JUDGEMENT DAY...And I'm Judge, Jury, and Executioner.

When I heard that they were making another Terminator film, (as a nerd) I could already feel my midichlorians tingle. Rise of the Machines was a bit of a let down. Salvation was crap. So Genisys was our only hope. Well, I just saw it. AND.....

Oh, where do I start? While there were a few interesting twists, overall the writing was lame. The acting was boring. None of the off-hand jokes landed. Sarah Connor is now apparently a 12 year-old girl. And we have a Terminator that looks like Chandler Bing from “Friends.”

We all know the story. Skynet decides to blow up the world after it unexpectedly becomes self-aware.

But in this film, the timeline has changed. And Sarah, Reese, and “Old Man T-800” try to destroy Skynet before it becomes the next crazy popular download called GENISYS. Because when the entire world downloads it to their smart phones and junk, it’s planning on playing Angry Birds using nukes instead of cockatoos. And even though this deranged OS system is gonna try to eradicate the human race, you gotta admit that it’s still WAAAAAY better than Windows Vista.

Who still says "bucko" anymore?

So here’s the really stupid part. It has a countdown to the download…and essentially the end of humanity. I guess that’s supposed to add tension, but it doesn’t. Because in this timeline, Skynet is already self-aware. It knows all about John Conner and that humans are a threat and I’m sure it thinks it’s fat even though it’s totally not. So it realizes that Sarah and Reese are trying to destroy it and what does it do? Does it go ahead and launch missiles 7 minutes early to ensure its inevitable take-over of the world? Nope. IT JUST CONTINUES TO COUNT DOWN AND WATCHES THEM TRY TO BLOW IT UP. And spoiler...they blow it up. For an advanced artificial intelligence, it’s pretty stupid. And that was one of the many things that irritated me about the film. 



Don’t get me wrong, the old Terminator films had plenty of stupid things going on in them. Think about it…an advanced artificial intelligence decides to create realistic cyborgs to blend in with humans in a post-apocalyptic world, and this is what it comes up with?



SERIOUSLY, WHO IS WORKING OUT AT A GYM AND TAKING STEROIDS IN A CRUMBLING WORLD RULED BY KILLER ROBOTS???



And so this super smart computer managed to create a cybernetic organism with living tissue over a hyper-alloy endoskeleton, but for some reason it talks like a 1950’s robot doing a really bad Elmer Fudd impression? REALLY?



And the T-800 was supposed to be this ultimate infiltration weapon, but how could that be when they made like a billion of them? They were cranking them out like a Playdoh Fun Factory.



Wouldn’t people just say, “oh, that’s the terminator right there. Yeah, that guy that looks like he works out and eats food. Oh, and there’s another one over there cuz they all look alike. They’re like the Kardashians but with more personality.” 

And remember that hydraulic crushy machine that Sarah used to kill the first Terminator? Why would a computer factory even have one of those? What purpose would that serve?



And let’s not forget when the T-800 realizes that what it’s like to be human.



Yeah, that was stupid, but I forgave it. Why? Because the characters actually HAD character, and you could connect with them. John was full of pre-teen angst, Sarah was fragile and suffering from PTSD (was she nuts or wasn't she?), the T-800 was cool and sometimes unintentionally funny, and the T-1000 was psychotic, cold, and calculating. The action was tense. The was a depth to everyone's interactions.  They used a cool GnR song.  And the story was imaginative, unlike anything I had ever seen at the time. Just the thought of Skynet was terrifying because it started out innocent, and developed on into this monster. Now we give Skynet a face with Dr. Who and Chandler Bing (BOTH characters and performances which are completely forgettable), and it suddenly doesn't seem so scary. It was what you’d expect from a movie made by a bunch suits who don’t have a passion for story-telling or innovation. It’s just a copy of a copy of a copy. I wish they had pooed duh plug on this one.

And a little side note: Can all you programmers out there please just put a subroutine in whatever you are developing that says, DON’T KILL HUMANITY! Please! If I get killed by a Zune, I’d be totally embarrassed.