Terminator: Dark Fate

Terminator 2: Judgement Day is highly regarded as a peerless science fiction movie with a decent premise coupled with excellent special effects and brilliant performances across the board. There have been Terminator films since T2: Judgement Day but for some reason this film is a sequel to that, ignoring three films and presumably the TV series.

It has an incredible set-up that riffs on Terminator and T2: an appearance through time of a naked figure in Mexico City who acquires the clothes and the car of the investigating police, whom she beats up single-handed whilst onlookers gasp. This is Grace (Mackenzie Davis), who has come to protect Dani (Natalia Reyes) in much the same way as Sarah Connor was once protected by a Terminator twenty years previously.

Dani is being pursued by another model of Terminator, the “Gen-9”(Garbiel Luna), who is even more difficult to kill than the T-1000 or the original Terminator. But the beginning of the film stays with the human story for a good while, so you get to understand the characters and relate to their usual lives before they learn their future and have to react. This is a reminder that Sarah Connor was, for a while, working in a diner with her own domestic worries before she was told of her place in the future history of the world. The history is quite complicated now because of various time-lines, but by the time Sarah Connor shows up in this film, it’s time. Linda Hamilton in this film is fantastic. She cuts a battle-hardened figure: someone who for two decades has been going after Terminators and destroying them, effortlessly handling massive guns and rockets—and is responsible for most of the film’s many f-bombs. Joining Grace and Dani on the run, she argues with the younger woman (who isn’t an android, but is a modified human) about the best way to protect Dani from a the Gen-9—but ultimately the plan involves paying a visit to the original Terminator.

Arnold Schwarzenegger has been an incredible figure in 1980s Hollywood and beyond. His Austrian accent and great physical strength made him a figure of ridicule, but he has gone from acting to politics and back to acting with a deftness that eludes a lot of people who’ve excelled at neither. And he is as much a crucial part of this franchise as is Linda Hamilton. Now,  this Terminator (who Sarah Connor promises to kill) is living a domestic life in rural Texas—installing curtains. He has a partner and children even though he isn’t capable of such, and of course has no innate empathy or “love” in him. Schwarzenegger is tremendous at delivering lines such as “plus I’m extremely funny” in a suitably robotic fashion which would only work if the audience goes with it, and they surely will. Meanwhile Mackenzie Davis deserves special praise for being a little like the young Sarah Connor—as if the people in the future were looking to get as many Connor-like warriors as they could. 

With the joyously neat setup and the introduction of some established characters and performers, Terminator: Dark Fate really doesn’t put much of a foot wrong. One of the series’ classic lines is suddenly dropped and it feels clunky, but the film doesn’t deal in “fan service”. It’s not exactly a nostalgia-fest but if you loved the first two films you will take the nostalgia in with you. Although the ending does descend into the literal “robots hitting each other” and it’s preceded by an airborne scrap that’s almost a little too silly. The newest Terminator is practically indestructible, just turning into gloopy liquid and reforming if the worst kind of mechanic-assisted beating is administered. An indestructible force is a compelling character in this sort of film, but it’s difficult to invest any feelings about it—especially since Arnie’s terminator has already put us through that process over a long time.

None of this matters though. Because this is the Bladerunner 2049 of re-entries into an established and beloved franchise. Revisiting old properties seems tired, and generally leads to fans warring each other over what should and shouldn’t be done.