Terminator: Dark Fate Movie Review

Comfortably the best Terminator film since Judgment Day

by Casimir Harlow
Movies & TV Shows Review

173

Terminator: Dark Fate Movie Review

Terminator: Dark Fate Review

With all the lowered expectations from previously being burned, Dark Fate should come as a mostly pleasant surprise; a competent, tense and aggressive Terminator sequel.

Cameron's 1984 The Terminator was a stunning sci-fi spin on a serial killer horror movie, propelling star Schwarzenegger into the limelight and cementing the director's standing as a capable filmmaker. Seven long years later and Terminator 2: Judgment Day was the Aliens to The Terminator's Alien - that rare sequel where fans actually argue over which one is better - in many ways surpassing the original, redefining its heroine, Linda Hamilton's Sarah Connor, in a way not dissimilar to Sigourney Weaver's evolution from those aforementioned Alien chapters.

An even longer 12 years later and Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines lost Hamilton and posited a grown-up John Connor as the target, with Schwarzenegger once again on saviour duty, protecting against an advanced female terminator. With a few nice setpieces, and a few terrible comedy decisions, ultimately the only truly memorable moment came in its devastating final scene, which was a daring decision in an otherwise regurgitated narrative. Unprepared to let this franchise go - or come up with anything completely new - Terminator: Salvation gave us insight into the "Clone Wars" of the Terminator universe, which could have been immense, and started off with possibly the best action sequence McG has ever committed to film. After that, however, it became bogged down with stale ideas and over-contrivance, failing to make good on the war setting in the way that, say, something like Rogue One so majestically did. Then came the time of the reboot, and Terminator: Genisys used advanced CG and complicated time travel to spin us all the way back to the 80s, in a kind of Back to the Future 2 entry to the Terminator saga, which could have actually worked - and had some nice early highlights - but was ultimately killed by one of the most poorly chosen casts for a major production, and by an abysmal villain reliant on the a la mode gimmick of nano-tech.

With rights finally reverting to James Cameron, but no time for the Avatar sequel-obsessed director to actually take the helm himself, Terminator: Dark Fate was commissioned under the hand of Deadpool's Tim Miller, returning classic cast members to the fold, ignoring the events of every sequel since Judgment Day, and attempting to work in some Force Awakens magic into the franchise which has been floundering like a Frankenstein's monster that just won't die for almost three decades. 

 Dark Fate has done the impossible, and arguably put the Terminator franchise back on to some kind of course

Judgment Day has been and gone, and nothing happened. The future fate of the world has still not been secured, however, and a new highly advanced terminator is sent back to assassinate a young girl in Mexico. An aged Sarah Connor, still hunting terminators across the decades, steps in to protect her, but finds she has her own guardian angel - another future soldier who comes with her own high tech augmentation. But will it be enough to take on this new terminator? 

Terminator: Dark Fate

Dark Fate
gets off to a great start, with an almost dream-like nightmare of a prologue that attempts to set the tone from there on out. It's a shot in the arm that the franchise needed, and as we cut to the present day and follow the dual trail of bodies that both hunter and saviour leave in their wake, there's some nice flashbacks to the old, classic, Terminator movies which makes you feel like this is on the right track.

Trailers always give away too much, but the early vehicular chase sequence is very well managed, and establishes this new Rev-9 Terminator as someone who audiences will genuinely believe is unstoppable. That's a feeling that has been largely absent since those first two films, and the threat afforded by this advanced robot - which combines the metal frame of the original Terminator with the liquid alloy of Terminator 2's T-1000, and which can handily split into two - poses a palpable threat, lending weight to multiple action sequences.

  It's best to keep your mind on the myriad lows of the last few films, then maybe Dark Fate will be more likely to remind you more of highs of the first two

Casting is mostly very good indeed, Mackenzie Davis is tremendous as the resistance soldier, augmented and sent back to protect the new target; battered, scarred, and battle-damaged from the outset, and not without her own vulnerabilities, it's a nice new character, and Linda Hamilton makes an inspired return to the fold, much like Jamie Lee Curtis did to great effect in the recent Halloween sequel. Hamilton too wears her battle damage well, like every line on her face tells a story, and despite a few weaker moments she holds her own surprisingly well given her complete lack of theatrical presence in the last three decades. Gabriel Luna's Rev-9 is also great, and easily the scariest villain since the first two movies, with that classic Terminator determination - that look - which has simply been absent for years. Perhaps the only weak choice is Natalie Reyes young target, just about making it work for the duration, but completely failing to convince in one vital key sequence (it's also a shame to find that current politics appear to once again inform the script, leading to one on-the-nose bit of dialogue which probably didn't need to be as heavy-handed - especially given the clear presence of two kick-ass female characters who are already utterly commanding the movie; leave the politics out and let Davis and Hamilton do their thing).

Schwarzenegger's return is a glorified cameo, but a welcome one for a change, and they tie it in nicely with what they have to work with, giving it some degree of purpose and perhaps even a modicum of melancholy, which is well-handed. Whilst he didn't need to be in the movie, it makes sense when you see him and Hamilton together, and some credit should be given to a script that made that possible. Miller manages his action well, but there's a clear lop-sidedness to the picture, which is easily at its best during the more grounded early action setpieces, than it is when the skies erupt into flames and everything becomes a little bit blurry. There is a feeling that they forgot that less is more, and the need to satisfy blockbuster appetites was clearly great in this one, but they bring it home in the end, and remember the classics in this franchise rather than just seek to push the limitations of current CG tech and blockbuster budget.

All-in, Dark Fate has done the impossible, and arguably put the Terminator franchise back on to some kind of course. It is not woefully geared up for its own 'trilogy', like Genisys, nor is it locked in its own little universe, like Salvation, and nor does it overtly retread the beats of the first two classics, like Rise of the Machines, other than to celebrate them, develop them and run with whatever they can muster in a story set 27 years later. Sure, it has flaws, and probably therefore sits somewhere between a 7 and 8, but it deserves a nudge for having done what a lot of other franchise resurrections have ultimately failed to do - The Predator and Prometheus/Covenant to name but two - and give us something new that works and doesn't merely insult everything that came before. Still, it's best to keep your mind on the myriad lows of the last few films, then maybe Dark Fate will be more likely to remind you more of highs of the first two.

Scores

Verdict

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8

8
AVForumsSCORE
OUT OF
10

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