The OTHER Terminator Movies: A Review of "Terminator: Dark Fate"

"Ok Arnold, I shot fifty-two with my Steam workshop add-ons. How many did you shoot?"
"One... I am running stock."

Happy Friday, hope everyone had a fantastic Fourth of July. I spent mine drinking beer in a pool! I already experienced fireworks that prior Saturday evening so I was set, very relaxing. You should get a pool if you ever have a chance. Forget your mortgage and student loan payments, just invest in a nice pool. It'll flip your life around one-eighty in no time, and you'll feel more fulfilled then you would paying off those pesky loans. Guaranteed.

"So... even though we're technically the same
person, should I call you 'boss'?"
"No, simply 'your royal highness' will do."

Since reviewing the final Indiana Jones film that came out, I returned and finished the Terminator series with the one I hadn't quite seen yet to close out this series of reviews. We've been able to knock out the entirety of the Terminator movies this year... with James Camer-thon leading into this follow up series, and it all comes down to this. We've seen some stellar sci-fi masterpieces, a couple so-so, part good-part bad movies, and when we last left off we had a real crap-fest on our hands with Terminator Genisys. Now, James Cameron himself, right smack-dab in the middle of directing Avatar: The Way of Water, offered to produce and develop the story of the next "attempt at a new trilogy" Terminator reboot. That's right... as Rafiki once said, "The king has returned". Would this new Terminator film finally return us to form? Would we finally get the true "James Cameron-esque" sequel we've been wanting since Terminator 2: Judgment Day?

Ehhhhhh....... I'll say this. It tried. It has some really fascinating new takes for the franchise (finally), but it still fell victim to the same tropes the not-so-good sequels fell victim to. Let's dissect this mish-mash sequel and figure out what works and doesn't! This is Terminator: Dark Fate, a movie that teaches us experimenting with new ideas is ok as long as you also dial it back and play it safe with aging action stars the Gen X'ers can get behind.

This is how your kids' friends roll up to your door
asking if they can come in and play.

The movie starts off with a "bang" (literally) in1998, three years after destroying Cyberdyne Systems. We see Sarah (digitally de-aged Linda Hamilton) and John Connor (digitally resurrected Edward Furlong... wait, wait he's not dead? Huh, could've fooled me) have retired to Livingston, Guatemala. They are suddenly ambushed by a T-800 Terminator (Brett Azar, with Arnold Schwarzenegger's 1991 likeness digitally pasted over him), one of several sent back through time by Skynet, which kills John despite Sarah's attempts to stop it.

RIGHT OFF THE BAT... This movie slaps you in the nuts. Or kicks you right in the ovaries, if you're female. Equality, pal. Uhh... so this movie means to tell us that every single solitary T-800 and T-1000 sent back in time having a movie-length back-and-forth with our heroes fails... but this one that just happens to stroll up to John in GUATEMALA somehow just smuggles a shotgun into a tiki bar and blows his body apart?! and it SUCCEEDS and JOHN CONNOR DIES?! WITHIN THE FIRST FIVE FUCKING MINUTES?!?! HOLY DOG SHIT, this movie is asking us to immediately be okay and cope with A LOT OF STUFF. James Cameron thought his bookend-ending for T2 must've been weeeeeeeak some twenty-eight years on. Like... John Connor's dead. He's been the target the last five movies, and in JC's first foray back into Terminator in almost thirty years, he just mercs John Connor. That takes some serious balls, dude. The rest of this movie better be SPECTACULAR.

Mackenzie Davis doing her best impression of Doom guy.

In 2020, an advanced Terminator, the Rev-9 (Gabriel Luna), is sent back in time to Mexico City to murder Dani Ramos (Natalia Reyes), while a cybernetically enhanced soldier, Grace (Mackenzie Davis), is sent from 2042 to protect her. The Rev-9, disguised as Dani's father (Enrique Arce), infiltrates the automobile assembly plant where Dani and her brother Diego (Diego Boneta) work, but is thwarted by Grace, who escapes with the siblings. The Rev-9, using its ability to split into its cybernetic endoskeleton and shape-shifting liquid metal exterior... which I'm not going to lie, I was surprised this idea wasn't done already. However, it's done here and it is pretty sweet. It pursues them, killing Diego and cornering Grace and Dani. However, Sarah Connor (properly aged Linda Hamilton) arrives and temporarily disables both forms of the entity using military-grade weaponry. How does Sarah Connor get her hands on military grade weaponry? Look, we don't ask that question. We certainly haven't in the past, and we don't now.

Dani, Grace, and Sarah retreat to a motel. Sarah reveals that she found them because in the years since John's death she has received encrypted messages detailing the locations of arriving Terminators, each ending with "For John", allowing her to destroy them before they become threats. Again, another pretty radical idea. That story idea alone could've been a worthy sequel. Grace notes that Skynet and John do not exist in her future, meaning Sarah succeeded in destroying the former after Cyberdyne went defunct. However, humanity's future is threatened by another AI called Legion, originally developed for cyberwarfare, which was built in Skynet's place... see this is fascinating, while being the Genisys style "new software in a new timeline" which is lazy, this is "a replacement software in the same timeline". It again goes the Terminator 3 route, further explaining/defining that "Judgment Day is inevitable". So even though it seems lazier, it actually satisfies me more than the whole "timeline reboot" malarkey. Anywho, when Legion became a threat to humans, an attempt was made to neutralize it with nuclear weapons, resulting in a nuclear holocaust and the AI creating a global network of machines to terminate the human survivors, who organized a resistance movement to counter Legion's onslaughts, and Dani's destiny is linked to their war against it.

"Listen you old decrepit bitch, I say where we go,
I say when we go, and I pick the ice cream parlors we
eat at! You got it?"

Grace traces the source of Sarah's messages to Laredo, Texas. Barely evading the Rev-9 and the authorities while crossing the Mexico–United States border, they arrive at their source, where they discover the same T-800 (a properly aged Arnold Schwarzenegger) that had killed John. Having fulfilled his mission and with Skynet no longer existing, the T-800 was left aimless. Over time and through his adaptability, he became self-aware, learned from humanity, and developed a conscience, taking the name "Carl" and adopting a human family. Again, another fascinating idea. Except one nerd flaw which might be nerd-explainable; In a T2 scene in the garage, that T-800 reveals that Skynet units are sent out into the battlefield with their CPUs set to "read only", to prevent this. However, then in a director's cut deleted scene, John and Sarah reset the T-800's switch to read/write so it can start learning and adapt more to humanity. This T-800 kind of just developed a conscience after killing John... I don't know, by itself I guess. I don't know, just a minor grievance I thought about.

Back to the movie: After learning how his actions affected Sarah and being able to detect the location of temporal displacements, Carl began to forewarn her of them to give her a purpose to make amends. Carl offers to join them against the Rev-9 and they prepare to destroy it, with Sarah begrudgingly agreeing to work together for Dani's sake. Anticipating the Rev-9's arrival, Carl bids his family farewell and tells them to escape. The group seek out a military-grade electromagnetic pulse (EMP) generator from an acquaintance of Sarah's. Ha, I love it. The acquaintances of Sarah always have some kind of access to military hardware, but this guy just has access to a full-blown EMP weapon. You know the BIG-BAD weapon from GoldenEye? Have we talked about any of the Bond movies yet? No?! Well anyway... I find it laughable this guy has access to a full-blown EMP device. The Rev-9 catches up with them, forcing them to steal a plane to escape, though the EMP generators are destroyed in the resulting shootout. During the flight, Grace reveals that Dani will become the future founding commander of the resistance before the Rev-9 boards their airplane and temporarily subdues Carl, forcing Grace, Sarah, and Dani to parachute from the plane into a river near a hydroelectric plant, with Carl and the Rev-9 following close behind.

"Talk about 'split personality disorder', am I right?"
"Grace, now is not the time!"
"Sorry I was programmed for whining, not for humor."

Trapped, the group makes their stand inside the plant. In the ensuing battle, Carl and Grace force the Rev-9 into a spinning turbine, causing an explosion that critically damages the two Terminators and Grace. The severely damaged Rev-9 endoskeleton incapacitates Sarah, forcing Dani to confront it herself. A dying Grace tells Dani to use her power source to destroy it. Dani tries to fight the Rev-9 but is quickly overpowered. Carl reactivates himself and restrains the Rev-9, allowing Dani to stab it with Grace's power source. He then drags himself and the Rev-9 over a ledge before the power core explodes, destroying them both... just after uttering "For John" to Sarah, one last time. We then fade to sometime later, where Dani and Sarah watch a young Grace at a playground with her family, the former determined to avert Grace's death and Legion's rise, before driving off to prepare... and thus we have yet another "no fate but what we make for ourselves" cliffhanger ending before end credits.

So what did I think of Terminator: Dark Fate? Well... I think it continues the trend of playing safe very well, with bringing back Linda Hamilton and Arnold Schwarzenegger in their respective franchise roles. Unlike other franchise reboots that bring back the old timers in supporting roles these days, Arnold does a good job of not seeming tired or worn out by playing the same role. He's appropriately aged and acts as one would expect his self-aware T-800 now with a conscience should act. Linda Hamilton killed it in her comeback as Sarah Connor. This is the first time we've seen her back since Terminator 2, though she had a brief voice cameo in Salvation on John's tape recorder, and I didn't think she could get more badass than she did in Terminator 2... but this is like that minus the mental illness/trauma of fighting the events in The Terminator. I thought it was great to see her back.

"It's ok, Sarah. John will be back."
"No he won't, you literally killed him."
"Never underestimate the power of the Hollywood
reboot, Sarah. He'll be baaahhhck."

The rest of the characters did their jobs and/or seemed kind of generic. The newcomer that surprised me the most was Gabriel Luna as the Rev-9. He was a threatening and terrifying villain, on par with Robert Patrick's T-1000, and even had similarly delivered lines and interactions with human bystanders. I thought he was very well done. Now, Grace... on the other hand... I'm not sure what kind of performance Mackenzie Davis was going for, but she always seemed pouty, whiny, and on the verge of crying. Every sentence delivery just seemed like the director told her she couldn't eat ice cream at catering and she just responds like "What?" "Huh?" "Are you serious?" "You're not my dad"; shit like that. As for Natalia Reyes' character Dani Ramos? Ehhhhh... I hate to be "that guy", like I really do, but she was just... so forgettable to me. I guess she's the new John Connor now, which is fine! I have zero qualms about that, more power to her. It must just be my John Connor-conditioning of watching the original movies so many times for so long that has like, programmed me to resist any change of anybody other than the John from being the savior of humanity. Dani Ramos is an interesting enough icon, I suppose, I would hope another sequel would flesh her character out more and turn her into the T2 Sarah we know she can be.

... except we aren't getting a sequel to this follow-up either. Terminator: Dark Fate didn't satisfy anybody like Cameron and director Tim Miller thought it would. Even I thought it was a surefire hit prior to release because of everyone from Terminator and T2's involvement being back. Instead of "HOORAY!" we got a lukewarm "Eh". This movie was like a dud firecracker. You light the fuse, run back, plug your ears but gaze in anticipation, and then... nothing. Except maybe a dull pop. Cameron blamed it on himself inviting Arnold back, as then it made it "Your granddad's Terminator movie". I personally enjoyed it, a lot more than I enjoyed the root canal that was Terminator Genisys. Still, it's sad to see I am a member of a minute crowd. I thought it was serviceable, I thought it's new ideas were fascinating enough, and while I did find some moments dumb... like still clinging to the "no fate but what we make" shtick, STILL having prayer for the future even though we've been told countless times that Judgment Day is always coming no matter what... finding the new lead forgettable, and Mackenzie Davis to be a colossal dud, I still can rewatch this one. I recommend it, but I guess I'm like the only one, lol.