I have one overarching question for this movie: Why? Why were you made?

Actually… I have another question: What were the writers thinking?

So far, in our review series of the Terminator franchise, we’ve found the movies to be very strange. Only one of them can really be considered bad, Terminator 3. The first two movies are classics. While Terminator Salvation isn’t great, it’s above average; however, it has been widely disregarded. And that is really Terminator Genisys’s first big mistake. It completely ignores everything set up in Terminator Salvation. For that matter, it ignores Terminator 3.

Ignoring the substance of the earlier stories

I must offer a spoiler here. Terminator Genisys (2015) resets the entire timeline, which is bad enough, but the problems run much deeper. The prophecy that John Connor would die at the hands of a T-800, leaving John’s wife Kate to pick up his mantle is outright ignored. There is no mention of Marcus. How the war starts, despite the events of either Terminator 2 or 3, is never explained. It’s as if this movie exists on an island unto itself.

As a result, the emotional stakes are destroyed because the viewer is practically starting in an alternate universe. Despite the same characters, setting, and musical score, this film feels like a movie from a completely different franchise.

What the writers could have done differently

The writers really should’ve started with the Salvation timeline. Terminator Salvation had its problems as a story. But some of its issues were due to the writers’ not-altogether-successful efforts to fix the mistakes of Terminator 3. Had the Salvation timeline been allowed to proceed, I’m sure the franchise would’ve remained successful.

The problem with outright ignoring the previous movies involves a word I use constantly in these reviews, and I won’t stop screaming it, probably, until my dying day: STAKES! Stories are about promises and progress. If, in a previous movie, viewers are led to expect a scenario, that promise must be addressed even if it is ridiculous. Addressing the promises is why Terminator Salvation still feels like a part of the Terminator franchise despite taking place in a post-apocalyptic world.

If a writer decides to ignore the events in the previous film in the series, then that writer is basically telling a whole new story. And it’s a story that nobody is going to care about because, if the writer is willing to ignore the previous installments, then who’s to say he won’t go on to ignore everything that takes place in his current tale? Ironically, this is exactly what happens in the last Terminator film.

Why the writers might have chosen this route

I believe writer-director James Cameron or someone else who is closely tied to the franchise felt that the story needed to center around Sarah Connor. That is something I understand, but then they needed to find a way to reintroduce her to the story. Considering that the story revolves around time travel, that would have been entirely possible. But, to refocus the plot around Sarah Connor, they did the worst thing possible. And the assassination of John Connor’s character is nothing short of atrocious.

I have said multiple times that the Terminator series, for all its accomplishments, seems to suffer from a profound sense of self-loathing. That self-loathing manifests itself fully in this film. What happens to John is a crime against cinema, especially after Christian Bale’s portrayal of the character in Salvation. Refocusing the story on Sarah Connor is justified, but John is tied to the stakes of the story too. Sacrificing him to reintroduce Sarah undermined her own character arc. Like it or not, the two characters are a package deal.

With that out of the way, let’s begin the review

The story starts from Kyle Reese’s perspective. Born after the war begins, he meets John Connor in a way that is wholly different from what was established in Salvation. John saves Kyle from a Terminator, and he grows up in John’s shadow.

This was simply baffling to me. Again, there was no reason not to affirm the events of Salvation and Terminator 3. All the writers had to do was fast-forward to the end of the war. They didn’t need to tell Kyle’s whole life story. They could’ve just started with the final battle and immediately gone into the time travel scene.

The writers appear to have wanted to make a statement: This movie is in no way connected to the prior film. But then why should anyone care? There’s no reason for the audience not to say, “Okay, this isn’t the Kyle Reese; this is a Kyle Reese. So, I don’t need to be as invested in him.”

Anyway, after some needless exposition that kills the movie before it begins, the viewer reaches the time travel scene that has been alluded to in other films. Skynet is supposedly defeated, but has sent a T-800 into the past to kill John’s mom, Sarah Connor. John, already knowing where the T-800 went and why, decides to send Kyle Reese.

However, once Kyle is in the machine and the machine is turned on, one of Skynet’s robots — we later learn that it is Skynet itself — grabs John. Kyle sees this, but before he can do anything, he’s sent back in time.

There is no mention of John’s situation in the first film. I’ll return to the issues this creates in a moment. As Kyle is traveling into the past, he’s given a whole new set of memories. He remembers himself as a kid, but now he’s no longer growing up in a decimated world. He’s a normal boy, living in a normal house. His younger, alternate version is speaking into a mirror, saying that a program named Genisys is really Skynet, and it must be destroyed in 2017. He also remembers a woman — Sarah Connor — speaking to him as a child.

This scene goes back to the whole “how can something that happened in the past be dependent on something that happens in the future” question. But I’ve already beaten that dead horse several times, so I’ll leave it alone. The more pressing issue here is this: There’s no mention of John’s situation in the first film. His predicament is a new development, which means the timeline in the future has changed as well. Questions like how it changed, who changed it, and why it changed are never addressed or mentioned. Brace yourself for more of this incoherent writing as the movie progresses. See you next Saturday!