Sarah Connor and a hybrid cyborg human must protect a young girl from a newly modified liquid Terminator from the future.
I remember going to see “Terminator 2: Judgment Day” at least seven times in theaters back in 1991 as I loved the movie so much. While the first film set in motion the overall tone and storyline for all the sequels that would follow, T2 achieved what very few sequels ever accomplish: the rare feat of being a far superior sci-fi epic that surpassed its predecessor in almost every aspect. The less we say about “Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines” and “Terminator: Salvation” the better, although I do have a soft spot for “Terminator: Genisys” as I thought it was more akin to the first two films than its shoddy sequels.
The promotional artwork for “Terminator: Dark Fate” states that James Cameron returns but not as director, rather, in a producer and co-writer capacity but that is more than enough to elevate “Dark Fate” above mediocrity, something every Terminator movie has encompassed since T2. Tim Miller, who helmed the hilarious “Deadpool,” takes over the directing reigns and does a tremendous job infusing the film with enough action and humor to keep even the most hardened Terminator fans happy. Much like “Star Wars: The Force Awakens,” “Terminator: Dark Fate” follows suit in pretty much rehashing the first two movies in the hopes of introducing a new audience to a tired and antiquated franchise, while bringing back fan-favorites Arnold Schwarzenegger and Linda Hamilton. They prove that while they may be older and creakier, they have more years experience doing what they do best.
A young Hispanic girl, Dani Ramos (Natalia Reyes), lives in Mexico City with her brother Diego (Diego Boneta) and her father Vicente (Enrique Arce). Dani and Diego work in the same factory and one morning after having just arrived, their father appears and tries to kill Dani but he is thwarted by a tall blonde named Grace (Mackenzie Davis), who knocks him to the ground. Both Dani and Diego are confused as to why their father would try to kill them but then he changes his physical appearance altogether and gives chase. Grace manages to successfully stall him by ensnaring him in an industrial compressor which gives her time to escape with Dani and Diego. On the freeway, she tells them that the man chasing them is not actually a human but a terminator, an unstoppable killing machine from the future known as a Rev-9, which has the ability to split its mimetic exterior and endoskeleton into two separate components, making it virtually indestructible. The Rev-9 quickly catches up and forces their pickup truck off the road. With Diego fatally injured, Grace manages to save Dani but they are both trapped as the Rev-9 splits into two and approaches them from different directions. Before it has time to kill them, an SUV approaches and out steps Sarah Connor (Linda Hamilton) with an arsenal of machine guns and bazookas, temporarily rendering it inoperative.
The three women escape and hole up in a motel where Grace tells Dani about her story. In the year 2042, Dani is the leader of the resistance which is being threatened by an artificial intelligence known as Legion, where it took control of every computer and machine around the world and used it against humanity. Sarah tells Grace and Dani about a future where it was taken over by a company called Skynet that much like Legion, became self-aware and turned on the humans that created it, resulting in the deaths of billions. When Grace asks Sarah how she knew where she and Dani would be, she says that for years, she has received encrypted text messages with the coordinates of arriving terminators, who she then proceeded to destroy. Grace is able to hack Sarah’s phone and tracks the location to an address in Laredo, Texas, but Grace is perplexed as the location is one that was given to her should she need help. The three women cross the border into Texas and make it to their destination safely, only for Sarah to be confronted by a face from her past: a T-800 Terminator from her nonexistent future. Now the women and the terminator must band together if they are to stop the Rev-9 from achieving its objective of killing Dani and ending mankind.
The plot is identical to the first two movies only this time, instead of John Connor, we have Dani Ramos, the resistance leader of her future and instead of the T-1000 and the T-X, we have the Rev-9, both seemingly unstoppable killing machines that Schwarzenegger’s obsolete T-800 always manages to terminate, and instead of Skynet, we have Legion. The comparisons are all in there and much like “The Force Awakens,” “Dark Fate” doesn’t stray too far from the elements that made it successful in the first place. Now that we are at the beginning of a new trilogy, its future installments could pretty much go anywhere, just as long as they don’t produce a sequel that mirrors T2 and a third film that imitates T3. With so many talented writers in Hollywood, it would be nice to see this franchise go in a vastly different direction than previous iterations. The collaboration of James Cameron and Tim Miller makes for great entertainment as this series hasn’t had a decent entry since the aforementioned T2. The special effects are groundbreaking, much like Cameron actualized with T2 and in the beginning, there is a flashback scene to a young John Connor that takes place shortly after the events of “Judgment Day” and the resemblance is uncanny, it genuinely looks like a young Edward Furlong and the fact that the scene is brief and doesn’t let us linger on him, unlike the young Will Smith in “Gemini Man,” or Grand Moff Tarkin in “Rogue One: A Star Wars Story,” means the desired effect is brought to successful conclusion. There is much-needed humor, thanks to Schwarzenegger but thankfully, director Tim Miller knows when to scale it back and when to let the action take over. Whether or not you’re a Terminator fan, you should have a blast with this, it’s great escapist fun and reminds us why we go to the theater in the first place.
Available on Digital HD January 14th and on 4K Ultra HD, Blu-ray, and DVD January 28th
