‘Terminator: Genisys’ Super Bowl trailer still looks awful, but at least it’s short

About a month ago, we were treated to the full, two-and-a-half-minute-long trailer for the upcoming Terminator: Genisys. It told us pretty much everything we need to know about this (kinda) reboot of the Terminator franchise (in a way). This new movie will be coming out a scant six years after the franchise was (in a way) rebooted with Terminator: Salvation, starring Christian Bale. That movie came out during the second season of Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles, which was like a parallel reboot of the franchise.

I guess that’s sort of the thing about time travel franchises: every installment is a reboot, of sorts. Especially a franchise with the central conceit that The Terminator has: a computer system takes over the world, unless Sarah Connor gives bith to John Connor. And Kyle Reese must be sent back in time to save/impregnate Sarah so that John can be born and “good” Terminators can help humanity win the war. Something like that.

Even the beloved, runaway hit Terminator 2: Judgment Day was a reboot, more or less. It injected the idea of Arnold Schwarzenegger as the “good” Terminator and hammered home James Cameron’s message that “the future is not set.”

The new heat that Genisys (good luck typing that without triple-checking Wikipedia for the correct spelling every single time) seems to be bringing to the franchise with this latest reboot is the following:

1. Sarah Connor is now Daenerys Targaryen
2. The T-800 is now an old guy! This is exciting, for some reason
3. There is a creepy-as-hell cartoon of young Arnold

That’s about it. At least Lee Byung-hun as the T-1000 will probably be pretty cool. And everyone like watching school buses do somersaults, I guess. I’m just tired of reboots that are all the same as the ones we just watched several times over. If you need anything, I’ll be over here yelling at kids to get off my lawn.