Movies Are For Girls: “Terminator: Genisys” (2015)

You can actually track the progression of the boy-movie summer blockbuster to it’s current state of girl-movie by taking a quick look at the Terminator franchise. In “The Terminator,” Sarah Conner is a typical woman who finds herself in an extraordinary situation by-chance, and while she mostly needs the protection of Kyle Reese, when he is incapacitated she successfully rises to the occasion of being pro-active in her own defense.

I doubt my Belarusian grandfather had ever seen “The Terminator,” and maybe his generation would have scoffed at the progressive idea that a woman can defend herself against a murderous future robot, but movies should service some degree of fantasy- in that, I find “The Terminator” acceptable.

“Terminator 2: Judgment Day” (1991) begins the apology tour for the initial movie having had the audacity to place a confused waitress under the protection of a trained soldier. An adult male-lead is deleted from the film entirely and replaced by a redefined Sarah Conner as a strong, independent single-mom. New Sarah doesn’t need a man to protect her, and if she runs into trouble, she has a big, hulking beta-male robot to help out (“muscle”). Important to note that Sarah’s primary interest is in protecting her son, not necessarily saving the world, although that is certainly a secondary interest. While masculine Sarah serves as an apology for her prior incarnation, motherhood is what primarily motivates her beyond selfless duty.

While T2 certainly corrects the error of the helpless Sarah Conner in “The Terminator,” it consequently presents two significant oversights which needed correcting in the 2015 update: Sarah Conner prioritized motherhood, and didn’t have a male-lead to perpetually emasculate for two hours- enter “Terminator: Genisys.”

Even if the progression of Sarah seems a bit cartoonish from the initial movie to its sequel, I’m willing to accept that Sarah could be motivated to act by self-preservation in “The Terminator” and by motherhood in “Terminator 2,” however in “Genisys” we reset to a sexy, single Sarah Conner unburdened by icky motherhood who is motivated by fatalist duty from an early age.

If you didn’t see “Terminator: Genisys,” don’t worry, no one really did, but if you saw “The Force Awakens,” the female characters are entirely interchangeable. Both are beautiful, but neither are feminine. Both are selfless; they’re only motivated by self-preservation and social duty. Both are entirely competent in all things including physical combat and intellectual prowess. And both are far more capable than any of the men around them.

Even the hack-title, “Genisys,” feels calculated and deliberate with it’s Y-replacement of the proper spelling. The film, of course, takes its name from The Bible which presents the traditional gender hierarchy of man/woman. The Y-replacement here signals a redefinition of that starting point, the fruition of our matriarchal new world order.

Traditional spelling is just so patriarchal.

And thus what you have with “Terminator: Genisys” is two-hours of a pretty little girl emasculating a faux Alpha-male until he’s reduced to pure-beta along side a beta-robot father figure to do her bidding when needed (“muscle”); a two-hour, nearly pornographic, female fantasy disguised as an action movie.

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