Studio: Paramount Pictures
Director: Tim Miller
Writer: David Goyer, Justin Rhodes, Billy Ray
Producer: James Cameron, David Ellison
Stars: Linda Hamilton, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Mackenzie Davis, Natalia Reyes, Gabriel Luna, Diego Boneta
Review Score:
Summary:
Sarah Connor, a T-800, and an augmented human super-soldier team up to defend a future freedom fighter from a highly advanced terminator.
Review:
The decision for “Terminator: Dark Fate” to retcon events of the preceding three films, not to mention “The Sarah Connor Chronicles” TV series, made perfect sense to me. Despite seeing all of those movies, I couldn’t tell you a single plot point from any of them even if I had a liquid metal spike arm pointed at my head. My mind merely remembers “Salvation” as “that one where Christian Bale blew up at the cinematographer” and “Genisys” as “that one with Khaleesi from Game of Thrones.”
Just now I had to look up which of those two sequels was which. In doing so, I was reminded Arnold Schwarzenegger features heavily in 2015’s “Genisys.” The fact that I totally forgot the series’ main star was in the most recent film says a lot about the lasting impression it leaves.
My unenthused experiences with these post-T2 projects are not exclusive among casual fans of the franchise. Foggy memories and disinterested yawns from general audiences practically demanded another retool. At the very least, they ensured changing the overall arc yet again might not matter much since few people cared about what had already taken place anyway.
Not only that, ignoring inconvenient sequels is all the rage for rejuvenating withered IP nowadays, particularly when trying to restart a new trilogy, which “Terminator” has attempted more than once now. It brought Blumhouse big success with “Halloween” 2018 (review here). Why not see if “Terminator” could benefit from a similar baton passing from old guard characters to new?
Of course, when that baton goes into the hand of a woman, a person of color, or (gasp!) both, trolls come out on cue with crazy conspiracy claims of “PC propaganda,” “leftist liberal” whatever, and “woke” something or other. See also: “Ghostbusters” 2016, “Star Wars: The Last Jedi,” “Black Christmas” 2019 (review here), etc. Predictably, prominently portraying three strong female leads and including sequences involving the Texas/Mexico border meant similarly hateful slander would dominate discourse about “Dark Fate,” and perhaps played an unfair part in its underwhelming box office performance too.
If I thought there was a snowball’s chance in Hell of a remotely rational response, I’d ask, “how exactly does someone differentiate between a female-focused movie that innocuously includes women and one that was orchestrated by an anti-patriarch cabal out to ruin childhoods by forcing purposefully politicized diversity down our throats?” Just kidding. I know logic doesn’t apply to paranoid and prideful misogynists who imagine movie-based threats against masculinity.
FIRST SCENE SPOILERS
Stuff shortsighted stupidity aside and anyone can find qualitative reasons to feel legitimately lukewarm about “Terminator: Dark Fate’s” boat-rocking creative choices. One point I’ll concede to its detractors is that the film starts on unstable ground by unceremoniously icing John Connor.
Picture someone watching “The Terminator,” “Judgment Day,” and “Dark Fate,” currently the only canon films, in chronological order for the first time. It’s really weird to establish John as the fiction’s consistent linchpin and devote four hours to an emotionally-charged plot to protect his life only to suddenly gun him down at a Guatemalan beach bar. All of that effort expended and “Dark Fate” just erases John Connor from history in a two-minute prologue. What do the first two movies mean now?
END SPOILERS
“Dark Fate” becomes to “Terminator” what “The Force Awakens” is to “Star Wars.” It pulls beats that were popular in previous entries, then refashions them into a similar story that’s essentially an amalgam of the first two Terminator movies, except with different characters fulfilling the same roles. It’s odd to see eight separate people credited with the story and screenplay, and several more affiliated with various drafts and rewrites, when the shooting script completely clones preexisting concepts.
At least that saves me the trouble of recapping the movie. Start with the setup for “Terminator 2.” Sarah (Linda Hamilton) stays Sarah. So does Schwarzenegger’s T-800. Kyle Reese is now super-soldier Grace (Mackenzie Davis). Replace John Connor with Mexican factory worker and future freedom fighter Dani Ramos (Natalia Reyes). Swap Robert Patrick’s T-1000 for Gabriel Luna’s REV-9. Now all you need are some standard action setpieces and you have a “new” movie.
It appears that’s literally what “Dark Fate” did. According to a Hollywood Reporter interview with director Tim Miller, James Cameron created a list of unconnected ideas for action scenes, for no project in particular. Things like, “what if a tank drove down Main Street and then went through a mall?” Miller and Cameron thus cobbled together “Dark Fate’s” ‘sound and fury’ through this questionable strategy, reminiscent of producer Jon Peters insisting on “Wild Wild West’s” giant mechanical spider because of something he saw in his child’s school play. “Hey, wouldn’t it be cool if…”
Without knowing these origins, you can still sense the soulless interchangeability of “Dark Fate’s” spectacle-oriented sequences. The film certainly features more than its fair share of fights, gunplay, and explosions, as well as vehicle chases on the ground and in the air. Partly for this reason, I’m rating the film with a reticent thumbs up because it fulfills the basic functions of blockbuster entertainment engineered to sell concessions and merchandise. But the emptiness from not having story-specific stakes eventually numbs eyes and ears with noisy tedium. By the time a climactic airplane encounter turned into a nigh endless procession of puffed up improbabilities ending at a dam, I was mentally checked out of the movie.
“Dark Fate” also wears the scars of a project created from the cuts of clashing creators, corporate interests, and producers taking the safest route possible to hopefully return Terminator to evergreen profitability. Every time it seems like the movie might finally venture out on a fresh limb, it retreats to the familiarity of formula. It feels like the film only dips its toe in the water of what Terminator could become while wearing a life preserver to boot.
Undercutting issues exist everywhere. Whenever someone jumps or otherwise flies through the air, accompanying CGI looks like herky-jerky Spider-Man silliness from the Sam Raimi era. Sarah Connor’s constant cynicism grizzles her character into a corner of off-putting crustiness. The classic T-800 largely exists to provide comic relief, although I expect some Arnold fans will find this odd turn to be hilariously endearing.
None of this automatically equates to disappointment however. Because the previous sequels it kicked to the curb repeatedly reset the expectation bar lower and lower, “Dark Fate” ironically wins out as one of the better installments in the series, even though it is an independently average action movie.
Had the franchise become healthy again, maybe I’d inflict harsher punishment on “Terminator: Dark Fate” for not advancing the mythology so much as only altering it. It’s a lateral move that mostly maintains mediocrity, which qualifies as “good enough” for a property whose best days appear cemented in the last century.
That’s bad news for anyone with the optimism that “Dark Fate” would restore Terminator to its former glory. The good news is that if another ill-fated opportunity to try again should arise, pretending “Dark Fate” doesn’t exist won’t just be commonplace, it will be expected. So why should anyone give any more than the minimum amount of attention to another Terminator movie that might not matter in the long run?
Review Score: 55
At least the movie only runs 70 minutes, though I suppose that extra 10 technically disqualifies it from being a literal amateur hour.