Kevin LaFleur

Terminator Genisys is as Highlander II was to the Highlander franchise. It simply does not belong. There is no rawness, no grit, nothing of authentic feeling and relationships between characters. We went from THE Terminator with its emaciated, war-ravaged, cornered-and-rabid Kyle Reese alongside legit transformed Sarah-character portrayed by Linda Hamilton to—as one critic quipped—a cosplay of the original cast. We went from raw realness of the savagery Judgement Day resulted in, to a cast of bronzed, sweatless, dirtless, bloodless, well-fed gym rats, unrelatable and one-dimensional pretty people whose eyes alone (as well as their complexion) tell you they've never experienced one day of actual hardship. And let's make sure we focus less on Emilia Clarke's plastic interpretation of Sarah's person and personality and more on her cleavage instead. Vacuous from start to finish. In the original, Sarah's range of panicked gasping to her enraged refusal of what her life was to become, to Kyle's animal-like intensity juxtaposed with his admission of love for her born from a world devoid of any such sentiment made for Terminator what it was, a surprisingly human story that literally stands the test of time. But now? Even Arnold is made to be a caricature of his previous self. Gone is his expert delivery of a dark, foreboding, mechanical, singularly-focused killing machine. We're left with an obsolete (his word) robot who prime directive seems to be to provide comic relief, and a franchise one-step away from devolving into an animated, cartoony Terminator 6.