This movie is an oddly fitting culmination to the trilogy of failed attempts to make a new Terminator trilogy. You may have heard it trumpeted as something approaching a grand return to form but I'm afraid I found no such glorious comfort; this movie has different issues than the previous three but they are no less egregious and ultimately, despite vastly improved action and a stellar return performance by Linda Hamilton, it joins them in my heart as equally fine "what-if" alternate timeline tales which don't come close to the first two movies or the lore they establish. I'll try not to be overly explicit but slight possible spoilers follow so be warned.
The movie starts out like another attempt to make a sequel to a stellar James Cameron sequel; Alien 3. In much the same way as that movie's introduction rendered the entirety of what you went through in the second movie completely moot, this film in it's very opening scene wipes out existing lore, established characters, developments & a lot of logic. And that's before the credits roll. It's a baffling move that the movie fights to recover from for the next two hours with only partial success right at the end. Why the writers chose to develop the storyline this way is unclear, and much as I don't wish to embolden such claims I can see the argument that it was just an attempt to make a more culturally & gender diverse redo of T2. Ultimately the plot winds up being exactly the same, despite attempts at clever rebranding. In a universe where a key message is "no fate but what we make" it seems like the nightmare of human apocalypse to machines & AI is inevitable, which again leaves the movie struggling for a story reason to exist.
The film wipes the previous three movies out of continuity, in seeming acknowledgment of their flaws, only to cherry pick elements literally from each of them to paste onto a remake of Terminator 2. It all just feels like we've seen it before but this time the disrespect to lore and underlying repetitive nihilism leave me not really caring. This isn't helped by a new character that everything hinges on who we never get anything close to development for, believability and who we are not given anything to connect emotionally to in any way other than to invoke characters you know to compare them to (a big mistake). The performance itself is also awful, the worst in the film and one of the worst miscastings I have ever personally felt.
It's not all bad though, as I've said. Linda Hamilton gives a performance that elevates everything and emotionally propelled me right back to the feeling I had of loving this woman in Terminator and especially T2. Mackenzie Davis is also fantastic, coming off as effortlessly tough and complex as a protector with more character than the person she so wants to protect. Arnie returns to something like we saw in Genisys with an aged T-800 showing a balance with some well-acted humanity in the machine and the most levity the film gets through some great humorous lines and asides. And there is a moment that came very close to eliciting the same response as a certain thumbs-up through molten steel (and which did have some people in my screening openly weeping).
The action is mostly amazing, with Deadpool director Tim Miller you'd have a certain expectation here and he delivered for me. The film is a little too long and so the final, most intense action sequence was hard for me to really register and focus on, I struggled to tell where each character was ending up and how. But the new antagonist is a clever idea that lends itself brilliantly to some awesome, unique and clever visuals and fight choreography. And with another great performance from Gabriel Luna (Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D's Ghost Rider) who encapsulates the menacing smarm of Robert Patrick with the relentless dread of Arnie's early model (credit to the VFX people as well here).
Sadly the movie writes out two of it's most interesting characters, leaves huge logic gaps and has no interest in anyone else (a key character literally disappears from the narrative left behind never to be mentioned again). But like all the other Terminator movies I found the whole very enjoyable and entertaining, possibly because I just like the franchise. And by the end I felt like the movie had fought back to leave me genuinely thrilled, entertained and moved. But it's also finally got me too tired of seeing a franchise I once loved offering nothing particularly new. Judging by the abysmal box office this franchise won't be back, and I'm ok with that. It ended with the conclusion of T2, gave us a decent trilogy conclusion if we want it & three tales of alternate timelines that entertained but must stand alone because they have nowhere to go. I liked this, I'll buy it, I'll watch it again. But do I want to see more? Negative.
*** (3/5)
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