DUNDUN DUN DUNDUN! DUNDUN DUN DUNDUN! DUNDUN DUN DUNDUN!
MASSIVE SPOILERS BELOW:
Upon a second viewing of this movie, which was just as fun and a tad bit of confusion as the first time, I came up with a few ways the film could be improved. Many people say it’s the worst of the franchise. But at least this one had a better plot than Rise of the Machines, which was endlessly predictable. And at least it wasn’t depressingly born out of the desert combat movies era like Salvation (which isn’t horrible, just not good or fun).
Firstly, Genisys has a ton of great potential. The movie unfortunately sits as what feels like the second draft of the screenplay. Great premise, good twists (ruined by the marketing team), fantastic score, Arnold one-liners, a Game of Thrones star, that guy from the Apes thing (no seriously, I heard another viewer say that)… lots of potential! But not well fleshed out.
IF I were Alan Taylor I would have spent at LEAST fifteen to twenty-five more minutes in the Future War. Not in a battle, but maybe 4 or 5 more minutes with Kyle and John to flesh out the reverse “father/son” relationship they have as adults. Then I would have introduced Matt Smith’s character in a much clearer fashion. In a semi-recent interview from the screenwriters they state that Matt Smith is the embodiment of Skynet that’s seen and jumped through multiple realities and seen multiple interpretations of the timeline. SO why not have him say that other than “I’ve come a long way to stop you.” That’s entirely too vague, especially for action movie audiences. Come on. Know your audience! That should be story-telling 101. They already have to roll with some unknown event sending a T-1000 to kill Sarah’s parents and Pops being sent to save her. Don’t give them more work!
So flesh out this Skynet guy more. Maybe have a bit more of a monologue when he’s talking to the infected John Connor.
Calling back to that interview of the screenwriters, they state that there is an answer to whomever sent back the T-1000 and Pops. Obviously there are multiple possibilities of who it could be, but allude to it! Hype up the mystery, like have a scene where Pops and Kyle talk about it and he gets more than “THOSE FILES HAVE BEEN DELETED.” Seriously, Alan, nothing is wrong with running over two hours. Same deal with Thor 2, by the way.
Anyways, John Connor as the villain? Golden! Revealing it in the trailer? Total [redacted]! It ruined my perception of him from the start of the movie as well as his epic hero speech. But that’s a whole other editorial.
So, on to the subject of Pops: Arnold was one of the best if not THE best part of this movie. However I think he could’ve been executed a bit differently. I feel as though his entrance could’ve been done differently, and I don’t mean the Griffith Park fight with the 1984 Terminator. That was beyond gold. I mean his “fight” with the T-1000 and his rescue of young Sarah. That should have been a full scene at the start of the movie BEFORE Kyle Reese’s voiceover about Judgment Day, just so we can start wondering “what? That was Sarah? What’s going on?!” Like young James Kirk driving the Corvette of the cliff. The way that flashback was actually handled in the movie was like a TV show acting as if we’d already seen the whole clip, which we had not. Secondly? Make Pops becoming one fourth T-800, three parts T-1000 less obvious. I saw it coming from the moment he said the liquid metal wouldn’t work without a CPU chip. Make his defeat at the hands of John Connor part of the final blow to the good guy team before the final climax.
During the San Francisco bridge scene in 2017: Pop’s and John start fighting after the bus falls off the bridge and Pops’ systems and endoskeleton start to fail at a rapid pace. He’s been active since the early 1970’s! Like Kyle said, he wasn’t supposed to be active for ten years, let alone forty seven. Why would he still be fine through his entire fight with John if his knee broke just from an MRI? So have him fail and John steals the CPU and dashes off as the police arrive and arrest Kyle and Sarah. Then you can have JK Simmons show up and break them out, now that he has seen them and Pops at the hospital and knows the events in 1984 were real.
Then the three of them can attempt to take on John at the Cyberdyne Systems building. No need for the crazy helicopter chase, just have the building fight and perhaps Sarah injured, Kyle fighting to not fail his orders and keep her safe, fighting to not fail AND THEN when all hope is lost? Pops comes out of the T-1000 sludge and rips John Connor apart, not sure if Pops should be young or old at this point. That CGI Arnold was good, but not THAT good. Maybe right before John is ripped apart he does a similar monologue to Matt Smith where he talks about seeing all the variations and this is the closest Skynet has come to winning, that next time they’ll get it right and blah blah blah, you can’t stop me, this is inevitable. BUILD THE HYPE FOR THE TRILOGY. Maybe Arnold goes “BITE ME” then John’s ripped apart in the time machine and the building blow up. Boom, climax over.
Then they can have Sarah and Kyle talk to the young Kyle and “close the loop” and then Kyle and Sarah kiss… etc etc, and Arnold does his creepy smile, because that was AWESOME. Then have them drive off in that oddly clean truck that was obviously stolen and have them speculate if John was telling the truth, that Skynet can jump timelines and have Arnold say something funny like “If that is the case, Kyle Reese must mate with Sarah Connor. John Connor must defeat Skynet.” Then he looks in the rear view and makes eye contact with them, THEN have Kyle say “the future is not written” or whatever it was.
Also in the post credit scene? At least cut to Matt Smith’s face, show him smile and then state “one more timeline down, one step closer.” Or something creepier, I’m not a professional.
So in summary, Alan… take your time man! Not everything has to be rushed and action filled every two minutes. Even Marvel knows this and they crank out two movies a year! So it’s a good start. Let’s do even better on the sequel, okay? Okay. He probably won't direct, but still.
This franchise is old, but not obsolete.