If you enjoyed The Terminator or Terminator 2, there's a good chance you'll enjoy Terminator: Genisys. That's not necessarily because it's a good movie, but because Alan Taylor's franchise reboot is essentially a two-hour love letter -- and in large parts even a meticulous frame-for-frame recreation -- of James Cameron's sci-fi classics.
We won't bore you with the plot spoilers -- it's too complicated and spoiler-filled for such luxuries (and besides, the trailers have done that for us). As ever with Terminator, some things remain vaguely constant: future Skynet causes the nuclear apocalypse, John Connor stops it, so it sends back Terminators to kill his family members and/or him, etc. Fights ensue. Arnie says, "I'll be back". Then inevitably the studio decides it wants another sequel and somehow Judgement Day gets changed (first it took place in 1997, then 2004; in Genisys, it's now 2017) and it repeats ad infinitum. (No, Genisys makes no sense, despite its attempts at explaining Nexus points and other such jargon. That's beside the point. Better to subscribe to the Doctor Who school of time travel, and blame any paradoxes on "wibbly-wobbly timey-wimey stuff".)
Sure, Genisys has its entertaining moments: the visual effects are great, and Emilia Clarke is entertaining and kick-ass as the new Sarah Connor. Arnie raises a few laughs reprising his old tricks. But what's interesting about the film is that it's essentially an exercise in nostalgia -- its only creative purpose is to remind you of a previous film that you loved from your past. If you haven't seen any other Terminator films, then Genisys will make absolutely no sense, or in the very least fail in its purpose; it's basically wall-to-wall references. The Observatory scene from Terminator 1? It's there, with digitally recreated young Arnie. The clothes and motorcycle bit. The T-1000-liquid-metal-phasing-through-objects bit. The car chases. I mean, there's even a helicopter sequence that nods at Rise Of The Machines. The care and detail that Taylor has gone to in the recreation of these scenes is astonishing -- Genisys might have the highest-quality production values of any fan remake I've ever seen. But as soon as it tries to divert from the tribute act and do something original, it starts to fall apart.
Genisys isn't the first film to do it this summer: Jurassic World was similarly a self-referential exercise in nostalgia, with a plot that revolved around ignoring large parts of the recent films in the franchise and relentlessly exploiting what you loved about the original. (Remember the theme song? Remember the vans? Remember the night vision and flares and triceratops scene? Us too!) JJ Abrams' Star Trek films are the same: they source their narrative existence not from original ideas but by playing upon your memories of the originals (such as inverting the Spock death scene from Wrath of Khan in Into Darkness).
Sequels recreating scenes from the film that spawned them is nothing new: see the Back To The Future films, or Anchorman 2, or any of the Hangovers. But it's the self-referential nature of Genisys and Jurassic World that feels like an admission; as if Hollywood, like Skynet, has become self-aware.
And with plenty more remakes-cum-sequels in the works for films as varied as Ghostbusters, Independence Day and Top Gun, all we need now is a name for this new self-awareness. Sequel isn't quite right. Welcome to the age of the tweakuel!
This article was originally published by WIRED UK
