Terminator: Genisys once again sees Arnold Schwarzenegger starring in the franchise which helped propel him to stardom. The 67-year-old actor steps back into his iconic role as The Terminator, albeit looking somewhat older than the last time we saw him. This age difference is explained quite cleverly by the writers. They not only offer a satisfying explanation as to how a cyborg could have gray hair, but also use the Terminator’s age to humorous effect on numerous occasions throughout the film.
I have to admit, I have long considered myself to be a Terminator fanboy. James Cameron’s Terminator 2: Judgment Day is one of my favorite films of all time. Each of the Terminator films deals with time travel on some level, including Genisys. Yet the amount of time travel in Genisys results in countless changes to the timeline of a story which I thought I knew fairly well. These many changes make it difficult at times to follow the complexities of this film’s story. However, everything falls into place by the end of Genisys, providing a satisfying conclusion worthy of the earlier films in the series.
Sarah Connor’s mantra from the first two films rings true once again in Genisys: “There is no fate but what we make; the future is not set.” This type of anti-deterministic philosophy could also be thought of as an affirmation of the concept of free will. The question of whether humans have free will arises from the concept of an omniscient Creator. The argument goes something like this: “If there is a God, and if that God knows everything that has ever happened and ever will happen, then aren’t the actions of my life already planned out for me (that is, hasn’t the course of my life already been determined by fate)?” Free will contends that humans still have the ability to choose different courses of action, and Christians believe that God’s omniscience does not preclude humanity’s free will. The characters of Genisys echo this struggle as they fight for the right to make their own future rather than simply adhere to a future that had already been planned out for them.
Each of the Terminator films deals with the contemporary fear that the technology we create may one day overpower us. The Terminator was released in 1984, a monumental year in the history of computers, and Terminator 2: Judgment Day came out in 1991, at the start of a decade which saw even more growth in the far-reaching abilities of technology.
Fast-forward to 2015 and the release of Terminator: Genisys. Computers have become even more personal and powerful, pervading nearly every level of our society. Our planet is more technologically interconnected than ever before. People rush to upgrade to the newest phone, computer, tablet, wearable tech, or operating system, each of which seems to promise a more personalized experience and a greater degree of interconnectivity. But is that a wholly good thing?
Terminator: Genisys contemporizes the fear of technology advancing beyond the limits of human control, and it sets forth some powerful questions. Do we as humans feel an innate need to retain sole control of every aspect of our lives, or do we subconsciously long to release control of our lives to something in which we place our faith? And if we choose to place our faith in something else, what might that be? In technology? In other humans? In a higher power? These are the types of serious questions which arise from the Terminator films, and we would do well to seriously ponder them.
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