Patrick Lussier just can’t catch a break.
Think about it : after toiling away in tinseltown as an editor for a couple of decades, he finally hits it semi-big as a director with the (go on, admit it) deliriously fun and sleazy 3-D remake of My Bloody Valentine in 2009. Since then? Well, shit — it’s all been downhill.
Apparently he was then considered Hollywood’s new “go-to guy” for 3-D flicks for all of about five minutes, but when his next one — the (again, go on and admit it) flat-out awesome Drive Angry tanked at the box office in spectacular fashion, it was back to the editing room (or, as is most likely the case, laptop) for poor ol’ Pat. And again, most of the movies he worked on — like the criminally-underappreciated Apollo 18 — were way better than their tepid reception among audiences and critics (but what do they know, anyway?) would indicate. Other projects his name was attached to, like Halloween 3 (and no, I’m not talking about Season Of The Witch), failed to materialize altogether.
Then comes another big break — hell, the biggest break of all — out of the blue. The long-shelved script he wrote (or co-wrote, as the final credits would indicate, since it was later tinkered with by Laeta Kalogridis) for yet another Terminator sequel/reboot was “back on” at Paramount, with Alan Taylor of Thor : The Dark World “fame” slated to direct. It even had a name : Terminator Genisys. And Lussier would be getting an executive producer credit on this big-budget blockbuster as well.
So what happens? It absolutely tanks at the ticket windows. And so the hard-luck saga of Patrick Lussier continues. I predict we’ll next see him as an editor on Paranormal Activity 9 or Insidious Chapter 6.
All of which is one heck of a shame because, once again contrary to popular belief, Terminator Genisys is actually pretty damn good stuff.
Damn good stupid stuff, to be sure, but so what? Apologies to all the James Cameron fans out there who don’t like to acknowledge this simple fact, but 1984’s original The Terminator had much more in common — both in budgetary and stylistic terms — with the Roger Corman fare that the future director of Titanic and Avatar cut his teeth on than it did with the billion-dollar bonanzas for which its auteur would eventually become famous. In point of fact, it’s essentially one of the last low-budget sci-fi exploitation pictures that didn’t go straight to video. And it’s absolutely awesome.
I’m not here to tell you that Terminator Genisys is as good as that was. Shit, it’s not even close. But it is much closer to the original in spirit than it is to the later, much-more-lavish sequels/prequels — the last two of which, Terminator 3 : Rise Of The Machines and Terminator Salvation, were positively atrocious. This, at least, feels like a “proper” Terminator flick again.
Are there plot holes big enough to plow an armored tank through? Absolutely. But that’s just part and parcel of the goings-on with a movie of this nature — and besides, they engage in this sort of “timey-wimey” gimmickry on Doctor Who all the time these days, and it’s praised as “quality” television rather than the cheap and obvious stunt it is (and speaking of Doctor Who, don’t blink — sorry, couldn’t resist! — or you’ll miss Matt Smith in this). I’ll take it served up as it is here without any pretense towards faux-intellectualism, thank you very much. And anyway, are people really complaining about getting to see present-day Old Arnold Schwarzenegger duking it out vs. CGI-reconstructed Young Arnold Schwarzenegger? Where’s your sense of fun, folks?
I guess it all just depends on who you ask. While Terminator Genisys currently “enjoys” a rather atrocious 21% rating on Rotten Tomatoes, where the critics hold court, it’s faring much better on the IMDB scorecard, where the fans have their say, with a perfectly respectable 7.1 out of 10. In other words, real people like this movie.
And what’s not to like? We’ve got “liquid metal” T-1000s squaring off against Ah-nuld’s earlier T-800 model. We’ve got cheesy one-liners galore. We’ve got a new plot twist involving John Connor (here played by Jason Clarke) that’s actually interesting. We’ve got a reasonably dashing new hero in the form of Kyle Reese (Jai Courtney). We’ve got Oscar winner J.K. Simmons doing the “old man tilting at windmills who no one else will listen to” role that he’s perfected down to a science (when he’s not selling his soul to Farmers Insurance, that is). We’ve got explosions, aerial battles, and likable good guys vs. suitably despicable bad guys. We’ve got an amped-up version of the internet that’s out to destroy the world, with requisite Luddite authorial sympathies attached. And, oh yeah, we’ve got this grin —
My only gripe is that Emilia Clarke just plain can’t cut it as Sarah Connor. She tries her best, sure, but she’s no Linda Hamilton. Consequently, her love story with Courtney’s Kyle Reese ends up falling a little flat. But that’s small potatoes compared to everything Taylor and company (including, of course, Lussier) get right here — rather than trying to one-up the original, which never really worked anyway, they just set out to add a worthy celluloid appendage to it. When looked at that way, Terminator Genisys is — against all odds and the loud chorus of naysayers out there — a tremendous success indeed.
Through the Shattered Lens 