It’s hard to name a longer-running and yet more uneven franchise than the Terminator films.
The first two have always been the most notable: James Cameron’s The Terminator (1984) set the tone, but easily the best is his 1991 Terminator 2: Judgment Day (“T2”)– oft-cited as that rare sequel that outshines the original. Of the other three I blessedly remember little: my life-size cardboard cutout Kristanna Loken from Rise of the Machines (2003); the homegrown techno remix of Christian Bale cursing out a lighting technician from Terminator: Salvation (2009); deciding not to see, at all, the most recent one (GeniSys, 2015).
Seeking to help the franchise escape the dark fate of the discount bin, Terminator: Dark Fate cleverly asks us to forget everything after T2. (Done!) This film is essentially a mid-stream reboot, picking up with Sarah Connor’s story some years after she and John Connor drive off into the night at the end of T2. Which, if you’re counting, was flipping 28 years ago. (AARP bots, pls don’t spider, thx.)
Dark Fate plays it safe in the plot department: An augmented, semi-terminator woman (Mackenzie Davis) is sent back to protect winsome naif Dani Ramos (Natalia Reyes), who’s suddenly pursued by a fancy new model terminator called the REV-9 (Gabriel Luna). After some very T2-esque knife-hands and truck chases, the two run afoul of Sarah Connor herself (Linda Hamilton, looking delightfully unmodified) and eventually a Cyberdyne Systems Model 101 (Arnold Schwarzenegger). Dani is more than the Mexican everywoman she appears, and by saving her they’re looking not to avert a future (e.g., ending Miles Dyson’s work in T2), but rather to enable one (as with the entire “protect John Connor” theme). So they team up to protect Dani from the new baddie.
In honor of the sheer number of bullets fired in this film, I will include some of my own:
- This is a good, solid Terminator movie. Probably the best since T2, notwithstanding that it plays often as a straight homage to that film. See it, and for the love of SkyNet do NOT think you need to watch Rise of the Machines, Salvation, or GeneSys first. If anything, watch T2.
- It’s very 2019. Three female main characters, an evil male villain (at times even wearing a Border Patrol uniform!), no mention of any love interests (thanks Frozen!), some scenes inside a border detainee facility, and quips about Texan gun ownership. Trump-era software patch: Applied.
- We’re treated to a blink-and-you’ll miss it update to the SkyNet / AI takeover story (SkyNet is out; Legion is in), but fundamentally nothing about the future seems very different from prior outings. Machines shall hunt people. (May they begin with wrong-way drivers and the MAGA crew.)
- I’m sure the Terminator films have never been poster-children for realism in action, but this grates on me more now than it did 28 years ago. The veneer of Fast-and-Furious level silliness to much of the action was, to me, unwelcome. In sci-fi, dialing up the (perceived) realism similarly increases potency. (Think, e.g., Sunshine, Minority Report, Primer).
Dani Ramos, we learn, has an important role to play in the future human resistance. But rather than just telling us this (as the films in past did with John Connor’s leading of the “human resistance”), here we’re shown why. This is the weakest part of the story, should have been cut.- Tim Miller directs. It’s just his second feature, after debuting with Deadpool. It’s well done, a solid action film, but if you’re looking for that Ryan Reynolds fourth-wall-break humor (or really any at all), keep in mind that Tim Miller didn’t write Deadpool.
- It’s nice to see Sarah Connor again. There’s some notable CGI de-aging early on, and an equally notable lack thereof through most of the film. Brava, Linda. Looking real and looking good. Ditto Arnold.
- I promised myself I would get through this review without calling it Terminator: Dork Fate, because net net, it’s not really that dorky of a film. So I’ve either made good on this promise or not.
Haus Verdict: Terminator: Dark Fate is easily the best Terminator since T2 (but also very similar to that film). It could’ve been more, but given the discount-bin fate of the franchise otherwise, I’ll make do with a solid, watchable, slick outing. See it, and don’t hold the last three movies against it.
Terminator: Dark Fate opened Friday November 1.
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