Terminator Genisys is on Trial

Bailiff: Hear-ye, hear-ye, this court will come to order. The dishonorable Judge Brikhaus is presiding.

Judge: Today’s case is the People of Good Taste versus Terminator Genesis, no, Genysis, no, Genisys, oh for fuck’s sake, why did they give this movie such a stupid title? From now on, it’s Terminator 5. Anyone calling it otherwise will be held in contempt.

Defense: Objection!

Judge Brikhaus: You can’t object, the trial hasn’t even started yet.

Defense: I’m sorry, your dishonor.

Judge Brikhaus: Very well, let’s hear the opening statements.

Prosecutor: Ladies and Gentlemen of the jury, I stand before you today as a representative of mankind. All of humanity craves good entertainment. And we were all cheated out of good entertainment when this new movie, Terminator 5, was shat into theaters. By this time this trial is over, you will agree that this movie is a rancid piece of shit that should be wiped off the face of the planet.

Defense: Ladies and Gentlemen of the jury, do not listen to the prosecutor. He was mad at his wife the night he saw the film, and it colored his judgment. In fact, Terminator 5 is a fun action romp, and a worthy entry into the Terminator canon. It is a completely enjoyable film.

Judge Brikhaus: Call your first witness.

Prosecutor: The prosecution calls Jai Courtney.

Bailiff: Do you promise to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so help you God of the franchise James Cameron?

Jai Courtney: I do.

Prosecutor: Mr. Courtney, you play the star of Terminator 5, Kyle Reese, is that correct?

Jai Courtney: Yes.

Prosecutor: And what do you say to the people who feel you look nothing like the originator of the role, Michael Biehn, and in fact look like a roided-up freak?

Jai Courtney: I’d say they aren’t drinking enough Muscle Milk.

Prosecutor: And what about your acting? It has none of the intensity that Biehn’s had. He was borderline crazy, had seen too many battles, and was fried on the inside. You play the standard Hollywood good guy who’s tough and loyal and has no layers of depth whatsoever.

Jai Courtney: *doing bicep curls* Whoever said that about me needs to get to the gym more.

Prosecutor: And why would you say that?

Jai Courtney: *doing squat-thrusts* They’re jealous. They’re probably a bunch of 90-pound weaklings.

Prosecutor: You are so bulked up you would have been a better fit for a Terminator than a half-starved, half-crazed resistance fighter.

Jai Courtney: Do you even lift, bro?

Prosecutor: Finally, what do you have to say for yourself about A Good Day to Die Hard? I mean, come on, that film is absolute trash.

Defense: Objection! Irrelevant!

Judge Brikhaus: Overruled. Mr. Courtney’s acting is on trial here.

Prosecutor: So, you starred in the fifth Die Hard movie, a movie that killed the franchise. And now you star in the fifth Terminator movie, a movie that will probably kill this franchise. Are you movie-franchise poison?

Jai Courtney: Can someone call my trainer? I think I pulled a hamstring.

Judge Brikhaus: Call your next witness.

Prosecutor: The prosecution calls Emilia Clarke.

 

Prosecutor: Now, Ms. Clarke, why did you agree to be in this movie?

Emilia Clarke: I had some free time.

Prosecutor: That’s it?

Emilia Clarke: The latest season of Game of Thrones is over, and I don’t get a lot of other offers.

Prosecutor: I find that hard to believe.

Emilia Clarke: Well, I get a lot of offers to go to bed with men, but I turn them down.

Prosecutor: So that’s why you never wrote me back.

Emilia Clarke: Pardon?

Prosecutor: Er, um, you play Sarah Connor, is that correct?

Emilia Clarke: Yes.

Prosecutor: Why did the film-makers make a conscious decision to turn Sarah Connor into a midget?

Emilia Clarke: Excuse me?

Prosecutor: You’re so short. It’s kind of shocking. I mean, standing next to Jai Courtney and Arnold Schwarzenegger, you look like an ant.

Defense: Objection! Badgering the witness!

Judge Brikhaus: Sustained.

Prosecutor: Ms. Clarke, what do you have to say to the accusation that you were horribly miscast in this film? That you try to emote too hard and look laughable. Or that you look ridiculous when you’re trying to shoot a gun? What I’m saying is that you aren’t an action star.

Emilia Clarke: I’ll summon the dragons upon whoever said that.

Prosecutor: Ms. Clarke, Game of Thrones isn’t real.

Emilia Clarke: *rising up with arms raised* I, Daenerys Targaryen, mother of dragons, shall smite you all. Behold, the dragons! Breathe fire! Destroy my enemies.

*nothing happens*

Prosecutor: I would like to ask Ms. Clarke to disrobe, to make certain her breasts are indeed the same breasts we have all seen on Game of Thrones.

Defense: Objection! Irrelevant

Judge Brikhaus: *sighs* As much as I would like to see that, I must agree. Sustained.

Prosecutor: No further questions, your dishonor.

Judge Brikhaus: The witness is excused.

Prosecution: *whispering to Emilia Clarke* Give me a call after the trial. I’ll buy you some drinks. I can show my house and my bed. They’re great. It won’t be weird, I promise.

*Emilia Clarke rolls her eyes and walks away with disgust*

Prosecutor: The prosecution calls Arnold Schwarzenegger.

Arnold Schwarzenegger: I’m back.

Prosecutor: Yes, back for the fourth time, in fact. People have been saying that you are too old to play an unstoppable killing machine. How do you respond?

Arnold Schwarzenegger: You son of a bitch.

Prosecutor: So, I take it you disagree?

Arnold Schwarzenegger: No problemo.

Prosecutor: Um, all right. Anyway, you look really old in this movie. Aren’t you too old to be running around, blowing stuff up, and acting like a killer robot?

Arnold Schwarzenegger: I’m Detective John Kimble!

Prosecutor: You — what — huh?

Arnold Schwarzenegger: I’m a cop, you idiot!

Prosecutor: Let’s move to something else.

Arnold Schwarzenegger: Who is your daddy, and what does he do?

Prosecutor: Just a minute. I’ll be asking the questions here. Now, Mr. Schwarzenegger, do you give the Terminator too much emotion? In the first two films, you are believable as a robot without emotions. But now you are hamming it up, you have lots of emotions, and you are practically the comic relief of the film. How do you explain that?

Arnold Schwarzenegger: My CPU is a neural-net processor, a learning computer.

Prosecutor: Okay, I suppose that does answer that. But what it doesn’t explain is how you got sent back in time again. Who the hell is sending all these Terminators back? And why do they all look like you? Don’t they have any variety?

Arnold Schwarzenegger: I hope you leave enough room for my fist, because I’m going to ram it into your stomach and break your goddamn spine!

Prosecutor: *adjusting tie nervously* Very well. I’ll think we’ve heard enough from the witness.

Arnold Schwarzenegger: Remember when I said I was going to kill you last? I lied.

Prosecutor: No further questions, your dishonor.

Arnold Schwarzenegger: I’ll be back.

Prosecutor: I hope not.

Arnold Schwarzenegger: Hasta la vista, baby.

Prosecutor: Um, your dishonor, might we have a 15 minute break? I need to change my pants.

Judge Brikhaus: Court is in recess.

*court resumes*

Judge Brikhaus: Call the next witness.

Prosecutor: The prosecution calls the writers, Laeta Kalogridis and Patrick Lussier.

Kalogridis and Lussier: Wow, it’s great to be here, what an audience.

Prosecutor: You do realize you’re on trial?

Kalogridis and Lussier: Thank you for such a warm welcome.

Prosecutor: The two of you stand accused as writing the braindead “script” for Terminator 5. It is nothing more than a terrible fanfiction. It cribs from other, better Terminator films without bringing anything new to the table.

Kalogridis and Lussier: We included new things, like the T-3000 and the T-5000.

Prosecutor: Just adding numbers to the end of the letter T doesn’t count as adding new things.

Kalogridis and Lussier: But we made John Connor into an evil Terminator. What a twist! Nobody saw that coming.

Prosecutor: Well, they would have seen it coming if they had watched the trailer, since it spoiled everything. But they shouldn’t have seen it coming, because it’s a completely inane plot twist. Why would the savior of humanity, and the focus of three films, suddenly become the villain?

Kalogridis and Lussier: Because you wouldn’t see it coming! Boom! Plot twist!

Prosecutor: And how do you explain another T-1000, who happens to be a cop just like the one from Terminator 2?

Kalogridis and Lussier: It’s a reference to the old movie. People love references to old movies.

Prosecutor: People like clever references, they don’t like seeing the exact thing verbatim.

Kalogridis and Lussier: Boom! Nostalia! Yeah!

Prosecutor: You even ripped off T3, which until now had been the worst film in the franchise. Skynet had already gone from hardware to software in that movie. So, basically, you were ripping off every other Terminator movie.

Kalogridis and Lussier: More references! Awesomesauce!

Prosecutor: And what about the time travel conceit? It makes no sense. How does John Connor exist in 2017 if his parents traveled forward in time and never consummated their relationship?

Kalogridis and Lussier: Boom! Time travel is crazy, boyyy!

Prosecutor: And how would Arnold Schwarzenegger and Emilia Clarke know to show up to fight the two bad Terminators in 1984? As far as they know, this is happening for the first time. They wouldn’t know to expect those guys. And how can they say the timeline has been rewritten? They can’t possible know that. If it was rewritten, their memories would have been changed. They’d be completely unaware! And why would they travel to the modern day to stop Skynet a few hours before it goes online? They had 30 years!

Kalogridis and Lussier: Boom! High stakes! It’s off the hook!

Prosecutor: You guys are almost worse than Damon Lindelof.

Kalogridis and Lussier: He’s a inspiration to us.

Prosecutor: No further questions.

Judge Brikhaus: Bailiff, please take these two imbeciles away.

Prosecutor: The prosecution calls its final witness, director Alan Taylor.

Alan Taylor: Before we begin, I’d just like to state, for the record, that James Cameron loved this movie.

Prosecutor: Did he get paid to say that?

Alan Taylor: I plead the fifth.

Prosecutor: Mr. Taylor, I’ll get right to it. Terminator 5 is yet another rehash of T2. It has the exact same problem as T3. You copied it and gave us the same movie a third time.

Alan Taylor: You’re wrong about that.

Prosecutor: Am I? In T2, a good Terminator is sent back in time to protect John Connor from a more advanced Terminator. They go on the run for a while, but then take the fight to Skynet. They go on the offensive and destroy the groundwork for their future enemy. T3 is identical. Terminator 5 sends a human and a good Terminator back in time to protect Sarah Connor and Kyle Reese from two other Terminators. They go on the run for a while, but then take the fight to Skynet. They have to fight a more advanced Terminator (John Connor), and destroy the groundwork for their future enemy.

Alan Taylor: You’re splitting hairs.

Prosecutor: I think you made the wrong movie. There were only two good parts: the first was the future. We finally got to see the pivotal moment when Skynet fell and Kyle Reese went back in time; the second was seeing a very young Sarah Connor saved by a Terminator, and her explanation that it raised her.

Alan Taylor: Your point being?

Prosecutor: Either of those would have been better. Watching a young Sarah Connor being raised by a Terminator, to show a human raised by a machine, to examine the philosophical implications of such a thing. The idea is fantastic.

Alan Taylor: *grumbles under his breath*

Prosecutor: Or you could have done the whole movie in the future. Just show the end of the war. Finish it off with Kyle Reese going back in time, and be done with it. End the franchise on a high note! It could have been great!

Alan Taylor: *shifts eyes around*

Prosecutor: And how about your horrible misuse of J.K. Simmons! He could have been an obsessive cop who would stop at nothing to crack the Terminator case from 30 years prior. He could have been half-crazy and a legitimate villain. That would be fascinating, and he has the skill to pull it off. But instead you made him a zany comic relief. What a waste.

Alan Taylor: *his face turns red*

Prosecutor: Instead, you turned in a giant turd of a movie. Yet another unnecessary remake of T2. It tries to do too much. It sends Kyle Reese back in time, it rewrites the timeline, it has three evil Terminators, it has Kyle Reese and Sarah Connor go forward in time, it shows Skynet in human form from a parallel universe. The movie can’t handle all that! No single element has time to be adequately explored. Everything is half-assed. It collapses under its own shitty weight.

Alan Taylor: *steam rises out of his ears*

Prosecutor: My final question is this: do you realize that this movie is a piece of crap, or do you consider something like this to actually be good?

Alan Taylor: Fuck you. If none of you appreciate me, I’m going to leave. Maybe I’ll go back and direct some more episodes of Game of Thrones.

Prosecutor: Could you get Emilia Clarke’s phone number for me?

Judge Brikhaus: Now, it’s time for closing statements.

Defense: Your dishonor, don’t I get a chance to cross-examine the witnesses?

Judge Brikhaus: I’m sorry, but no. This blog post has gone on far too long for that.

Defense: I see.

Judge Brikhaus: Let’s hear the closing arguments.

Defense: Ladies and Gentlemen of the jury, I implore you, find Termintor Gen– I mean, Terminator 5 innocent. It’s a fun summer movie. A Hollywood blockbuster. It isn’t meant to be smart or reinvent the wheel. It’s meant to evoke nostalgia, to wrap the audience in a warm blanket of the past. The audience only needs to revel in the explosions and the one-liners. They don’t need to concern themselves with plot and acting and logic. What’s important is that the movie is entertaining. What more do you need? The defense rests.

Prosecutor: Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, I believe today’s trial speaks for itself. Not a single witness could come up with a coherent argument for the failings of this movie. It is a miserable piece of shit that is not worthy of your time. It’s nothing more than a hollow Hollywood summer shit-spectacular. It’s a product of a dire time in film-production. It prays on our nostalgia for better movies. It relies on nostalgia instead of being inventive, which is a horrible crime. Terminator 5’s laziness is unforgivable. From its mediocre directing, to nonsensical plot, to terrible acting, to huge plot holes, it brings nothing good to the table at all. Please, use your brains and finds this movie guilty as charged.

Judge Brikhaus: Jury members, you will now deliberate. Please take as much time as you need.

Jury Spokesperson: We’re ready now, your dishonor.

Judge Brikhaus: Wow, that was fast. What say you?

Jury Spokesperson: We find the film, Terminator 5, guilty on all counts.

*a great commotion rises in the gallery*

*Judge Brikhaus bangs the gavel*

Judge Brikahus: Order! Order! So help me, I’ll clear this room!

*the commotion dies down*

Judge Brikhaus: Very well. Terminator 5, for your crimes against humanity, I have no choice but to sentence you to life imprisonment. You shall spend the rest of your years toiling away with other horrible and unnecessary sequels like Transformers 2 and A Good Day to Die Hard. May James Cameron have mercy on your soul. Court is adjourned.

Verdict: Shitty

All Terminator films ranked: T2 > Salvation > T1 > T3 > Genisys