Directed by Tim Miller (Deadpool) and produced by James Cameron, Terminator: Dark Fate feels like an actual sequel to Terminator 2, kinda. With Cameron joining, you can basically forget the last three Terminator films and accept this as a return to canon. Goodbye T3, Salvation, and Genisys.
Dark Fate begins basically where T2 left off with a scene that is mildly controversial. Let’s just say there have been better attempts at digital de-aging. Then we are greeted with that all too familiar time-space bubble zapping in Mackenzie Davis‘ character Grace from the future. Dark Fate has an impressively female line-up as Grace’s mission is to protect Dani Ramos, played by Natalie Reyes, with help from the one and only Sarah Connor. Linda Hamilton reprises her role as the seasoned and grizzled Terminator hunter. The Terminator in question, a Rev-9, is a dual grey-goo skeletal hybrid played very well by Gabriel Luna. And of course, Arnie Schwarzenegger is back as the T-800, or Carl, as he’s now called.
To get right down to it, this is a Terminator film plain and simple. Dark Fate doesn’t innovate beyond the general franchise premise — time traveler saving an important person in the past from an implacable murder-bot. The film’s first scene wipes the clean and implies that it’s starting fresh, but then doesn’t take too many unexpected turns. But that’s ok, I guess? Dark Fate is a fun film even though it has almost no originality.
There were a few well-placed one-liners and innovations on well-trod series quotes like, “I’ll be back” and “come with me if you want to live.” And the cast does an excellent job on the whole. I already like Luna who played Ghost Rider on Agents of Shield. And it’s just hard not to enjoy Arnold’s take on an aged murder-bot who has developed something of a conscious. Although this was already sort of explored in Genisys.
But really, Dark Fate rests on its three female leads. And they don’t disappoint. Linda Hamilton is Sarah Connor and she doesn’t miss a beat in her return. As a terminator of Terminators, she is every bit the implacable woman this time around. Likewise, Davis demonstrates that she can kick as much ass as anyone, if not more. If ever there was an audition for a superhero role in the future, this was it. And Reyes, a newcomer, does a good job of grounding the narrative and also being the only character who undergoes development.
All that being said, though, Dark Fate isn’t all that original. As I said, its plot is a fairly vanilla Terminator story. While it boasts some minor innovations they don’t really have an impact on how the narrative plays out. The action scenes were enjoyable but hardly fresh. And then its hard to be unique with murder-bots these days. The grey-goo hybrid was unique but was almost a visual cut and paste from the John-Terminator in Genisys. Despite Cameron’s assistance in writing, Dark Fate cannot break free from what came before and feel like a novel entry.
There is a story beat where we’re told Sarah Connor locates and kills a Terminator sent from the future every two years. She sounds tired and resigned to her fate as she nonchalantly says, “I’ll be back.” This may be a self-awareness in that it seems we’ve had Terminator film after Terminator film and none of them seem to be doing anything. Is this our fate as an audience now? Has the Terminator series become a metaphor for its own plot device? A robotic, implacable franchise that just keeps coming back?
Dark Fate is easily the third-best outing in the series. If it existed in a timeline where T3, Salvation, and Genisys didn’t happen, we’d all be stoked out of our minds. But we’ve had 10 years and three *meh* Terminator films, so our stoke is running dry. Bottom line, though, if you’re a fan of T1 and T2, you won’t be disappointed. It’s still fun to watch murder-bots chase people to the end of their wits.
Terminator: Dark Fate releases Friday, November 1st.
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