(The following review is spoiler-free)

There’s something to be said for a franchise entry that doesn’t play it safe. Considering how many sequels and reboots are greenlit solely for brand recognition or continued recognition, an installment that actually tries to re-envision its source material and add new twists to its story deserves some commendation. On that level, let’s give Terminator Genisys its dues. The movie contains plenty of twists and surprises (many of which were ruined by the trailers) that offset the conventions of the series, and it acts as both a continuation and a new entry point for the franchise.

Unfortunately, most of my praise ends there. The plot, which follows JJ Abrams’ Star Trek by being both a reboot and a sequel, is woefully convoluted and never fully explained. Unlike Star Trek, which has had a mostly-linear continuity and was not significantly affected by time-travel before the Abrams films, the Terminator films are already burdened with a complicated (and, if we’re being honest, inconsistent and illogical) history of time-fuckery. By adding yet another layer of time-travel complications and alternate timelines onto a series with already-questionable continuity, the inconsistencies in time-travel logic and the overt complexity of the plot proves too much to handle.

Again, it’s not like this series was previously sound when it came to time travel logic. The original film indicates that the future is actually set in stone, that Kyle Reese traveling back in time is an event that was always going to happen, and that his actions had led to the film’s future in the first place. Terminator 2’s insistence that the future can be prevented altogether is completely inconsistent with that idea, but at least it works within the context of that particular film. Both films function on a similar level to Back to the Future: their mechanics are illogical and inconsistent, but are functional. They always makes cause and effect clear in the moment, even if they don’t stick to the same rules.

In Genisys, the writers try to reconcile both forms of time travel, but they simply can’t exist side by side, and trying to do so muddles the film’s sense of consequence. The future can exist unchanged at the beginning, because the characters have not traveled back in time yet, but Kyle Reese can receive a message from his 13-year-old self that he himself plants later in the film. The whole plot is reliant on the idea that the characters can change the future, but John Connor eventually states that the 2017 events are an off-shoot of the rest, so their actions there are inessential and will not cause complications. But if that’s the case, then what is the point of the machine’s “change the past to win the war” scheme in the first place? Nothing about the film’s time travel makes any sense on a narrative level, either in the moment or as a whole.

That’s not to say that Terminator Genisys doesn’t try to make sense of it. Oh God, does it try. More than half of the film could be described as exposition. Characters are constantly explaining time-travel phenomena or having it explained to them, and these plot-heavy interludes kill the pacing of the movie. Unlike the original Terminator, in which Kyle Reese and Sarah Connor are pretty much left to their own devices, their characters are instead directed here by secondary characters or strange, prophetic memories from alternate timelines. Their actions are never completely their own, which clashes with the film’s “No Fate” philosophy, as carried over from Terminator 2.

But the film’s biggest flaw is in what it doesn’t try to explain. The two biggest juncture points from the continuity of the original series (regarding “Pops” and John Connor) are never remotely explained. There’s a hint that the writers were saving such revelations for a sequel, but given how these questions are integral to the plot of the movie, not including them here is inexcusable.

I admit that this review is somewhat unfair, as I’ve barely gotten around to the action and effects in what is essentially a summer blockbuster movie. But when the character motivation is so lacking and the relationship in the center of the film is oft-neglected for poorly-considered sci-fi nonsense, it’s hard to care about the proceedings in the first place. It’s a shame to see a movie spend so much time explaining its concept while ultimately saying nothing at all.