Terminator Genisys (2015)

"Bite me!"

"That is a very immature response."

Ok, I started off resenting this film for its retconning earlier films, some of which I liked, and for Jason Clarke not being great as the future John Connor. And the first ten or fifteen minutes are seemingly just a version of the first film, as amended by its events:the beginning of the film hardly impresses. And yet it wins me over. Hugely.

Why? Simply put, it wears its timey-wimeyness lightly and has fun ith it and, most importantly, it has heart. And that's not something one would necessarily expect of a Terminator film.

The film starts to turn around as soon as the leather jacketed Arnie turns up,,, and kills his naked future doppelganger sent by Skynet. And we get a witty script where Arnie ("Pops") gets to insist that he is "old, not obsolete"- a delightful touch. And I love how Kyle Reese is sent back in  time to a 1984 which has already been changed by a Terminator being sent to kill Sarah Connor eleven years earlier. Interestingly, we never do get told who sent "pops" back.

Wonderfully, there's a constant theme of the helpless fatalism of living on  set path in a future that's already been written versus living in an unwritten future- and we get a happy ending, where Sarah and Kyle get to live and be happy together, and yet Sarah still has a kick-ass metal dad who will literally murder Kyle if he hurts her. As a father of a daughter, I find this the happiest possible ending. plus, we get a (bizarrely) American accented Matt Smith (credited as "Matthew") as Skynet. Best Terminator film since 1991, despite the cheeky recon.