Terminator: Dark Fate - Review Thread

Yeah. Pretty much. Terminator Sega Genesis was stoopid but at least I stayed awake.

The best we could hope for here was the third best terminator. It certainly accomplished that. I quite liked it.

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With James Cameron back as a co -writer and producer, Terminator franchise finally gets an installment which can stand up to the first part (1984) and the difficult to beat ‘Judgement Day’ (1991).

A much needed return to form for the franchise after the underwhelming response to the last three Terminator films.

Positioned as a direct sequel to ‘Judgement Day’, watching Arnold Schwarzenegger and Linda Hamilton in one frame offers solid nostalgia to the franchise fans. Especially 90s kids like me who grew up on first two parts. Linda reprises her iconic role of Sarah Connor while Arnie is T-800.
An aging Sarah amust protect youngster Dani (Natalia Reyes) who is the latest target. A super advanced Rev-9 (Gabriel Luna) is sent in time for her termination while an augmented human Grace (Mackenzie Davis) is the protector.

The stage is set for some extraordinary action sequences with jaw dropping VFX. Though technically, this is the second best Terminator film after Judgement Day. The movie still doesn’t live up to T2, and lacks the style and emotional touch of Cameron directed Terminators.

Nevertheless, I still enjoyed a trip back to the cinemas. Just for watching Hamilton and Schwarzenegger pump bullets into Terminators!

*Sixth best

That's what I thought after Genisys... and Salvation... and here we are. 

I don't need to go much into the legacy of the Terminator franchise since it's well known by now that the first two films by James Cameron are lauded as absolute classics in powerhouse filmmaking and the three attempts since have been underwhelming to say the least. There were always a bevy of excuses for why those three films failed, chiefly among them being that Cameron had only minimal involvement with them. Well, that changed when Cameron got the rights to the franchise back, and word around Hollywood was that he was developing a new script that would ignore the last three films and be the direct sequel to Terminator 2: Judgment Day that we've been waiting for. No, he wouldn't direct it nor overtly write it, but he would be heavily involved in overseeing the story and also be a hands-on producer this time around. Add to this that Linda Hamilton and Arnold Schwarzenegger would be reprising their roles and the film would be rated R, and thus people began whispering in wonder if we would finally get a Terminator film that was, if not on the level of the first two but at least worthy of bearing their name, the best since 1991. Well there I sat, watching this film play out in spectacularly familiar fashion, nodding at the plot beats as they happened exactly how I imagined them to. About halfway through I realized that Dark Fate, for all its murmurings of shaking things up while also bringing the franchise back to its tremendous roots, was perhaps the most derivative Terminator yet, offering no new ideas, thrills, or even unique action set pieces that had me puzzled as to what exactly Cameron had brought to the table here. Dark Fate is actually the exact opposite of what was promised, proving that this franchise has absolutely nowhere to go and should finally be put to rest once and for all. It's one of the biggest disappointments of the year, despite a talented cast at the forefront of it all, and certainly won't have anyone relinquishing their fond memories of the original two films.

The story gets somewhat of an update where this time the action begins in Mexico City and the "Sarah Connor" of the film is Dani Ramos (Natalia Reyes), who is targeted by an advanced Terminator model, a REV-9 (Gabriel Luna) that seeks to kill her and alter her impact in the future. She's saved by Grace (Mackenzie Davis), a human who reminds us several times throughout the film that she's been augmented into a sort of super soldier that can go toe-to-toe with Terminators. While doing battle with the REV-9 on a Mexico City freeway, Dani and Grace are aided by Sarah Connor (Linda Hamilton), who informs them that she prevented Judgment Day years ago but lost her son, John, as a result of her efforts anyways. Grace retorts that Judgment Day did end up happening, as she comes from the machine-ruled future and has been sent back to protect Dani. If all of this sounds incredibly familiar, well that's because it is. There's no real deviation from formula despite a few insignificant changes here and there. Eventually they meet up with the T-800 (Arnold Schwarzenegger) who is now going under the name Carl in what's possibly the most laughably baffling turn they could have done with his character. During this time, the REV-9 pursues them and pursues them and pursues them some more. Oh sure, they hop in helicopters, cars, military vehicles, planes, and they just keep on running away from their pursuer. There's a relentless repetitiveness to the whole affair, and all of the action set pieces just start to blend in with one another after awhile. I would find myself zoning out for a second only to look up and go "oh, Dani is now trapped in something when did that happen? Oh wait, it doesn't matter". 

One of the most frustrating aspects of a film is not so much when it's bad but when it's predictable, and this is a film that is ploddingly beat by beat to the tune of been there done that throughout. It's hard to understand what exactly Cameron brought to this story other than simplistically rehashing his own ideas. It's a clunky affair of machines fighting one another without any compelling reasons of doing so, and the action itself is highly dull as well which doesn't help anything. There's nothing new here, which is disappointing since the cast assembled is a talented one that deserves a lot better than the mediocre material they have to work with. Another element that's striking given Cameron's involvement is the shoddy effects work going on here. Everything is painfully CGI with little to no emphasis on the practical, and when your effects pale in comparison to the ones exhibited in groundbreaking fashion in 1991 that's not good. I've read the Cameron is already on the defensive, claiming he had to hijack the edit to salvage the movie in what he could, and to an extent I suppose that's true since I find director Tim Miller to be little more than a studio yes-man whose only significant credit is the immensely overrated Deadpool, but it's still a bullshit thing to say since Cameron was supposedly as involved as he was. This wasn't a movie that died or was saved in the editing room, but was a dull nonsensical film from its conception, offering nothing new and nothing interesting. Terminator: Dark Fate is a stunningly dull entry, one that has very little to grasp from positively. To say it's the "best" of the sequels since Terminator 2 I suppose is correct, but the gap between Dark Fate and those three films is very slim as opposed to the wide gap between them and the original two. Hopefully our fate won't include anymore of these derivative Terminator films.

5/10