Film Review: "Terminator: Dark Fate" ** 1/2
“Good. Someone else can be Mother Mary for a while.” - Sarah Connor
“If you’re Mother Mary, why do I want to beat the crap out of you.” - Grace
That is not an imitation of a 90’s action movie line. It is a 90’s action movie line, despite being made in 2019.
Part of me never grew up. As a 90’s kid, I have a sweet spot for bad 90’s action movies from the likes of Stallone, Schwarzenegger, Van Damme, Willis, and Seagal who each seemed to make almost a film a year in the early 90’s. Some were masterpieces: Die Hard, Terminator 2, Face/Off, Point Break, Speed, Lethal Weapon. Some were passable, but fun: Under Siege, Desperado, Total Recall, Anaconda, Con Air. Some were horrible, but I loved them anyway: Demolition Man, Assassins, True Lies. Terminator: Dark Fate, the first sequel since Terminator 2 to have James Cameron’s involvement and blessing, is not so much a “sequel” in the traditional sense. It doesn’t really add on to a previous storyline even though characters from the previous movie have significant roles. It is more of a retread of Terminator 2 with a new Sarah/John Connor (the person who is targeted for termination because of their future actions) and a new Guardian (Reese in the first film and the T-800 in the second) as well as a new Terminator (T-800 in the first film and the T-1000 in the second). If you’re expecting something new, this is not the movie for you.
Because of the actions of Sarah Connor and her son John, the future, where Skynet was created and led to humanity’s destruction till John rose as a hero to form a resistance against the machine, was averted. Yet, time travel is an iffy and funny thing. Apparently before Sarah and John ended that future, Skynet sent back more than one terminator, continually appearing in Sarah’s life. It seems shortly after the events of Terminator 2, one of the terminators is successful in killing John, but it doesn’t restore a future where Skynet is created, which leaves a fascinating question for what does a robot do when its program is complete and cannot ever receive new orders.
Even though that future was averted, another almost identical still happens. There could be something fascinating here about the concept of inevitable development of technology or fate, but… the film never goes there. None of the Terminator films ever had the desire to actually delve into the theories of time travel. Reese in the first film says, “That’s tech stuff”. Indeed. Just like its predecessors, Terminator: Dark Fate is happy being a 90’s action film.
In the future without Skynet, Legion, an AI used for defense (“Will they never learn” - Sarah Connor), takes over and begins hunting down and killing humans, a new resistance leader rises. [Also, a side note… did James Cameron name Legion? If so, he has lost his ability to create meaningful names. Skynet worked so well. Legion is almost as bad as unobtanium from Avatar] Fearing its destruction from the new resistance, Legion, like Skynet before it, decides to go back in time to eliminate the threat. The new resistance leader sends a guardian into the past to stop it. Dani Ramos (Natalia Reyes) is a simple factory worker who is a leader in that she cares for her family (father and brother) but has no exceptional qualities. She’s merely living life. In so many ways, she is the new Sarah Connor who herself was just a waitress. They both say, “why would anyone want me dead?” Sent to protect her is Grace (Mackenzie Davis). She is protecting her from a new breed of Terminator, a Rev-9 (Gabriel Luna) who seems to have been bred as the cousin of the T-1000, whose liquid body has a super structure underneath allowing it to split in two, both as the liquid portion of itself and the metal underneath. It’s a nifty trick. With that, all the pieces are in place and the plot simply pulls the trigger. The fact that neither Grace nor the Rev-9 ever live up to their predecessors from previous films is to be expected… in fact… some of them are in this film. Gabriel Luna does his best to do a somber Robert Patrick imitation, but never really gets the menace that Patrick does so well.
The difference here is that Grace is not enough to stop this particular type of Terminator. She actually is saved by an old Sarah Connor; Linda Hamilton returning to the role at the age of 63, being a true badass. Apparently, she trained with Green Berets in Arizona for three months. She looks like she could kill someone. Despite her dominance in terms of appearance, Linda’s break from acting has left some of her ability out of the picture, but there are a couple moments of genuine acting, such as after she confronts the reality that she can’t remember her son’s face anymore.
If you enjoy 90s action films, there’s plenty to like here even though it’s nothing more than a retread of better films. Terminator and Terminator 2 both remain as great films. Dark Fate in comparison to the other sequels that spawned after T2 is certainly the best addition to the series since T2, but that isn’t necessarily saying much.
The action sequences are well staged for the most part, especially the opening sequence which owes a lot of itself to the first fight in T2. There is a great sense of humor involved with modern events. If Trump’s wall had gone up, the world would have died. Even with that, Tim Miller does at times get in his own way (how many bad uses of slow motion can you fit into one film… well… more than he does. This is certainly no 300.) or sometimes he needs to get out of the way (aka there is a fight scene where you cannot tell what is going on because of the shot composition and editing) and the film suffers from being made now in that, it is simply too long. It is annoying that the average running time of a film continues to grow. In the 90’s and for most of cinema, movies knew not to overstay their welcome.
Terminator: Dark Fate’s weaknesses are brought into even more clarity when compared to a very similar film, Logan. In that film, a young girl is targeted for termination and an old man comes to her aide and enlists a retired hero to save her. That film has a depth to it with the development of the relationship between Logan and Laura, pushing us towards that movie’s tragic conclusion. Terminator: Dark Fate does not allow Dani to have faults and rather she seems too put together, too stoic, too rock solid, too able to forgive, too able to be whatever those around her need to be. As a result, she never comes off as a realistic character; in fact, because of that, we are never worried that she might die. It is sad because there was something here that I think could have been really good… it needed more rewrites without a doubt. Also dropping lines that hammer you over the head with the point. Grace’s character delivers what is supposed to be a reveal that we knew forty minutes earlier. She didn’t need to say it. We got it.
With all that being said, I am the target audience for a film like this. The thing I really liked and enjoyed about Terminator: Dark Fate is that it felt like a 90’s action film. Being a 90’s action film lover, I wanted The Expendables to feel like a 90’s action film, but it came off as a picture show, simply compiling the best clips from so many different action hero careers. Terminator: Dark Fate is the feel that I had hoped The Expendables would be.
