Terminator Genisys is, without a doubt, the most complicated film in the franchise yet. Of course, Terminator was always a bit convoluted, throwing out paradoxes as if they're going out of style, but while in previous films the time travel was more of a narrative device to get the chase movie going, in Genisys the timey-wimey goodness is integral to every beat of the plot. This can mean any post-movie discussion is less about what worked and what didn't, and more just trying to iron out who sent what robot to what year from what timeline. You certainly don't need to have your brain engaged in full gear to follow the movie, but to understand its wider mythology takes a bit of hard thinking. So let's break it down, figuring out what exactly happened, what it all means and what it says about the franchise's future. Needless to say, MAJOR SPOILERS are present throughout.
What Actually Happens?
Before focusing in on the minutia, let's get the broad strokes of the story as simply stated as possible. Terminator Genisys starts off going over the ground of the original movie. In a post-apocalyptic war between machines and humans, Skynet sends a Terminator back in time to kill Sarah Connor, mother of Human Resistance leader John Connor. Kyle Reese is sent back to stop it, which in the original timeline led to him becoming John's father. But this time things are different. The T-800 and Kyle arrive as they did in the original, but then things take a bit of turn. Because of some meddling in the future, Sarah Connor is now a badass accompanied by an aged T-800 Guardian (affectionately known as Pops). Together the trio manage to stop both a rampaging T-1000 and the original Terminator, before turning to the bigger picture. They travel to 2017 in an attempt to avert a new Judgement Day, where Skynet is posing as cloud software Genisys. The engineer of the whole thing is John Connor, who has been turned into a part-man, part-machine by Skynet and sent back to ensure the nuclear war happens in the new timeline. In the end, Pops disintegrates John in his rudimentary time travel machine, which also destroys the Cyberdyne building and Skynet with it. The Guardian fuses with liquid metal to become a mash-up T-800/T-1000 and he, Sarah and Kyle (after doing some timeline sorting) head off to a new, safe future. So now that's clear, let's take a deeper look at what this all means (click next)...
