Terminator Genisys

[Gonzo]

I dunno... It's looking kinda 'meh' maybe?
They continue to **** with the timeline which is confusing. So what I see in this trailer is this is the second time they send the same dude back to keep Sarah Connor alive? Wait, wut?
Apparently terminators age as well? Weird but whatever.
Here's the trailer. I didn't see it posted anywhere but the search function is fubar.

http://youtu.be/62E4FJTwSuc

[RINGLEADER]

Originally Posted by Stop, Chiefs

Three had a somewhat original ending, more interesting characters, and better action. And it was a lot funnier.

This felt like discount Terminator 3.

I will say this...they made the original Terminator at the beginning of the film scary. I remember how shitty it was in Terminator 4, when the thing had MULTIPLE chances to just close it's fist on whoever it was trying to kill and ended up just throwing them around.

And the CGI Arnold face looked incredible. There's going to be some fun movies coming out with that tech. Maybe we can get some of that in Star Wars and give us a young Luke. Although...it probably held up best here because the Terminator barely speaks or changes expression.

Agree with everything here.

There were a couple of moments that I thought were really well conceived and executed but most of the dialogue and exposition was just awful.

The conversation at the beginning between John Connor and Kyle Reese talking about what their plans were post-war were just cringe-worthy and threw up a red flag early on that the interpersonal stuff was going off the rails.

Read a review that (I thought) nailed it -- the only character you really care about or have any emotional investment in is the robot.

[Deberg_1990]

Ouch...it doesnt look good for a sequel.

Over the Friday-to-Sunday portion of the weekend, Terminator: Genisys earned only $28.7 million, and over its first five days, Genisys took in $44.1 million. The score is simply not good enough compared to budget, and unless overseas results vary wildly from the domestic, the Terminator franchise is dead. Proper care and attention of this asset was not taken. Reviews were putrid at 27% fresh, and audiences gave it a Cinemascore of B+. Usually a turd can still be sold for a solid opening weekend, but the marketing here was awful


http://www.boxofficeprophets.com/col...0&columnpage=3

[Hammock Parties]

There's nowhere interesting to go in a sequel anyway.

Let it die.

[ThaVirus]

It'll die for now then be resurrected in the 2020s

[Deberg_1990]

Originally Posted by ThaVirus

It'll die for now then be resurrected in the 2020s

Most likely this. That's part of the reason Jurassic World is big. They waited 14 years between films. Nostalgia for it was huge.

[Munson]

I saw this earlier in the week. Thought it was a decent popcorn flick.

The chick who played the young version of Sarah Connor was excellent. Not only is she smoking hot, but she played the role perfectly. It really felt like she was the hardass 1984 version of Sarah Connor.

[L.A. Chieffan]

As a long time terminator fan I enjoyed it but I think it could've been better. Too many plot holes, who sent the terminators back in the 70's? Who sent the t-1000 to 1984? I think they tried to do a little too much

[Rausch]

Originally Posted by Stop, Chiefs

There's nowhere interesting to go in a sequel anyway.

Let it die.

Robots doing thangs!

RAOWR!

[Anyong Bluth]

Did someone post the article talking about how the reboot and the writers already playing with the multiverse going forward?

Sounds like they're going to give the series the Fringe treatment...

Or at least continue on with the same concept used in Back to the Future II.

No idea what it means in terms of a story going forward, but the technology available now with how well they pulled of creating their 1980's Arnold opens a lot of potential possibilities.

The concept is only as good as what talent they find to pen the upcoming sequels.

Spoiler!

Clearly there's an alternate timeline to explore a "reprogrammed" John Connor facing off against the embodied Skynet. They wouldn't have cast Matt Smith in the role unless they have plans for him in future movies.

Is it future movies, or past movies yet to happen?

[Deberg_1990]

Originally Posted by Anyong Bluth

Did someone post the article talking about how the reboot and the writers already playing with the multiverse going forward?

Sounds like they're going to give the series the Fringe treatment...

Or at least continue on with the same concept used in Back to the Future II.

No idea what it means in terms of a story going forward, but the technology available now with how well they pulled of creating their 1980's Arnold opens a lot of potential possibilities.

The concept is only as good as what talent they find to pen the upcoming sequels.

Spoiler!

Clearly there's an alternate timeline to explore a "reprogrammed" John Connor facing off against the embodied Skynet. They wouldn't have cast Matt Smith in the role unless they have plans for him in future movies.

Is it future movies, or past movies yet to happen?

Doesn't sound like they are going to be any sequels. Unless they find a way to lower the budget.

[Tribal Warfare]

Originally Posted by Deberg_1990

Doesn't sound like they are going to be any sequels. Unless they find a way to lower the budget.

Box Office: 6 Reasons 'Terminator Genisys' Bombed (In America)
Scott Mendelson

Those parentheses are very important. It is entirely possible that Terminator Genisys will end up freefalling in America only to more-than-make up the slack overseas. After all, Pacific Rim barely crossed $100 million domestic but ended up with a $411m cume on a $191m budget and ended up with a sequel and an animated series. Even the prior Paramount/Viacom VIAB -1.5% Inc. would-be franchise starter G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra earned $300m worldwide off a $175m budget and ended up with a cheaper, 3D-converted, and more overseas-friendly sequel. If anything, there will be an inevitable temptation to greenlight a sequel to Terminator Genisys if the numbers even remotely come close to justifying it if only to deflect the notion that it was a failure. But regardless of how it does overseas (and that’s an important discussion for a later day), the fact remains that it pretty much tanked in America. The $155m Skydance Productions film opened with $27.5m over the Fri-Sun weekend and $44.1m over the Wed-Sun weekend, basically making about in five days what Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines and Terminator Salvation made in their Fri-Sun portions of their five-day weekends. So without further ado, and with the disclaimer that this is exclusively about the film’s domestic performance, let’s dive in!

1. The marketing was terrible.
Paramount has a really strong history of successfully opening tent poles over the last decade, but (with the obvious caveat that the film wasn’t very good) this was one of the worst and/or least successful attempts to market a tent pole picture in America that I can remember. The PR campaign started with laughably-terrible Entertainment Weekly cast photos, which had everyone but Arnold Schwarzenegger posing in generic backgrounds and looking as comically angry as possible. The first trailer was fine, establishing the “it’s the same, but different” premise, reassuring fans that Schwarzenegger would be a key character this time around, and offering a few money shots. But the second trailer blatantly gave away the film’s core plot twist.

It spoiled a major (and fan unfriendly) reveal to no real benefit of the trailer itself and for the sole purpose of getting the online movie community talking about it even if it was in the negative. Getting James Cameron to plug the film at the last minute was a smart touch, but allowing director Alan Taylor to talk too much about how displeased he was with Thor: The Dark World took the focus off of the film he was promoting. And finally the reveal of a cell phone game that could be played in the theater for select IMAX showings (which was initially and erroneously reported as a game to be played during the movie) solidified the bad taste that the film was building in the online community with little interest increased among general moviegoers. Of course, a bad marketing campaign can be salvaged if the movie is good and/or the public is excited anyway. But…

2. The reviews were terrible.
Thanks to an early overseas opening, the embargo for Terminator: Genisys was up a week prior to the film’s domestic debut, so the proverbial cat was out of the bag. In short, the film earned a 27% positive score on Rotten Tomatoes and more importantly an average rating of 4.7/10 on the site. While my review was among the more negative, there wasn’t exactly a small contingent of super-satisfied critics that fought the alleged good fight ala Speed Racer or The Lone Ranger. At best, some critics were okay with the film. But word got out that the picture was a narrative mess, was a general bore, did little with its time-hopping scenario, and was a mere arbitrary franchise reboot with no major story twists beyond the big one that the trailers revealed.

Again, bad reviews won’t doom a movie that is already anticipated, but Terminator Genisys was never a hotly anticipated summer property. It was based on the notion that there was a large community of fans who would race out to the theater to see a new Terminator movie and/or would race out to the theater to see a new Arnold Schwarzenegger movie. Neither of these things was in evidence, and thus the movie itself had to deliver beyond rehashed variations on what we’ve seen before. It didn’t, and even if the reviews didn’t kill the film outright; they were a nail in the coffin of domestic moviegoer disinterest.

3. It wasn’t the main event.
This is where I feel a touch of sympathy for those involved. Imagine if you will a slightly different timeline, one where Jurassic World and Inside Out play primarily how conventional wisdom suggested they would play. In Earth 2, Jurassic World opened to $115 million four weekends ago, earning so-so reviews and satisfied-but-not superlative word-of-mouth. It made $55m on its second weekend, $30m on its third weekend, and just $20m over the Fri-Sun portion of the holiday weekend. Meanwhile, Walt Disney's DIS +0.63% Inside Out played like a typical Pixar summer original. It opened to $65m on its debut weekend while earning $35m in weekend two, and now only $20m over the Fri-Sun portion of its holiday weekend.

Under this alternate timeline, Terminator Genisys arrives on the scene with audiences more primed with a new blockbuster release. But Skynet was up to no good, and thus in our timeline Jurassic World and Inside Out performed far better than anyone would have expected a year ago when these dates were set. Terminator Genisys is not the first would-be big movie to run headfirst into a phenomenon, but it had the extra misfortune to crash into two family-friendly phenomena. Both films amounted to perfect “consensus choice” movie picks for large groups of multi-aged family members making the choice to head out to the theaters over the long weekend. If you’ve got mom, dad, your eight-year-old son and fifteen-year-old daughter, plus a few cousins, aunts, and uncles and grandparents in tow, are you more likely to see Terminator Genisys or Jurassic World? Speaking of which…

4. That PG-13 didn’t help.
For the record, Terminator Genisys thoroughly deserved its PG-13 rating. It has very little on-screen killing, no gore, not much profanity, and no sexual content whatsoever. But once again a major studio has taken an R-rated franchise and watered it down to a PG-13 for the sake of younger audiences who already have plenty of kid-friendly options available to them. Moreover, while Jurassic World and something like Marvel’s Ant-Man are PG-13 films that are/will be considered kid-safe, the Terminator franchise has a strong reputation as a grim, violent, and adult-skewing franchise. All the PG-13 did was annoy the very hardcore fans who wanted to get excited about the film in the first place. The whole “turn an R-rated franchise into a PG-13 franchise” has worked exactly once, with Live Free or Die Hard. And even they eventually went back to the R-rated sandbox.

The film played 65% over 25 years old, which means again that there were very few would-be young Terminator fans who were thrilled at an age-appropriate Terminator movie. I may go into this later this month, but Hollywood really needs to stop making PG-13 the default rating. A genuinely R-rated Terminator Genisys would have at least helped the film stand out amid the current and future flood of PG-13 action-ers. As it is, the film had a PG-13 rating and yet still came off as kid-unfriendly, while the older moviegoers who might have been interested were turned off by the rating and otherwise not convinced to actually splurge for a babysitter in order to indulge their nostalgia. When playing around with cultural nostalgia, make sure the property is the kind that older moviegoers can drag their kids to. Otherwise, the former fans will just wait until VOD/DVD.

5. Arnold Schwarzenegger is not a box box office draw anymore.
I really liked The Last Stand, I enjoyed Maggie, and I appreciated his work in the deeply flawed Sabotage, but Arnold Schwarzenegger is not a major box office draw in America anymore. And frankly he hasn’t been in nearly twenty years since Eraser way back in 1996. His post-Batman & Robin vehicles (End of Days, The Sixth Day, and Collateral Damage) underwhelmed to varying degrees, while only Terminator 3 was a big hit since the franchise was still popular with moviegoers (star+concept). His post-gubernatorial output may be artistically interesting (Matt Singer’s “Arnold Schwarzenegger is an auteur” is a must-read), but only Escape Plan (with Sylvester Stallone) and his glorified cameos in the Expendables films topped $25m in America.

Now much of Schwarzenegger’s recent output has implicitly dealt with his cultural irrelevance, but, unfortunately, the box office performances of said pictures have turned subtext into text. He will still get work, because he remains an exciting performer and because I can’t imagine any filmmaker of a certain age turning down an opportunity to work with him, but his days as a top-level box office draw arguably started with the first Bush administration and ended during the first term of the Clinton administration. I’m excited about the artistic possibilities of a Schwarzenegger unburdened by box office dominance, but he shouldn’t be considered to be a major domestic box office draw anymore. No one stays on top forever, and we shouldn’t expect our former top-tier movie stars to maintain his or her popularity just because Hollywood has been so terrible at crafting new movie stars over the last fifteen years.

6. America didn’t want or care about another Terminator movie.
If I have been a bit hard on both the artistic failures and domestic box office failures of Terminator Genisys, it is because the film represents one of the ugliest trends in modern Hollywood today. To wit, just because a movie or a franchise was momentarily popular back in the 1980′s or the 1990′s doesn’t mean that moviegoers young and old want to see another variation in a theater. They also indirectly bashed Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines and then delivered a painfully inferior product, but I digress. The difference between Terminator Genisys and Jurassic World is pretty straightforward: Jurassic World offered a film that was plenty exciting even if you had zero strong feelings about the Jurassic Park franchise or were too young for nostalgia. It also had a killer hook (The park is open!) and a present-tense movie star (Chris Pratt) to entice those on the fence, and the film just plain looked good and looked like spectacular big-screen entertainment.

Terminator Genisys offered basically a tweaked variation of what you’ve already seen before, with the same would-be movie star who was a big deal in the 1990′s and the anti-Chris Pratt in Jai Courtney. It looked at best to be a passable Saturday matinee option, but the reviews squandered even that potential. The key appeal of Terminator Genisys was merely that it was another Terminator movie, with little to offer moviegoers who had no emotional attachment to such a thing. And the film’s big reveal was ironically something that was supposed to happen in Terminator Salvation but was altered after the script leaked and fans cried foul, which means that the very hardcore fans were already on the attack even before reviews confirmed the worst. Here’s a free (if simplistic) tip going forward: Before you embark on your franchise reboot, make sure that the pieces are in place to at least theoretically make a film that will appear exciting and fun even to audiences who have no interest in the franchise in question.

Epilogue:
Now if Terminator Genisys ends up playing more like Tammy (2.5x multiplier, $110m domestic) than The Last Airbender (2.1x multiplier, $95m domestic) and/or goes nuts overseas (it has earned $85m thus far with China, Japan, Germany, Spain, and Italy still to go) then a reevaluation may be in order. But for the record I don’t think Paramount greenlit a $155m Terminator movie to earn $110m domestic, so I don’t feel too bad calling the film a miss domestically. And if it ends up doing well outside of America, perhaps becoming the first film to end up under $100m domestic but still top $400m worldwide, then that will be an entirely different and wholly necessary conversation. But that conversation will have to wait. And just because the film earns just enough to justify a sequel doesn’t mean that said sequel will earn as much as the first film did. Unless you want to call Dwayne Johnson and get him to come aboard.

[Anyong Bluth]

Neutering the franchise by boxing it into a PG-13 rating was dumb.

Honestly, the R rating being set at 17 is dumb too. I think 15 is a better age restriction- even though that's completely arbitrary also.

Face facts, in an Internet world, major motion pictures are tame by comparison to everything else easily available to kids. You only have maybe 2-3 films that have gratuitous sex or violence, and a couple more that actually touch on adult topics that I can see wanting to put some advisory notice about the film so people aren't going in with their kids and blindsided with an uncomfortably sensitive scene.
It reminds me of another Arnold film that when it was released became a news story about whether it should have been rated NC-17, Total Recall.

No joke, I hardly think that film calls for it.

On the other hand, take the movie August, Osage County.
It's not violent and there's no graphic nudity. But, if you are at all familiar with the plot and topics of discussion, it's definitely not a film that you want to take the family to go see, or even really have a young teenager going to if you're their parent. However, from most of the trailers for the movie, it's not apparent the mature discussion that goes on throughout the movie.

[Easy 6]

Man, I don't know about this one... the reviews have me thinking rental in a big way.

My biggest problem is wondering if Arnies last few box office receipts will forever delay the new Conan... that's really the only Arnie movie I give, or will ever give, a shit about.

[Rausch]

Really glad I watched this after all the negative reviews and opinions.

It was ok. There were definitely some Jurassic World moments for me that just didn't make sense (in one scene there's a huge explosion and as they barely escape outside no one walking around even seems to notice) but only a few that stood out. They did make me roll my eyes but it didn't completely ruin it.

Ah-nald's one liners mostly were super cheesy but overall the performances were pretty good.

I'd say a decent rental. Good action scenes but not enough alone to justify a family theater amount of $$$.

One thing that did bother me:

Spoiler!

They never did explain "Pops'" origin. Who sent him back to very young Sarah? And what created the divergence from the original timeline to begin with?

[Rausch]

Long but entertaining read that tries to explain Terminator series timeline.

Spoilers...

http://www.ew.com/article/2015/06/30...line-explained