The trailer for Terminator Genisys with Arnold
Schwarzenegger has finally seen the light of day. After watching it a few times
my reactions were mixed, to say the least.
My first
sentiment was exileration, off course – the latest installment of one of my
favorite movie franchises is in the works. Terminator and T2: Judgement Day were a part of my
childhood and adolescent years, and I cannot even begin to express how much
they meant and still mean to me. T3 was good, although it did represent a
decline of quality in comparison with the first two parts. The fourth one,
Terminator Salvation (I am not even sure if it is the correct title), left no
particular mark. I also must mention the TV series Terminator: The Sarah Connor
Chronicles, which I thoroughly enjoyed. In my opinion, it is on the same level
as T3, if not better, though it is hard to compare TV and Cinema.
After
taking a closer look at the trailer, I realized that there seems to be a lot of
promise to this film. The trailer starts with the images from the future war
with the machines. The resistance movement headed by severely scarred John
Connor (Jason Clarke) launches the final offensive against the machines and
upon discovering that the machines have sent terminators to the past to kill
Sarah Connor, they decide to send someone to protect her. Kyle Reese (Jai
Courtney) volunteers and we see him entering the time machine. Then we see him
arriving to the past, in the same alley as in The Terminator, and he enters the
same department store. A policemen follows him inside and then a van bursts
through the wall with a young woman at the wheel, hitting the policeman with
the back end. When she yells the too familiar words – Come with me if you want
to live - we are completely aware of the twist. The policeman is actually a
T-1000 (Byung-hun Lee).
The second
half of the trailer shows us the arrival of the T-800 (young Arnold
Schwarzenegger) who is greeted by another T-800 (present day Arnold
Schwarzenegger), followed by a lot of action, lot of terminators, gun-totting,
schoolbus-flipping, and in the end, after the unavoidable “I’ll be back”, a
helicopter head-butting, the total highlight of this trailer.
It appears
to me that they took the screenplay for The Terminator and rewrote it to make
some sort of another T2, which could be a good thing, but not necessarily. A
way had to be found to include an old Terminator in the movie, and for that
matter, I think that part of the story is quite acceptable. Arnold IS the
Terminator, period. There would be no franchise without him. However, I am a
bit weary of the constant recycling. I do not think that every Terminator movie
should include every sentence or image from the first one or two. Give Arnold
some new one liners, he cannot keep repeating “I’ll be back” for all eternity.
It could turn into a parody no matter how much some people like it.
There are
some things about this trailer that I did not like. The future does not look nearly
as dark and bleak as in the first two movies. I like the John Connor’s look
though, with heavy scars on his face. Kyle Reese, on the other hand, looks
miscast. Jai Courtney looks like a complete opposite of Michael Biehn. Where
Biehn was slim, almost sickly, Courtney looks healthy, strong, ripped almost
like a terminator.
As regards
the casting of Emilia Clarke as Sarah Connor, she strikes me as a good choice.
She appears to have that same intensity that could be seen in both Linda
Hamilton and Lena Headey.
My biggest
objection to this trailer concerns the fact that, in my opinion, it reveals too
much of the plot. I remember when I watched T2 for the first time, I was
shocked when it turned out that T-800 was the good guy. This trailer seems to
contain every major twist, at least in the first half of the film. I hope that
I am wrong and that there will still be some surprises when the film comes to
cinemas.
The final
question is whether I would go to see this movie based on this trailer alone. The
answer is, off course, yes. It’s The Terminator, with Arnold Schwarzenegger. It
really does not need a trailer to attract me to the cinema. However, there is a slight feeling of apprehension. It is like when someone you care about is going to do something important and you are worried. You know that you will still care no matter what happens, but you would rather see that person succeed. The premiere will be in July, 2015.
