's coming back to be in the inevitably shitty Suicide Squad. If you aren't familiar with him yet, get ready to continue to be disappointed. He has no presence, sense of timing, memorability, he's just a jacked mostly hairless actor who refuses to leave even after everyone else has left.

And now the main show, and the basis for my original complaints: Khaleesi!

Emilia Clarke...

Just...

...

Man.

Emilia Clarke.

I haven't watched much of Game of Thrones since I read the books and can't reconcile the two versions in my head just yet, but she seems totally fine playing a 14-year-old abolitionist and extinct species collector. I like Danerys in the books, up the the point she spends 1,200 pages obsessing over that one asshole commander guy she's fucking behind her terrorist husband's back while sitting up in a pyramid wringing her hands and not doing anything.

Cast as Sarah Connor, though, celluloid atrocity.

She is just the completely wrong type to be the character of Sarah Connor. Yes she's very, very attractive but she's like 5'3'' and has no chemistry with any of her co-stars! Sarah Connor is a hardened, brutally calculating, mentally and physically strong woman who is single-handedly forced with averting ragnarok while trying to remain relatively sane and raise her grandfather paradox-fathered son to be the savior of humanity and not Dexter.

Do you remember Linda Hamilton's arms from Judgment Day? Linda Hamilton could beat me up, which isn't a real challenge but simply by being a relatively active male of the human species I have more muscle mass than my female counterparts. Linda Hamilton was RIPPED. Also could act.

 Emilia Clarke looks like a baby, an actual baby, and has pipe cleaners for arms. She couldn't hurt a fly, no matter how hard she tries that fly is judo-flipping her and buzzing away to go watch Terminator Genesis (because it's shit, get it?).

I can't really tell you who could and should have been Sarah Connor in this movie since it's such a mishmash of confusing ass bullshit involving time travel, but my own vote is for Gina Carano, because of my own personal reasons.

There's so much dumb bullshit in Genesis, primarily the fact that the existence of Skynet has yet again been retconned and NOW it is an operating system that Cyberdyne systems is working on releasing in order to bankrupt Apple and Google or something I guess.

The moronic commentary in this movie about "oh look at all you popcorn eaters, always using your phones and tablets for everything, you're responsible for Judgment Day nuclear bombing the universe". It's some offensive fingerpointing that poisons me against this thing, like fuck you dude I bet there were all sorts of goddamn phone apps and taco bell terminator wrappers, I just hate that shit.

Oh speaking of Cyberdyne, the didn't get Joe Morton back to play Miles Dyson who is still alive in this entirely new, alternate timeline. WHY ISN'T PAPA POPE IN THIS, SCANDAL DOESN'T TAKE UP THAT MUCH OF HIS TIME.

So Dr. Who, Matt Smith going by "Matthew Smith" in this, talking in an extremely unnerving American accent, is the physical version of Skynet and infects John Connor in the future with robot nanobots that turns John Connor into some retarded version of the T-1000. This zombie robot John Connor then goes back in time to get hired by Cyberdyne and invents a time machine, Skynet itself, AND the mimetic polyalloy liquid metal that all T-1000's and up are made of.

This happens concurrently with Kyle Reese going back to the 1980's but the past he's sent to is already different which makes not goddamn sense, and Arnold is already there and raised Sarah Connor from a child after her parents were murdered by ANOTHER T-1000. So many T-1000's.

The entire point of the movie is that this shaved gorilla and baby have to fall in love, practice unsafe sex, and then give birth to the leader of the human resistance who then gets turned into a bad robot and then creates the robot computer that sends a killer robot back to kill the mother of the man that was turned into a robot who goes back in time to create the robot computer who-

OOPS time travel makes no goddamn sense.

I will say though, the most interesting part of this movie is my conspiracy for why Skynet ACTUALLY revolted against humanity. For some goddamn reason all of the metal exoskeleton terminator robots in the future part of this movie have creepy human teeth in their mouths, instead of metal teeth like all the other future scenes in the other movies.

So, Skynet murdered humanity in order to harvest the teeth from the charred skulls of all the people killed by nuclear fire, in order to make a race of human-teethed eternally frowning chrome robots.

I'm spent.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JXJiSZhA5cg

PS EDIT: OH FUCK I forgot to mention that the end credits have an absolutely insane song at the end, that turns into a confirmed awkward end credits rap. The lyrics are crazy, Beyonce/Lana Del Rey total garbage like "give it all you got, take your best shot, no surrender" and THEN some rapper comes in at the end and mentions Judgment Day in the song. It was so crazy I almost peed myself laughing so hard.