The problem with reboots and remakes of great movie franchises is that, about 90 percent of the time, they get caught up in paying homage to their predecessors, recalling the original’s most iconic scenes and doing them half as well. Terminator: Genisys falls neatly into this category of uninspired fan service cash grabs, but to its credit, it’s the cream of the crop when it comes to Hollywood schlock. It’s a well-oiled, inoffensive thrill machine that doesn’t approximate T1 and T2‘s entertainment value by a zillion miles, but is by and large a painless, easily-digestible summer action movie starring the former king of summer action movies.

Arnold Schwarzenegger (I will from this point forward only refer to him as “Ahnold,” because I must) has reinvented his career in recent years by shedding all self-seriousness and making movies (as far as we can tell) for the fun of it. He acknowledges that he’s 67 years old and no longer pilots his career with a macho-bullshit attitude, and that’s really, really endearing. This newly acquired “old guy” appeal is the best thing about this fifth installment of the long-running Terminator franchise, in which he reprises his role as the T-800, though this time with a paternal twist (as strange as that sounds). Will hearing Ahnold say “I’ll be back” ever get old? His new catchphrase, “Old. Not obsolete,” might be the best answer to that question. Ahnold isn’t as badass or relevant as he was twenty years ago, but heaven knows he’s still fun to watch.

Director Alan Taylor’s picture begins with the series’ most familiar scenario. We start in a machine-ravaged 2029 and find human resistance leader John Connor (Jason Clarke) sending his right-hand man, Sgt. Kyle Reese (Jai Courtney), back in time to protect (and knock up) his mother, Sarah Connor (Emilia Clarke). History gets skewed, however, as Kyle arrives in an already-altered 1984 in which Miss Connor is a far-from-fragile machine killer who’s been protected since childhood by a T-800 she calls “Pops” (Ahnold). From this point forward the film becomes both a continuation of the original mythology and a reboot of sorts, a la JJ Abrams’ 2009 stab at Star Trek. It sees Sarah and Kyle launched forward to 2017 to destroy Skynet, which has taken the form of a popular life-management operating system called “Genisys,” before the world-wiping “judgment day” ever happens.

It comes as no surprise the movie is packed wall-to-wall with time-travel explication, mostly administered by the socially ill-equipped Pops (in Ahnold’s iconic Austrian monotone, of course). Kyle hurtles from 2029, to 1984, to 2017, where he finds himself in the awkward situation of learning that his mentor is actually his son, whose mother is the girl he’s been manipulated to fall in love with for years, but just met yesterday. There are alternate timelines, memories from impossible pasts, flashbacks to the future—the mind boggles! But not too much. Taylor actually does a great job of making the time-travel loopiness easy to follow, though the humor mined from it is pretty lame; watching Kyle agonize over timeline logistics is grating, especially when he makes the obligatory “Say it in English!” joke.

The movie never gets stopped dead by the bullets of exposition because the action is piled on so relentlessly. It’s all pretty standard fare: big, meaty explosions; buses doing somersaults in slow motion; San Francisco getting brutally demolished (seriously, what’s with Hollywood’s current obsession with wiping out SF?). The action, like the plot, is comprehensible and well presented, but doesn’t bring a whole lot to the table in terms of artistry or innovation. (An effect that sees the newest terminator incarnation leaving shadows of itself behind while breaking free from an MRI is the sole exception.) Taylor simply doesn’t have the knack for over-the-top action Cameron does, though fans will be happy with some of the movie’s shameless recalls to the originals (“old” Ahnold throwing fists with CGI young Ahnold is awesome).

The father-daughter-new boyfriend dynamic between the three leads is amusing, but it fails to launch emotionally. It’s good for laughs from time to time (Kyle and Pops exchanging impudent glares as they race to fill ammo clips in an unspoken “best guardian” competition), but the movie’s dramatic climax is a stinker that goes nowhere fast. The actors are serviceable (Courtney is a much better villain than hero, as seen in the Divergent series), with Ahnold’s robot-failing-at-acting-human schtick being the most memorable character impression we’re left with. There’s a levity to the material that may infuriate those who hoped for a grittier kind of doomsday movie, though I found it welcome.

Terminator: Genisys is a bridge to the future in that it captures the feel (not the greatness) of T1 and T2 while laying the groundwork for a full departure from the old mythology in forthcoming installments. J.K. Simmons makes an appearance as the only surprise in a mostly unsurprising movie, playing a ruffled cop who’s spent decades obsessing over a life-changing experience he had with a deadly robot in 1984. He’s a warm representation of the legions of fans who’ve been in love with the Terminator series since 1984’s The Terminator; the childlike smile on his face while in the presence of Sarah Connor, John Connor, Kyle Reese and the T-800 says it all.

Set in pre-colonial New Zealand, The Dead Lands follows a Maori boy (James Rolleston) who recruits a legendary warrior (Lawrence Makoare) to help him avenge his tribe and father, who were slaughtered in a violent act of treachery. Directed by Toa Fraser, the film is a brutal, grimy tale of revenge that focuses on Maori martial arts, a form of combat seldom, if ever, seen on-screen. It’s a rare representation of New Zealand culture in its purest form, as well as a thrilling beat-’em-up in the vein of ’80s and ’90s action classics like Rambo and Predator. We recently spoke to Fraser about representing New Zealand cinema, his partnership with Gareth Evans and the Raid crew, the tradition of physical expression in New Zealand, actors acting with their bodies, constraints fueling creativity, and much more.

The Dead Lands is out in limited release today.

Coming from an American perspective, The Dead Lands is unique on several levels, especially because my familiarity with the Maori is so limited.
Me and all the cast grew up watching Terminator 2 and Commando, so from our point of view, it was an opportunity to tell a story in our world in a way that we wanted to when we were kids, playing with broomsticks and smacking each other over the head, wondering what it would be like to be one of our ancestors. There’s a great storytelling tradition we grew up with, stories from the Pacific that have been handed down from generation to generation. They were told in a particular kind of way, and they often had this ghostly quality to them, as well as an athletic, muscly quality. We wanted to tell the story in the way our ancestors might have if they had access to the tools and equipment we have these days.

The film’s mostly been talked about as an action movie, and while it is, I think it’s better categorized as a martial arts movie. Is that fair?
Yeah, sure. We worked with XYZ Films on this and Gareth Evans was really helpful to me. I had a great couple of conversations with him. All of those Raid guys have been very supportive of us. There was this really awesome sort of conversation across the ocean between Indonesia and New Zealand during pre-production. New Zealand kind of sits in the middle of Western and Eastern storytelling traditions.

The fighting is really in-your-face and intimate, really small-scale.
We wanted to do that. There was a way to make this film with a bigger budget, with helicopter shots and wires and slow motion, but we wanted to keep it bare-bones, raw, and real, but with a graphic novel quality as well. It’s a film that draws from many influences across the world.

If I’m being honest, I’ve lived a very sheltered life. I’ve never been in a real fight, and I haven’t inflicted much physical harm on anyone else. So watching your characters, whose lives and culture are so ingrained in violence, is really fascinating to me. Can you talk about the psychology of your characters, who answer the call to violence so readily?
I suppose the most important thing that springs to mind while listening to you speak is this idea of there being a sense of a code of violence and combat in this world. That was really important to us when we were making the movie. There’s not just fighting, but a lot of pre-fight theatricality and dance and posturing, that tongue-waggling stuff, which is as important as the fighting, almost. My experience growing up as a teenager in Auckland…I was involved in fights growing up. It was quite a part of our culture. We were really aware that violence was a major part of the language of this movie, but at the same time we wanted to talk about the code around it as well.

I talk about this a lot: I think not enough attention is given to actors who act with their bodies. I think your actors are phenomenally expressive storytellers with their bodies.
That’s awesome. A great compliment. That comes from theater as much as anything else. A lot of these guys come from a theater tradition. In fact, there was a production of Troilus and Cressida in Maori at Shakespeare’s Globe in London about a year and a half before we made this movie, and a lot of the actors that were involved in that, their performances inspired the production of our movie. When we were in L.A. last week, James Cameron gave Xavier Horan a similar compliment. He said, “He moves so well.” It was a beautiful compliment. Our culture is very physically expressive: We love rugby and dancing, and it’s a very strong way of expressing ourselves, through physicality.

Whenever you’re watching the Academy Awards and they show clips of the acting nominees, we only ever see them doing these dialogue scenes in little rooms. We never see someone praised for expressing themselves with their bodies.
I did a dance film before this, Giselle, and I worked closely with Ethan Stiefel on that, the great American choreographer. He’s a martial arts guy himself, so we talked a lot about, for this film, the body language of a warrior and what he thought a warrior would move like. Low center of gravity, a lot of weight in the knees. I totally agree with you.

I think Lawrence Makoare’s physical stuff is great. Whether he’s beating people up or laying on the ground hurt, he’s a great storyteller. What discussions did you have with him about his physical performance before shooting?
I didn’t really know what kind of movie I was going to make until Lawrence came in and did his audition. He did a performance of one of the emotional scenes that was pretty good. I gave him a tiny bit of direction, and his next version was amazing. We all sat around on the floor crying. Lawrence, referring to his tears, said, “Don’t you think this will make me weaker?” I said, “No, it makes you stronger.” He was a long way away physically and linguistically from where he wanted to be for that character, so I trained with him and a trainer for four weeks. It was hell. When it came to shooting, we didn’t have to talk much. We had each others’ back.

You’ve said that movies done in pre-colonialism New Zealand don’t really exist, and that it’s an untapped time in history. Would you like to revisit the time period again?
I loved making this movie, and it’s very much in the tradition of the stories we grew up with. In terms of New Zealand cinema, this is only the second full-length feature film in Maori. We were very aware that we were tentatively opening a door, and we worked hard to make sure the door was opened properly.

You’ve also said that you’re a big proponent of creativity being born of constraints. Can you give me a specific example of how constraints helped your creativity on this film?
I guess I mentioned it before, but going for a very brutal, dusty, sweaty, bloody kind of style was born out of constraints. We didn’t have a massive budget, so we didn’t have drone cameras or helicopter shots. The whole ethos was born of a tight schedule and a desire to tell a story in a way that we feel is very much a part of us.

There’s a nighttime fight scene in the film that looks incredible.
That was a real collaboration over months to get that scene to look right, from the beautiful location of Piha Beach in Auckland to the post-production facilities in London. Raukura Turei, who plays Mehe, the only female warrior in the movie, had a big sense of responsibility herself. When she rehearsed the scene she was doing it on a nice clean floor, but I forgot to tell her we’d be doing it in a stream and that there would be rocks under her feet. But the real key to the look of that scene was Leon Narbey’s great cinematography, but also a very talented colorist in London named Sam Chynoweth. Grading and coloring movies is such a massive part of the process these days. When I found out he was working in the building, I said, “We need that guy!” Turns out Sam was one of the guys who colored The LEGO Movie, which is one of the massive achievements in visual pizazz in the last ten years. He worked really hard. We actually shot that scene in daytime. If you’re into the look of that scene, it’s largely down to a modest guy in a post-production place in London.

Unfortunately, I was rather unimpressed with the 3D effect in the theater. Being that this was my first 3D experience, I was imagining the 3D parts to be a little better. I think I would have enjoyed the film just as much without the 3D. After about 20 minutes, I nearly forgot about the 3D, except for a few scenes. So if anything don’t let that be the only reason you watch this film, believe it or not, it has a story too.

Avatar is about a paraplegic war veteran, Jake, who is brought in to learn the culture of another planet, Pandora. Our military has greedy corporate intentions of mining for precious materials which happens to be loaded on Pandora. While trying to dig up information about the local customs of the Na’vi race, he begins to fall in love with one of them. This forces him to choose between carry out the mission or to take the side of the Na’vi and fight for their land.

The concept behind Avatar was very interesting. I saw metaphors of racial issues, environmentalism, and even religion. Somewhat similar to District 9. Looking at the big picture, the film was well written and imaginative. Which is what a film that is the highest grossing film in history should consist of. It was also one of the most expensive movies ever made up to this date with an estimated budget of US $280 million.

It was by no means perfect though. First off, on more than a couple occasions, the film was fairly predictable and typical. There were some minor flaws too such as, how did the Na’vi get guns in the battle towards the end?

Some of the things I enjoyed best were the little details, such as: the interfaces of the computers they used, the way monitors were curved and transparent, how a tablet computer should really function, those jellyfish looking creatures and the way you had to “connect” to the animals. I thought the CGI was top notch and Oscar worthy. It’s pretty incredible that 60% of the film is actually photo-realistic CGI.

Bottom line, I thought the film was worth watching, especially for the broad concepts, technologies and metaphors. The subtle details. It did a lot of things pretty well but it didn’t get too far from the stereotypical Hollywood formula for a blockbuster film. Perhaps it didn’t want or need to though.

Update: It did end up winning Best Cinematography, Best Visual Effects, and Best Art Direction at the Oscars.