Terminator Genisys is one part reboot, one part rip-off, and all parts ridiculous. Fashioned as an update to James Camerons massively popular sci-fi franchise, this movie somehow manages to both pay homage to the original 1984 film and to destroy our childhood memories of watching it.Im going with two out of five for Terminator Genisys. This fifth chapter in the saga is all sound and fury, with none of the character depth or emotional impact of Camerons terrific first two films.

Terminator with its end-of-the-world walk, its fear-of-the-machines plot, and its unconvincing leap to the smartphone times €” its left to only Schwarzenegger to show how it is done. His T 800, nicknamed Pops here by Emilia, is fond of trying to explain the science of it all here, qualifying each such explanation with €œtheoretically€. He is also at pains to underline that he may be €œold€, but €œnot obsolete€. That should be the case with Terminator too, with machines omnipresent and more inter-connected than ever before. Theoretically. In practice, this franchise has had its judgment day.

What made Terminator 1 and 2 epic is the scale of Camerons sophisticated imagination, the menace, panic and unpredictability surrounding his storytelling along with cyborgs, wed care for, cry for. Devoid of any wizardry, Taylors Terminator Genisys is no better than what was churned out afterwards (Rise of the Machines, Salvation). Even if reduced to a ‘relic of a deleted timeline,’ Schwarzenegger is easily the only attraction of this wishy-washy sequel

a carefully balanced bit of the old with plenty of spanking new elements. There is a plethora of cross references made to Cameron’s work by way of homage, that any fan who has loved the first two parts, will be able to spot. Oh, and this time, we get to see Byung-hun Lee step into Robert Patrick’s liquid metal shoes as T-1000. It goes without saying that the effects are top-notch. Terminator Genisys overhauls the franchise that made the phrase ‘I’ll be back’ a part of pop culture. More than anything, you’ll watch it for Arnold. For as once promised, he’s indeed, back.

His unlikely saviour is Sarah, in flesh, and a cyborg she calls Pops (Arnold Schwarzenegger). A tad weather-beaten (it is still a kill machine but flesh must age), Pops informs Kyle that he may be old but he is not obsolete. Kyle and Sarah decide to time travel to 2017 where Skynet is getting ready to take over the world in the form of an OS called Genisys. Only when they reach there naked — oh, the vagaries of time travel — they have not-so-pleasant surprise waiting for them. Their son is there but hes not the man they thought he was.

Frankly, any Terminator fan would agree that the franchises best work was in the first two parts and post that the quality of content had a serious deterioration. The 1984 classic could have been a first mover of the genre of mankind vs machine action and hence it has now gone overboard and done to death by its fifth part. So if you are just a die-hard Arnold Schwarzneggar fan, you could enjoy it yet reminisce his previous works more.

For series fans, Terminator Genisys will be relished by many. Catch it for Arnie, whos back, and for some epic action with great background score!VERDICT: Arnold’s back, and this time, with a bang.