Hollywood franchises consistently use cutting edge technology to inform about the perils of overreaching ambitions. When optic fibre is promising a seamless world, you want to know the source where you are plugged in. This week Alan Taylor reboots the Terminator franchise to strike home the point. The point is Taylor doesn’t cut the umbilical cord with the original James Cameron classic and still tries to create a new being. It is a tough ask and from a distance it does look like a mangled mess but as it unravels you realise there is more to it than just a copybook homage.
Skynet, the smart computer is playing nasty with the humanity in an apocalyptic future. John Conner (Jason Clarke) is the last commander standing with a prophetic aura around him. We are into the night when humanity will once again get the better of machine but suddenly something snaps. The machine cheats and sends a terminator back in time to kill Sarah (Emilia Clarke), the mother of John so that its nemesis never gets born. In reply John also makes his trusted aide Kyle (Jai Courtney) time travel to stop the evil plans of Skynet.
But as he goes back we discover that things are not simple. Sarah already knows about the return of John and she has a terminator (Arnold, of course!) to guard her. She calls him Pops. He is aging, becoming more human and but he says he is old but not obsolete. This is true about the franchise as well.
As the alternate time line comes into the picture, logic gets short circuited. As Taylor tosses between tribute and technology overkill, the narrative gets incoherent. But then Taylor puts J.K. Simmons as the bewildered detective –– a comic relief –– who has not been able to keep pace with the multiple timelines and alternate realties. In a way he represents the state of audience. Every time you ask Oh! But how it is a possible, Taylor moves on to a new conceit and you feel like ok I will come back to it but there is no such timeline for audience in this crisply edited saga.
The action is not consistently fascinating and 3D doesn’t add any extra depth but the performances are top rate. Arnold’s imposing presence is still hypnotic and Emilia and Jason impart a human layer to the mechanical world. There is more. As the machines shift shapes, Sarah holds Pops tight when she is about to go into another timeline, the machine that Pops is, calls it a meaningless gesture. It says why holdback something that you have to let go. It is this conflict between man and machine, between rational and emotional that makes one invest in the narrative. When John, seemingly compromised, travels back in time to see his young mother and exults that there is nothing like fate, you ponder. The film smartly plays with the fear of future where given a chance the mother doesn’t want to mate again because she knows what her son has become. It is this magic realism that makes a fantasy play with your realistic fears.
