Seen any good films lately? [3]

While this is the fifth movie in the franchise, it pretty much ignores Rise of the Machines and Salvation. And while I think both were ok films, I can understand why they went that way.

So, basic plot.

This film starts showing the story that Kyle Reese (Michael Biehn) told Sarah Connor (Linda Hamilton) in the original movie. The resistance launches it's final attack on Skynet, destroying it's core and winning the war. At the same time, they break in to a facility that houses a time machine. In it's last desperation, Skynet sends a Terminator back through time to kill Sarah Connor and therefore lead to the events in the first film.

Now, if you haven't seen the first 2 films, then most of the next set of sequences will be lost on you and you will also probably be wondering what the hell is going on throughout most of the film.

Kyle Reese is sent back through time to 1985 to defend Sarah Connor (now Emilia Clarke) from the machine, however the original machine has already been taken out by another Terminator that had been sent back to stop a different attempt on Sarah's life in 1973. As we are now on the 4th iteration of an ever changing timeline, Skynet has learnt from films 1 and 2 and tried something new.... and failed again.

So Kyle Reese (now Jai Courtney as Michael Biehn would have been a little too old) is now in an unfamiliar timeline where everything he was taught to do has now changed.

The overarching story here is that as different timelines are formed, so Judgement Day (the machines initial nuclear strike against humanity) itself is put in jeopardy. This means that not only are they trying to stop the future leader of the resistance that defeats them, but they are also trying to ensure that the war itself starts.

Lots of time travel and therefore complicated thought processes if you decide to try and really work out what is going on. If not, then plenty of explosions, one liners and general action movie content.

So, my thoughts on the movie.

Storyline

My opinion is that the majority of this story is actually very well thought out. It takes everything you thought you knew about the lore and twists it around in to something relatively new. Obviously this is based off of a concept used several times, however it doesn't feel stagnant to me like Terminator 3 did at times.

I don't know how well this would come across to anyone that hasn't involved themselves in the franchise before... it was difficult to connect strands together even for someone who knows the films very well. I would recommend watching at least 1 and 2 before you go.

Characters

Arnie actually does well breathing new life in to his character. And there is a very reasonable explanation as to why he appears old. Even at his age, he can still kick ass!!

Emilia on the other hand, I felt struggled with the role she was given. For anyone who has seen the first two would have seen how Linda Hamilton played both the young, naive Sarah in 1985 and completely transformed in to the kick ass Sarah from the second film. In this film, the young, naive version never existed. She is supposed to come across as kick ass from the start but... well she is too cute. She is short, she has soft lookin skin, pouty lips... everything that makes her then inexperienced, young, naive Queen of Dragons from Game of Thrones. She is not a warrior! How they thought her hip firing a shotgun would work is beyond me... she would have broken several things if that was a real one!

John Connor, again didn't quite live up to what I was expecting out of that character. From the very few 'future' shots of him in previous films, he looks tough... almost robotic by the time of the resistance. Here he looked like he should be wearing a shirt and jumper while programming the next version of Windows. In fact, when the biggest twist (that is ruined by the trailer) moves along, he actually fits in to that part of his character well. I wasn't totally sold on this one.

Kyle Reese, the last primary character, was about 50/50. Michael Biehn played a more rough and ready Kyle, worn down by the years of war and suffering. Jai Courtney, by contrast, is very clean cut and energetic. Not the same Kyle Reese. Jai, however, I thought did quite well with what he was given. The confusion of the changed timeline and all that followed was reasonable acting. If there hadn't been an original character then I would have been sold I think.

Effects

There were a lot of visual effects used in the film, and nearly all of them worked. CGI Arnie worked much better than I thought it would. The future war and all it's purple laser glory was good. The T1000 and its liquid metal was good. The only bit I raised an eyebrow too was a helicopter chase near the end which was just a little too much (and ended with a very convenient crash location). So well done to the team that worked on those.

Verdict

Ok.... so by way of comparison, I would give Terminator 1 7/10, T2 9.5/10, T3 5/10 and T4 5/10.

I think, on balance, this probably deserves an 7.5.

It manages on a lot of what made the first 2 successful, but without being tired. It was never going to be revolutionary, because the 5th film in a franchise could probably never be. Good story, great visuals, a lot of respect for it's predecessors (the recreation of scenes from T1 was awesome!!) and a reasonably good set of actors with interpretations of characters mainly judged against their older versions.

If you like Terminator, then go and see this. I am not going to spoil the main twist and I hope you wont watch the trailer and spoil it for yourselves. However, if you are new to it, watch at least 1 (and put up with the production) and 2 (which is epic!!). You will probably be lost otherwise

by the time the movie ends it lacks a main character. The films begins with Caleb, but (as they have admitted) the director and crew are all in love with Ava and the film clearly shows that. So fairly soon into the movie she becomes the main character. By the end we have Oscar Isaac's character murdered in a sort of Frankensteinian-feminist twist (it felt almost unavoidable to be honest), and Domhnall's character has run into the fact that he is not central to the story but is merely a foil for Ava to use and discard.

With all the twisty reveals and thought-provoking changes-of-viewpoint the film ends up being a little vague about what its point is. I watched a panel of the cast and crew after I finished the film, and they sort of mutually agreed that the point of the movie was to provoke discussion and raise questions, not answer them.
The one place where this really does not work as a film is the fact that once it was revealed how heavily Ava had been manipulating the other characters I no longer felt like I could trust what I had seen of her during the film. And once that happened I no longer felt like I knew her as a character. And if, at the end of the movie, you no longer have a main character you can understand or empathize with, the film lacks narrative resolution. We are left with a dead genius, a discarded mid-level employee, and an AI that we don't actually know very well at all. It was an an unsatisfying ending, to say the least.