Monday Morning Quarterback Part I
By BOP Staff
July 7, 2015
BoxOfficeProphets.com
Felix Quinonez: I think it's the nail in the coffin for this franchise reboot. Their plans for two sequels always seemed like extreme wishful thinking but after this performance I really see no chance of that happening. I would actually pay to hear someone try to justify going forward with their sequel plans after this.
Edwin Davies: This is pretty terrible, especially considering that it shot under the performances of both the previous installments in the series, neither of which ended up doing particularly well. If they wanted to relaunch the franchise, they needed to make a big impression on opening weekend, and that didn't happen. The negative reviews and mediocre word-of-mouth will also kick the legs out from under it, so the chances of it matching its production budget of $155 million domestically seems pretty much impossible at this point. International numbers could make up the difference, but it would need to earn $400 million overseas to even have a chance of seeing a profit, which seems like a big ask.
Ben Gruchow: I kind of feel bad talking about this, like I'm kicking something while it's down. On the strength of the early foreign gross alone, this won't be an outright disaster on the level of Tomorrowland, or The Lone Ranger, or John Carter. It's also going to make Terminator Salvation look like a hit by comparison, and I'm with Felix: I think this is the end of the road for the franchise (until the inevitable reboot in 2035, with Judgment Day now delayed until 2039 and Skynet being the dark side of wearable tech*). My biggest question is actually whether or not Paramount even expected a better result. I don't know if there was ever a point where this Terminator project was met with anything other than derision or indifference from the public...but if there was, it dissipated by the time the Genisys name was announced, and any remaining enthusiasm was dashed with the first trailer. So I guess the flipside of feeling bad about this is to realize that Paramount should have realized they had it coming.
This is the fifth entry in a franchise with two success stories followed by two consecutive misfires. The Terminator franchise bears a pretty close resemblance to the Batman series in this regard (with the added note that Terminator Salvation in no way approached the depths of Batman & Robin). When Warner Bros. decided to reboot their series with $150 million, they got a well-respected director with a notable visual sense and distinctive storytelling method, a screenwriter who'd earned some pretty decent genre credentials up to that point, and an insanely distinguished cast. Paramount got the guy behind a Thor sequel, the writer behind Drive Angry and Dracula 2000, and an absolutely middle-of-the-road cast. Better things than "Genisys" have been made with less to work with, but not very often and not with these stakes. It'll be a long time before the Terminator name is commercially viable again, if ever, and that's not something to be very happy about. At least Paramount still has Mission: Impossible - Rogue Nation to hope for.
Jason Barney: As I read over the other comments I was pleased to see a bit of regret from our staff. Many of us are realizing something which is very sad, that the Terminator franchise may be put on the shelf for a very long time. Paramount put a lot of money into this project and even if the international numbers do emerge, there is no way the money works out.
I think Paramount purchased the rights to a possible tent pole series and the worst case scenario has developed. Studios are all about being able to produce sequels as part of a successful line, and I wonder if they thought they could just get the first of this reboot out there, and then they could evaluate where to go from there. Unfortunately, Paramount now has the rights to Terminator and it will be awhile before we see another one.
Transformers, Hunger Games, The Hobbit, Star Trek, Star Wars, Avengers, Iron Man....you don't have to look very far to look at what studios have done with multiple entries in film line. Terminator should be in this group. At one time it was.
Reagen Sulewski: While there's little defending the performance of this movie on an individual level, it does go to show why people keep trying to make fetch happen here. This was probably a worst case scenario in terms of marketing and reviews, and it still managed to not crater. There's value in the franchise even if no one seems to know how to make it work anymore. People want a good Terminator movie (I still stand by #3 - a ballsy bit of franchise warping) if only someone will make it. Maybe Cameron can come back to this when he's done making all the Avatar films and give it the Mad Max treatment.
Ben Gruchow: Cameron coming back to the franchise is actually something there's been some muted whispers about; I first read about the possibility on IBN last October. Speaking of that general time period, I won't name names, but there was a list-based article that got published around that time that basically outlined four reasons why Genisys was doomed before it got a chance to survive, and all four of them are remarkably on-point. It was from this article that I learned (and subsequently forgot) that Alan Taylor was the fifth directorial choice for the movie. The studio had already tried for Ang Lee, Rian Johnson, Denis Villeneuve, and Justin Lin; all four backed out.
I agree with Reagen that there's a market out there for a good Terminator film; heck, I went into the movie last weekend knowing the Rotten Tomatoes score, and I was still hoping to be pleasantly surprised. Having said that, a total redefinition of the universe by Cameron himself is probably the only way a good film will happen now.
Leaving the popularity of the core concept aside for a moment, Skynet as an antagonist has become wheezy and tired and resolutely non-intimidating. The T-1000 liquid-metal concept is 24 years old and still has no worthy successor (mad props to Kristanna Loken for making an absolutely splendid Terminator, but I still don't understand how its architecture is an advancement over the T-1000). The characters involved have been back and forth through time so often and Judgment Day has been retconned enough times that there's precious little meat left on this particular storytelling bone.
Kim Hollis: I’d echo the sadness that people are feeling here. The Terminator (1984) is one of my favorite films. I saw it in the theater at the time, and it blew me away. In fact, I’d go so far as to say that I vividly remember my movie-going experience for both Terminator and T2. I know who I saw them with and remember quoting lines from the film for weeks (years?) afterward. They were pivotal experiences in my becoming a fan of cinema.
Fast forward to 2015 and I can’t even be bothered to go see the latest Terminator in theaters. That’s depressing, because even if Rise of the Machines and Salvation were lesser films, I still was excited to see them on opening night (and agree with Reagen that 3 is an underrated flick). I’d even call this result shameful. It’s going to be a disaster, especially as it falls off the face of the Earth over the next couple of weeks.
David Mumpower Let's call this performance the anti-Mad Max. Whereas that moribund franchise rose from the grave to demonstrate verve and energy, Terminator V failed to move the dial in any sense. I've openly mocked the trailers, which go a long way in making me love Khaleesi less, and I maintain that if they had it to do all over again, they would have cast Orphan Black in the Sarah Connor role instead. It wouldn't have mattered, though. The crazy-ass plot for this movie combined with the stubborn decision to include the utterly irrelevant Governator put this project behind the 8-ball long before principal photography began.
I agree with the consensus here that Terminator matters as a brand. It could excel if the right director breathed new life into the project, but I don't even see James Cameron as a savior at this point. It needs to go away for half a dozen years before another reboot attempt. By then, home robotics will be ubiquitous, so the revolutionary idea of Skynet may seem perfunctory and dull. It was imperative for this reboot to succeed to avoid the issue. Instead, we're talking about a least case scenario result. As someone who considers Terminator 2: Judgment Day one of the seminal action films of all-time, that breaks my heart.