Terminator: Dark Fate - Review Thread

Terminator: Dark Fate

Here we are.  Time to get serious.  Bottom of the 9th.  2 outs.  No one on base.  Down by 27 runs.  Most of the crowd has gone home.  This swing is our last chance at salvaging the Terminator franchise.  Time to bust out the big guns.  Arnold.  Linda Hamilton.  James Cameron as Executive Producer.  The gloves are off.  THIS was the movie that was going to put Terminator back on the map.  At least that was the hope.  Instead it became one of the biggest box office bombs of all time and hopefully, mercifully serves as the last attempt at bringing this franchise back from the dead.  That pains me to type, in fact this whole silly exercise of mine was painful because, believe it or not, I wasn't trying to hate-watch these films.  I don't have much time or interest in hate-watching movies these days and I certainly wouldn't want to do that with a franchise that I hold in such high esteem.  But Terminator: Dark Fate, the final Terminator movie to date, does take a few steps forward while taking a few other steps back.  Most of its steps though are mostly side to side in that they don't really contribute anything.  I think for the most part that right there could define these films that constitute the second half of the franchise.

So how did we get here?  One way to look at it is that after Salvation's failure, the bosses wanted to bring the franchise back to familiar territory.  Hence, Genisys.  Unfortunately that movie was convoluted, confusing and nonsensical so the bosses tried to bring it back even more into familiar territory, once again giving us the same story of 'machine sent back through time to kill someone' and this time have it not be as confusing.  It's also the first movie since T3 to get the R rating and the F-bombs try to give it a return to form.  The movie begins with a voice over from Sarah Connor about the coming war with machines.  It took six movies for me to finally realize that there must be some rule that says every Terminator film has to start with a blowhard monologue and scenes of 'the war' with a bunch of skulls as if we haven't seen a thousand versions of this already.   It immediately jumps to a scene of Sarah and Edward Furlong-John Connor where a T-800 immediately kills John.  Over the course of the movie it's revealed that Skynet and the 1997 Judgement Day never happened.  Instead, a different Judgement Day happens because of a different war with a different self-aware program that has different killer cyborgs that go back in time to kill a different leader of the resistance.  This time, a program called Legion sends back a Rev-9 to kill Dani Ramos, the next leader targeted for termination to radically change the future.  So yes, it basically erases all the other Terminator movies but hey, we need to market this thing somehow so why not bring Arnold back, a T-800 relic from a future that never happened.  Not only that, this T-800, the same one that killed John earlier in the movie, now grew a conscience, learned that human life is valuable and raised a family, all while secretly helping Sarah locate Terminators that are entirely unrelated to him, Skynet or his overall existence.  Also, Sarah mentioned that John was killed by a Terminator because Skynet sent back a bunch of them.  If the T2 T-800 knew about the T-1000, why didn't he know about any others?  If Terminator Genysis was a slap in the face to Terminator fans, Dark Fate was a middle finger and 'eff you.'  You know all those things you loved about the original?  Well forget all those, here's a bunch of new, not as cool things that are all still kind of the same.  But don't worry, we'll still drop easter eggs like the mandated 'I'll be back' variations and Dwight Yoakam's 'Guitars and Cadillacs' when the Rev-9 falls on a shed in the middle of a BBQ.  

Again, I understand the conundrum with trying to make more Terminator movies.  I've thought this for a while and those RedLetterMedia guys said it as well but the Terminator concept actually isn't one that's ripe for cinematic longevity.  There are only a couple directions you can take it, either 'machine goes back in time to kill someone' or show the war.  The war angle might have actually worked better had the execution been a little more on point while the time travel angle has been done to death.  And while they have to introduce Cool New Terminators™ every time to keep it spicy, you already know how these movies have to end.  I know fans were wildly offended by the erasure of pretty much the entire franchise in Dark Fate and while I understand the frustration, it's not the first time things were undone in these movies.  Heck, in Terminator 3 we heard the T-800 say 'Judgement Day is inevitable.'  That itself runs against the entire theme of T2, it's the complete opposite of the message it was trying to convey.  At least T3 didn't kill everybody and render their entire existence meaningless.  Messaging aside though, Dark Fate isn't entirely a failure.  It's a big step up from Genisys (easily the worst of the franchise, I even hate typing the name) and while they still try to make Arnold funny, at least those stuck a little better.  I have to admit that I chuckled at Arnold's delivery when talking about drapes.  Stupid? Yes, but Arnold does have pretty good comedic timing.  While the action is CG-heavy it does have some stakes and although the movie follows the exact beats of the first Terminator movie it shows just how lethal and murderous the Rev-9 can be.  By and large though, Dark Fate isn't exactly the whiff that Genisys was but it still doesn't demonstrate that this is a franchise worth continuing.

So where do we go from here?  It's clear that there is little demand for new Terminator films regardless of whoever's in front of or behind the camera.  Like I said, it's a story that's been done to death already and even when they try to make it new it's impossible to not tread over old ground.  I have started into the Netflix series Terminator Zero which has had a good reception and maybe smaller productions with more drawn out stories could be the way to go.  I think putting the cinematic releases on ice is a good idea though, at least until demand becomes more apparent if that even were to happen.  Nevertheless, Terminator 1 and 2 will forever be cherished in my heart and it will always be easy to convince myself to give them a watch every now and then.