Up and Coming Weekly is a weekly publication in Fayetteville, NC and Fort Bragg, NC area offering local news, views, arts, entertainment and community event and business information.
Issue link: https://www.epageflip.net/i/551165
20 UCW AUGUST 5-11, 2015 WWW.UPANDCOMINGWEEKLY.COM At one point, Joss Whedon was interested in mak- ing Terminator: Genisys (126 minutes). Instead, we got a version written by Laeta Kalogridis (Shutter Island) and Patrick Lussier (Drive Angry) and directed by Alan Taylor (Thor: The Dark World). It wasn't terrible. But please, spend just a moment imagining what Joss Whedon could have done with Emilia Clarke after recasting Jai Courtney, who should never have been cast as Kyle Reese anyway. And really, casting Jai Courtney in the role was a terrible, terrible mistake. He's like the younger, dumber, sweatier, version of Channing Tatum. The whole premise of the franchise is that the human soldiers fighting Skynet were living in a post-apoca- lyptic ruin, feasting on rats, unable to produce food in the irradiated ruins, dying of starvation when they weren't being sent to extermination camps. Michael Biehn's Kyle Reese in the original Terminator was covered in ropy muscles and looked underfed, so can someone please explain to me where Jai Courtney's version was keeping his protein shakes and weight- lifting equipment? The film begins in 2029. John Connor (Jason Clarke) is preparing for the final battle against Skynet. Despite having knowledge of Skynet's access to time travel technology, the machines manage to send back the T-800 (digitally integrated young Arnold Schwarzenegger), who is immediately blown away by Sarah Connor (Clarke) and her pet Terminator (present-day Schwarzenegger). Given the sequence of events, it is very hard to tell how many Terminators get sent back. Given the nature of time travel (depend- ing on which version of time travel makes the most sense to you), it doesn't even matter that much. The point is, the moment that Skynet sends back a termi- nator, the entire timeline is up for grabs. The fact that John Connor didn't immediately disappear points to the defeat of Skynet. But! Then something weird hap- pens. It involves a random guy standing in the back- ground, but (spoiler alert!) it's obvious that he is an important game changer as soon as he appears. There is a lot of cute back-and-forth regarding how girly and weak Sarah Connor's going to be when Reese meets her, followed by flashes of incompatible memories — some featuring post-apocalyptic Kyle Reese, some featuring suburban Kyle Reese. I really wish they had taken that somewhere interesting. For example, one of the coolest things about the Dark Tower series is that in the third book, after sort-of time travel saves someone who dies in the original timeline, the person who should have died is driven slowly mad by living while remembering that they are supposed to be dead. The film travels full circle when Reese finds out that Sarah and her pet terminator have spent a couple of decades building a time machine. This makes more sense later in the film when the audience finds out who sent him back through time in the first place — in case you are the one person in the audience who didn't fig- ure it after the events in the first half of the film. Overall, the blending of past Arnold and current Arnold, and the integration of the original footage into the new footage is fantastic. This entry in the franchise was off-puttingly optimistic — I am not a fan of people dying, but in a violent movie some of the main characters end up dead. This franchise in particular, to me, always emphasized the futility of trying to change the future. At most, the heroes only ever managed to delay things for a few decades at a time. I managed to see this in IMAX, and while I usu- ally don't care for that sort of thing, I can recommend spending the extra money to catch this one in the fancier format. Now showing at Patriot 14 + IMAX. Time Travel Makes My Head Hurt Terminator: Genisys(Rated R) . by HEATHER GRIFFITHS HEATHER GRIFFITHS, Contributing Writer. COMMENTS? Editor@ upandcomingweekly.com. 910.484.6200. 97.1 % receivership 76.9 % readership 74.4 % of readers make their buying decisions from free newspaper advertising and editorial Your Logo Here In your home every week..... TSCSI FREE PAPERS