GENISYS

This Terminator: Genisys trailer is a strange experience. It comes on strong with re-purposed scenes and ideas from the Jim Cameron entries before morphing into a full-on Marvel movie. If nothing else, it looks like Alan Taylor's film finally gets the complete future war prologue from Terminator 2: Judgment Day's tie-in novelisation on-screen. LA 2029 is a looker too. The human resistance, and their skeletal enemies, are lit like they're fighting in a city sized version of Tech Noir.

Although Jason Clarke is appropriately weathered as John Connor, Jai Courtney is a bizarre substitute for Michael Biehn as Kyle Reese. Courtney has zero of Biehn's wirey, malnourished intensity, the actor instead reads as a sub-Tatum, beefy, romantic lead. Chicken breasts and protein shakes must be widely available in the wasteland. This obvious sop to demographics is leavened by Emilia Clarke's Sarah Connor immediately subordinating her new boy toy.

I wonder how screenwriters Laeta Kalogridis and Patrick Lussier will handle this Sarah? The T2 fringe and ponytail would seem to indicate an all-business approach, perhaps even a character that views her coupling with Reese as a necessary transaction in the process of creating a messiah. Presumably this Sarah is fully aware for how the following decades will unfold. Clarke's youthful, bratty demeanour, not to mention her cyborg father figure, mean this characterisation will probably be closer to Edward Furlong's John Connor than any previous Sarah.

Which leaves us with The Terminators. Lee Byung-hun looks great when he's running around 1980s alleyways, less so when he's hurling his body parts around like spears. Conceptually, there's an instant pop in the idea of a T-1000 interposing itself into The Terminator. It's reminiscent of Frank Miller's Skynet from RoboCop Versus The Terminator - an elemental, God-like force that overwrites time incessantly until it arrives at an advantageous path. It's a situation here born of sequel escalation, but the idea of chaotic agents arriving unexpectedly is pure Terminator.

Surprisingly, Schwarzenegger looks like a bit of a fifth wheel. Aside from junking his youthful doppelgänger, and ticking off another aborted Cameron sequel in the process, it doesn't look like he has much to do. Perhaps it's a sign of the star's waning power? This doesn't look like a top billed role, more a special appearance. Also, a protector Terminator hurling itself out of one helicopter to detonate another is just fucking stupid. At the very least, he's just nixed his camouflage.

It's a shame that Genisys isn't designed to take place on one long night. Even in this brief glimpse there's a sense of bloat. As the trailer rolls on we get further and further into anonymous, boringly framed second-unit work. The afternoon bus flip in particular is straight out of a Marvel sequel. Kramer Morgenthau ain't no Adam Greenberg either. I can see why the cinematographer got the gig, aside from priors with Taylor, his work on the Sleepy Hollow pilot nicely tracked an undying thing through a series of night shoots.

It's hilarious though to note that a two hundred million dollar Summer blockbuster can't wring out the same level of grimey verisimilitude as a six million dollar, non-union shoot. I know it's an entirely different genre - this is Terminator as a palatable franchise proposition rather than a thriller - but threat has taken a back seat. The shot of the T-1000's cop car arrival is, despite the much higher stakes, strangely perfunctory. Compare it to a similar sequence in the original. Cameron and Greenberg signal terrestrial danger with blaring sounds and lights. Taylor and co could have at least hosed the streets down and given the film that sweaty, post-storm texture.

Terminator: Salvation

Churn out a few pleasant trailers and even the most hackneyed product can start to resemble something worthwhile. Terminator: Salvation's ad avalanche promised a wasteland flick heavily indebted to George Miller's white-line nightmares - the well from which much of James Cameron's kinetic original sprang. Salvation's teases posited a relentless chase narrative, full of cobble-armour juggernauts and the zip-machines that hunt them. On the night, we are instead presented with a sanitised apocalypse, manned by herd friendly heroics and incompetent ILM cast-offs.

This time John Connor's ranting mission statement is time-loop self-preservation. Skynet has the kid who will become Connor's father, so naturally he must be rescued. In order to get the rest of the resistance on-side Connor cannily shifts the dilemma off his imperilled parentage and onto a humanist rhetoric about collateral damage. If only this duplicity was acknowledged, then you'd have a strong, distinct take on a man obsessed with his own importance.

Instead the contradiction hangs there, casting a cowardly stink over Connor's efforts. This is a bit of a trend in T4, nothing really adds up. Why does Skynet churn out machines with such obvious design flaws? Why does the hyper computer package hulking metal goliaths in rubber Halloween masks? Where is the industry that feeds the exhaustively manned human war machine? If McG et al really did have to junk Cameron's nightmarish neo-Stalingrad, they could have at least attempted to create something a little bit more interesting than a Michael Bay military recruitment vehicle transposed onto disaster year 2018.

Despite the surplus of excitement this film stands to mine from its two most significant prequels, T4 seems more interested in chasing 2007's Transformers. Futuristic antagonists blink and tinker like misguided comic relief, each blaring the unknowable machine language that made Bay's film vaguely tolerable. A wandering cyclops burps up morphing minions like cassette-bot Soundwave, and all machine dimensions seem calibrated for a chunky action figure range.

How else do you explain the anti-stealth monstrosity that passes for an LA infiltration unit? Clodding breeze-block feet, a bobbing carnival head, and a Gatling gun accessory permanently stitched to his arm. He's fooling no-one. These enemies are disposable, peril non-existent. Rather than rend and tear at their despised ex-masters, these machines would prefer to toss them about a bit, all the better to manoeuvre the stars near a handy machine-gun emplacement. Terminator: Salvation is so relentlessly wrong-headed, it's barely worth listing the flaws. Rest assured they are near total.

Amongst the dross there is one brief moment of interest. Deep into the third act a 1984 vintage Arnold Schwarzenegger makes an appearance. Achieved through a CG alchemy that makes use of an ancient Schwarzenegger head-cast, and Arnold's officially sanctioned body double Roland Kickinger, this Frankenstein's Monster literalises the star as a walking special effect. This presents a dilemma for this viewer. I was never particularly taken with the idea that the Terminator series couldn't function without Schwarzenegger. It speaks to a lack of imagination, and simultaneously stretches credibility to breaking point. Why is the timeless mecha-man always played by a decrepit ex-bodybuilder?

It's not so much that Terminator: Salvation needs Schwarzenegger, rather it needs something like Schwarzenegger - an indefatigable presence to build its narrative around. By unevenly splitting the action between Sam Worthington's prototype assassin, and Bale's grumbly John Connor, T4 becomes a sort of collage, requiring acres of heavy-handed exposition to plug the leaks. It's a limping, toothless beast that only briefly springs to life when a nostalgia totem is trotted out.

Terminator: Optimistic

Terminator: Salvation gets a lengthy trailer. Viewable here. Even in this abbreviated form, it's interesting to note the long takes of action rather than quick-burst epilepsy edits. Maybe McG has it in him after all? Christian Bale is exactly as good as he always is, his John Connor a massive step-up from the coddled, impotent non-entity of T3. Also rather exciting that this moment montage would have us believe SkyNet routinely has malformed proto-Terminators sling on T2 anti-kill iconography to tear through panicking prisoners. T-600! More like that! Series echoes continue with a confused pacifist Terminator stumbling through Reese lines - perhaps hoping to further blur the lines between aggressor / protector. Elsewhere, Bale's adventures tap into that other great wasteland masterpiece Mad Max 2: The Road Warrior - hulking cobble-cab hightailing from rapid seeker hunter killer bikes. Dead against crowbarring in an impossibly clean love interest though. Who cares? Is it Hollywood law? Mind you, given her delicate condition, she's probably just one for third act heart strings. Ouch!