Elegy for the Governator: "Old, but not obsolete" Arnold takes on a killer app in the bewildering time-travel paradox of “Terminator Genisys”

In “Terminator Genisys,” which I guess must be described as an “alternate-universe reboot” of the sci-fi action franchise launched by James Cameron 31 years ago, some digital wizardry is wrought so that we see Arnold Schwarzenegger’s eponymous cyborg land in Los Angeles in 1984. He looks approximately like the old Ahh-nold, and not so much like the leather-jacketed antihero of Cameron’s first film as the bulging, sleek, poofily coiffed bodybuilder of “Stay Hungry” and “Pumping Iron.” Or rather, he looks like a model of the young Arnold sculpted in plasticine and brought to life, which serves as a decent analogy for this entire movie, a confusing and expensive jumble of recycled parts. Kyle Reese, the purported hero of this movie, is an idiot in all possible universes, and if there are fans out there who genuinely care about the internal machinery of the “Terminator” franchise, they’re going to wish they could forget the role this profoundly irritating dude plays in the story. While the movie addresses the fact that the adult Kyle who went back to 1984 and then forward to 2017 now intersects with a version of himself at age 13 or so, no one ever mentions the possibility that Clarke’s 20-something, time-traveling Sarah Connor might run into her “real” counterpart, who by my count would be 53 years old.