2019 Reviews – Terminator: Dark Fate

A brief history of the Terminator franchise: James Cameron writes and directs the first two Terminator movies to critical and audience acclaim. Since then, the powers that be have used three different approaches to keep the franchise going, all with varying unsuccess. Terminator: Dark Fate sees original creator James Cameron return as producer and writer, in some capacity – will this movie right the Terminator ship? Because if making Terminator sequels was baseball, ‘three strikes and you’re out’ would mean we wouldn’t have this one.

Terminator: Dark Fate is directed by Tim Miller and stars Makenzie Davis as Grace, a soldier sent back from the future to protect Dani (Natalia Reyes), who will prove important to humankind when the machines finally take over. The bad guys, not Skynet here but Legion, have sent back a Terminator (Gabriel Luna) to kill Dani. Luckily, with the help of Grace, and an unexpected ally in Sarah Connor (Linda Hamilton), Dani may survive the Terminator’s hellbent crusade and fulfil her destiny. Terminator: Dark Fate takes place some years after Terminator 2: Judgement Day, from 1991, eroding all other sequels in the franchise up to this point in time.

Terminator: Dark Fate does a lot right. There was a worry I had that with a story like this where we’ve seen it done a couple of times now, that developing good characters and presenting reasonable stakes might be overlooked in light of delivering a fantastical spectacle. But no, I really like Grace, who more so elects to run away from the Terminator than fight, as her knowledge of the future-machine makes her aware that it is near unstoppable. Grace is technologically-altered human, and her augmentation makes her body shut down if she fights the Terminator too long – this gives her a weakness that means our heroes have to be wary.

I found the Terminator to be a worthy upgrade on what we have seen before – this Terminator can come apart from his robotic skeleton forming two threats simultaneously. His outer layer is a shape-shifting oily goo whereas the T1000 in Terminator 2: Judgement Day was closer to a liquid metal. Considering Skynet never takes over in this universe, it doesn’t make much sense that the robotic design of the Terminator is exactly the same as the original Terminator as we know it; but I guess it wouldn’t be a Terminator movie if we didn’t have traditional Terminators, so I guess we have to overlook that. Gabriel Luna’s Terminator is also much more social than I remember Robert Patrick’s incarnation, and since we get a few flashforwards of the future in Terminator: Dark Fate, I would have liked to have seen a reason why Legion made that the case. Maybe the Terminators need to be social to infiltrate the camps of the survivors of the future, and merely looking human, like Arnold Schwarzenegger’s Terminator, isn’t enough to trick anyone anymore.

Linda Hamilton is finally back as Sarah Connor! I loved what they did with her too. She is hardened; proud that she prevented the end of the world, but a little resentful that the billions of people saved aren’t thankful that the future they weren’t aware of never happened – it’s a tricky bitterness to get over, I’d imagine. Something I found jarring about Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines was that John Connor wasn’t more jaded; he was aimless, but by preventing Judgement Day, John would never become the special leader that was supposed to be his life’s purpose – you’d think that would create some frustration. Sarah Connor should be doubly pissed; she pretty much got screwed twice by the future – the bad guys sent back a killing machine to kill her, but the good guys sent back the guy who impregnates her with John Connor, and makes her the targeted girl in the first place. Here, Sarah Connor’s anger is well-placed – since John is killed at the start of the movie, she is annoyed at herself for not being able to stop his death, and she wants to help Dani, since she knows how hard it can be to be the girl with the future on her shoulders and a Terminator on her tail.

Also on characters, there’s the Terminator (Arnold Schwarzenegger) that killed John Connor and still lives in the present day. What they decided to do with Carl is straight-up funny. Since Skynet never happened, and Carl’s future was changed, this Terminator receives updated history of the future and is able to send Sarah Connor to locations where alternative-future Terminators are going to show up to destroy them…this is a sci-fi movie, and that explanation was logically sci-fi-y enough for me to buy it. Movie, proceed.

This movie reminded me of Casino Royale in the way that it was able to include witty call-backs to previous films without it coming across as cheesy fan-service (Casino Royale has that great line where James Bond is asked if he’d like his martini shaken or stirred, and we expect him to say “shaken, not stirred”, the classic line, but because he’s gritter in this movie he looks at the bartender and says, “does it look like I give a damn?” Gold!). When Schwarzenegger picked up the sunglasses in Carl’s home, I was like “oh don’t put them on”, and he doesn’t, which is good because the original Terminator took them off a kid to blend in, and didn’t find them lying on his family hatstand. I liked when Grace exclaimed, “come with me or you’ll be dead in 30 seconds”, instead of “come with me if you want to live”, and Dani says something like, “you’re going to die, fucker” instead of, “hasta la vista, baby”, because she’s Spanish so this time the final retort to the Terminator is in English. I also liked the way Sarah Connor announced to Grace and Dani that “[she’ll] be back” and Carl told his family that he won’t be. A little cheese is okay, depending on how it’s melted. The antagonist Terminator also ends up in a cop uniform, and hanging off the back of a speeding car, but it felt congruent to the story so let that repetition slide.

What’s important to note is that I never viewed Terminator: Dark Fate as much a sequel to Terminator 2: Judgement Day as I’d rather call it Dark Fate: A Terminator Story. This is as much connected to the original story as Rogue One is to the Star Wars saga. Terminator: Dark Fate could have been a fan-made graphic novel as easily as a cannon sequel. Because in my Terminator world, John Connor is the chosen one and will grow up to lead the Resistance. What I love the most about The Terminator and Terminator 2: Judgement Day is how they respect time-travel; you can try as you might to change it, but the future is always a result of what happened in the past. Skynet thought they were smart by sending back a Terminator to kill John Connor’s mother, but they inadvertently created John Connor when the Resistance sent back Kyle Reece to defend her. That irony is delicious to me! So since Terminator: Dark Fate destroys John Connor and Skynet in the first few minutes, Terminator: Dark Fate is an alternative future for me and I view it as an alternative sequel. The Terminator franchise has had many whacks at trying to continue the original story, and even had another go at rebooting it, with Terminator: Genisys. Of the four sequels we’ve had after Terminator 2: Judgement Day, this is the best by far. The action, the special effects and the characterisations are all very very good. If you see this movie thinking that Terminator is a cake that’s already been eaten, then you might enjoy this tasty crumb. It’s great to see Linda Hamilton and Arnold Schwarzenegger back in worthy interpretations of their classic characters. Terminator: Dark Fate does all it can do to terminate the terribleness of past sequels.

4.0