Terminator Genisys review: Aussies, Schwarzenegger and amusing action

Say what you like about the film industry, but our actors are knocking it out of the park, and craving a cold beer.

Left to right: Jason Clarke plays John Connor and Jai Courtney plays Kyle Reese in Terminator Genisys from Paramount Pictures and Skydance Productions

There’s a wonderful Australian moment early in Terminator Genisys, the latest instalment in the world’s favourite cyborg film franchise. Human resistance leader John Connor (Queensland-born Jason Clarke) and his trusted lieutenant (and, as fans will know, father) Kyle Reese (Sydney actor Jai Courtney) are musing on what they will do once the war against the machines has been won. “A cold beer would be good,’’ deadpans Connor.

It’s a reminder, if we needed it, that Australians have two of the four lead roles in this $US170 million ($221m) Hollywood blockbuster, the other two stars being 67-year-old Arnold Schwarzenegger as the T-800 Terminator we have come to know and love, and English actor Emilia Clarke (Daenerys Targaryen in Game of Thrones) as Sarah Connor. Say what you like about our film industry as a whole, but our actors are knocking it out of the park.

Genisys is the fifth film in the series, following the James Cameron-directed Terminator (1984) and Terminator 2: Judgement Day (1991), widely considered the peaks, and Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines (2003) and Terminator Salvation (2009). It is not a sequel to the most recent film but a recapitulation — and bold re-imagining — of the first two, and in a sense also follows on from them.

Cameron has thrown his support behind this latest version, which is directed by Alan Taylor, whose television credits read like a greatest hits reel of the past 15 years or so, from Homicide: Life on the Streets,Oz and Deadwood to The Sopranos, Mad Men and Game of Thrones. Certainly Genisys has the intelligence, wit and psychological interest in character that we associate with the best TV dramas.

At least two more films are planned — and indeed the mind-boggling time twist revealed in Genisystheoretically allows for endless sequels, regardless of what happens to any of the characters. Arnie’s now-famous “I’ll be back’’ has universal application when, as we are told in the closing moments, “the future is not set’’.

That time twist (it’s revealed early) essentially is that different timelines can not only coexist but cohabit (for example, we have the older Reese meeting his childhood self). I confess the concept pains my brain, so I ask diehard fans to forgive any chronological cracks in what follows.

A pre-titles sequence, narrated by Reese, starts with Arcadian scenes of a world before the war with the machines. “By the time I was born, all this was gone.’’ That’s because Skynet, an automated missile defence system, becomes self-aware and decides to wipe out humanity. We see London and San Francisco obliterated. This is 1997, Judgement Day. Three billion humans killed, most others enslaved by smartbots, the earth reduced to a wasteland. This is the “broken world” into which Reese is born.

We move forward to 2029, with Connor and Reese leading the final offensive against the machines. The battle goes their way, but Skynet is able to activate a time weapon (and a T-800) which means the war is far from over. Reese volunteers to go back to where it all began — 1984 — to safeguard Sarah Connor, John’s mother (and, yes, Kyle’s lover — just go with it). As he is vanishing into the past, Reese sees someone attacking Connor, an event that will have extraordinary ramifications.

This is where we have a dramatic departure from the original film, and it’s very clever. I don’t want to reveal much more of the plot — the story so far is more or less covered by the earlier films — except to say that this 1984 is not the same 1984 as it was in, well, 1984. Sarah Connor is not the same Sarah Connor: she is more aware of what the future could hold. And Schwarzenegger’s T-800 has been protecting Sarah for longer than we thought, so much so that she calls him “Pops”. Another favourite, the relentless, liquid metal, shape-shifting T-1000 soon turns up, played this time by South Korean actor Lee Byung-hun, making him the handsomest Terminator yet.

“I’m old, but not obsolete,’’ Pops tells Reese, setting up a father-daughter’s suitor schtick that Schwarzenegger and Courtney play to great effect. Arnie has all the best lines, but there’s an appealing humour in Courtney’s performance. It’s probably beyond the point of calling him a rising star but, at 29, he sure has the look of our next big thing.

There are some terrific homages to signature moments in the earlier films, none better than nude Arnie Terminator being hassled by some punks, only to be interrupted by Pops Arnie Terminator. The punks split and the two T-800s have a stoush.

Yet another timeline — in 2017 — introduces the Genisys of the title — it’s a computer operating system sure to be sinister — and also Oscar winner JK Simmons in fine form as a police detective whose 30-year dedication to the ‘‘robots case’’ has driven him to the bottle, and earned the derision of his colleagues.

These various worlds collide, the result being a superior action thriller that has the significant benefit of not taking itself too seriously. It’s the finest Terminator since the first two, which rank among the great science-fiction movies of our time. And Arnie is the Terminator equivalent of vinyl records — old tech but still the best.

Terminator Genisys (M) 3.5 stars

National release