When John Connor, leader of the human resistance, sends Sgt. Kyle Reese back to 1984 to protect Sarah Connor and safeguard the future, an unexpected turn of events creates a fractured timeline. Now, Sgt. Reese finds himself in a new and unfamiliar version of the past, where he is faced with unlikely allies, including a Guardian T-800, dangerous new enemies, and an unexpected new mission: to stop "Genisys" and reset the future.
Information |
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Language |
English |
Country |
United States |
Premiere date |
July 1, 2015 |
Running time |
126 minutes |
Genre |
Sci-Fi Action Thriller |
Budget |
$155,000,000 |
Box Office |
$440,603,537 |
Crew |
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Directed by |
Alan Taylor |
Produced by |
David Ellison Dana Goldberg |
Written by |
Laeta Kalogridis Patrick Lussier |
Music by |
Lorne Balfe |
Cinematography |
Kramer Morgenthau |
Edited by |
Roger Barton |
Production Co. |
Skydance Productions |
Distributed by |
Paramount Pictures |
Top Cast |
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Official Trailer |
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Movie Collection |
Movie Order: #05 in The Terminator Collection
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The Plot
The Final Offensive: 2029
In the ravaged future of 2029, the war between humanity and the machines reaches its breaking point. Resistance leader John Connor launches a massive, two-pronged final offensive against Skynet, the artificial intelligence determined to eradicate the human race. While the Colorado unit is tasked with striking Skynet’s primary defense grid, the Los Angeles unit—led personally by John and his trusted right-hand man, Kyle Reese—assaults a hidden facility disguised as a work camp. Their objective is to destroy Skynet’s ultimate fail-safe weapon: the Time Displacement Equipment.
The Resistance breaches the facility, but they are moments too late. Skynet has already activated the tactical time weapon, sending a T-800 Model 101 Terminator back to 1984 to terminate John’s mother, Sarah Connor, before John can be born. Understanding the stakes, Kyle Reese volunteers to undergo the perilous journey back in time to protect her, a destiny John has long anticipated. As Kyle begins to levitate within the machine’s magnetic field, he witnesses a horrifying betrayal: Alex, another Resistance soldier, attacks John from behind. As Kyle dematerializes, he watches helplessly as John is overwhelmed. During the temporal jump, the timeline fractures; Kyle is bombarded with memories from a life he never lived—a childhood in a peaceful suburbia—and receives a cryptic, telepathic warning: "Genisys is Skynet," and it will come online in 2017.
The Altered Past: 1984
The timeline Kyle arrives in is radically different from the one he was briefed on. Upon arrival in Los Angeles, the Skynet-sent T-800 is immediately intercepted and disabled not by a helpless waitress, but by a combat-hardened Sarah Connor and "Pops," a reprogrammed T-800 Model 101 that has aged alongside her. Meanwhile, Kyle’s arrival is greeted by a T-1000, a liquid metal Terminator, which he narrowly escapes before being rescued by Sarah and her guardian. The dynamic is shocking to Kyle; Sarah explains that an unknown party sent Pops to 1973 to save her when she was nine years old. After a T-1000 killed her parents, Pops raised her, training her to be a soldier and preparing her for a destiny she resentfully rejects—particularly the decree that she must mate with Kyle to produce the future leader of the Resistance.
The group retreats to a hidden bunker, but the T-1000 tracks them down. It utilizes a drop of its liquid metal to revive the disabled T-800 from the earlier encounter. A chaotic skirmish ensues where Kyle manages to destroy the revived T-800 by blasting its head off. Sarah, taking charge, lures the relentless T-1000 into a trap at a large sewer junction. She shoots down barrels of acid, dissolving the liquid metal machine. As it attempts to reform, Pops holds it under the acid stream until it is completely disintegrated.
A New Destiny: The Jump to 2017
Sarah reveals that she and Pops have constructed a crude Time Displacement Device using scavenged parts, but they lacked the necessary CPU to power it—until now, having harvested the processor from the disabled T-800. Sarah’s original plan was to jump to 1997 to stop Judgment Day. However, Kyle argues that the timeline has shifted. Based on the visions he received in the time stream, he convinces Sarah that the true threat is now "Genisys," a global operating system set to launch in 2017. To stop Skynet, they must travel to that year.
Unfortunately, Pops cannot join them. The time field destroys non-organic matter, and his biological covering was severely damaged by the acid during the fight with the T-1000, exposing his metal endoskeleton. He chooses to stay behind, taking the "slow path" through time, waiting thirty-three years to regroup with them. Kyle and Sarah strip down and activate the machine, leaping forward into the unknown future of 2017.
Genisys and the T-3000
Kyle and Sarah materialize in the middle of a busy San Francisco highway in 2017, naked and disoriented. They are promptly arrested by city police and taken to a hospital. Pops, now with greying hair and signs of age, is delayed by traffic while driving a delivery truck but tails them to the medical facility. Inside, Sarah and Kyle discover that Genisys is a ubiquitous operating system developed by Cyberdyne Systems, championed by Miles Dyson and his son, Daniel. Just as things seem bleak, John Connor suddenly appears, seemingly rescuing them from police custody.
The reunion is short-lived. As they head to the parking garage, Pops arrives and immediately shoots John in the chest. To Sarah and Kyle’s horror, John does not die but regenerates; he is no longer human. He reveals that "Alex," the soldier who attacked him in 2029, was the physical embodiment of Skynet. Skynet infected John with phase-matter nanotechnology, transforming him into a T-3000—a machine cellularly integrated with human tissue. John has been sent back to ensure the creation of Genisys and the rise of the machines. A brutal fight ensues, showcasing the T-3000’s superior speed and strength. Pops manages to temporarily incapacitate John by smashing him into a running MRI machine, utilizing the powerful magnetic field to disrupt the nanobots holding John’s form together, allowing the trio to escape.
The Bridge and the Airborne Chase
With only one day remaining before Genisys goes online, the group retreats to a safe house near the Golden Gate Bridge. They make final preparations to destroy the Cyberdyne mainframe, with Pops fashioning magnetic brass knuckles to physically combat the T-3000. However, John tracks them down, leading to a high-speed chase on the Golden Gate Bridge. The chaotic pursuit results in the bridge taking heavy damage, and Sarah, Kyle, and Pops are once again taken into police custody.
While awaiting interrogation, they are unexpectedly freed by Detective O'Brien, an aging officer who Kyle had saved back in 1984. O'Brien, having spent decades ridiculed for his belief in "time traveling robots," helps them escape. The trio heads to the rooftop and hijacks a helicopter. John pursues them in a helicopter of his own, and an aerial battle rages over the city. In a desperate move, Pops dives from their aircraft directly into John’s helicopter, crashing it into the ground while Sarah and Kyle stabilize their flight toward Cyberdyne headquarters.
The Battle at Cyberdyne
Despite the crash, the T-3000 survives and reaches the Cyberdyne complex first. He interfaces with the system, accelerating the Genisys countdown from thirteen hours to a mere fifteen minutes. Sarah, Kyle, and Pops infiltrate the building, planting bombs at key structural points to bring the facility down. They are intercepted by John, leading to a climatic confrontation. The T-3000’s physical superiority overwhelms them until Pops forces John into the magnetic field of a prototype Time Displacement Machine being built at the facility.
The magnetic field rips John apart, trapping him, but Pops is also caught in the struggle. As the prototype machine overloads, Pops is flung from the device into a nearby vat of experimental mimetic polyalloy (liquid metal). The prototype explodes, triggering the bombs set by the heroes. The entire Cyberdyne complex is leveled, burying the Genisys mainframe and destroying the T-3000, preventing Skynet from coming online.
Epilogue and the Unseen Threat
Sarah and Kyle survive the explosion in a reinforced bunker beneath the facility. As they dig themselves out of the rubble, Pops appears, upgraded and shapeshifting; he fell into the polyalloy vat and his CPU successfully integrated with the liquid metal, granting him T-1000 abilities. With their mission apparently accomplished, the trio travels to Kyle’s childhood home. Kyle finds his younger self and instructs the boy to repeat the warning he receives in the mirror—"Genisys is Skynet"—thereby closing the time loop and ensuring the events unfold correctly.
Freed from the burden of an apocalyptic future, Sarah embraces the ability to choose her own path and decides to stay with Kyle. Along with the upgraded Pops, they drive off into the countryside, optimistic about a new future. However, unbeknownst to them, the victory is not absolute. Deep within a shielded underground chamber beneath the ruins of Cyberdyne, the system core of Genisys remains intact. A holographic projection of Skynet flickers into existence, looking out into the darkness, signaling that the war is not yet over.
