Terminator Genisys (Alan Taylor, 2015)

The big studios must wish that all their franchises could incorporate alternative timelines so that when an instalment falls flat on its face, like Terminator Salvation did, it's as easy as pie to reboot by simply saying that the timeline has changed. This means that the audience is expected to approach the new set-up unprejudiced by past experience, the complications caused through having to cast new actors for established characters can be swept under the carpet, and, so preciously for the spaghetti mess of past and future potential and actual realities of this series, the plot is effectively reset to square one.
Except that clearly you can't alter the past that much. So it is that this instalment succumbs to destiny and also falls flat on its face. The recasting of feisty teen Emilia Clarke and simple-minded jock Jai Courtney for Linda Hamilton and Michael Biehn is an unhelpful downgrade, but the film's real failings are in managing to get itself into a hopeless tangle once again despite having wiped the board clean, endless action sequences of little tension made worse by repeatedly 'reverentially' copying moments and dialogue from the first three films, and then having nothing of substance to put in their place when forced to come up with original content. It doesn't speak well for the film that the presence of Arnold Schwarzenegger as their creaking, superannuated cyborg helper is just about the only thing of any interest on show, nor is the fact that there is clearly no intention to stop milking the cash cow yet. Poor old Arnie should be reminded of one quote from the first film, so long ago: "And it absolutely will not stop, ever, until you are dead".

4/10