Terminator: Dark Fate (2019)

REVIEW BY: ROBERT CHANDLER

One of the curses of the TERMINATOR franchise is that it surfs along the leading edge of movie-making technology. This ought to be a good thing, and apt, considering the nature of the films. 

However, what it really means is the depiction of the Terminator models within the films has been prone to too much change as digital film technology has changed, so that each film’s prime directive of telling a good coherent story is shared with its need to showcase VFX advances.

Ever since James Cameron used digital technology in such a ground-breaking way in T2, subsequent T-films have felt the need to push things ever further.  

We started with Arnie as the original T-800 (in T), then we had Robert Patrick as the liquid shape-shifter T-1000 (in T2), Kristana Lokken was the shape-shifting liquid female plus hard-skeleton T-X (in T3), the next film focused on the shiny gleaming chrome origin of the T-800 putting its VFX energies into creating a younger Arnie (T-SALV), this was followed by Jason Clarke as a nano-swarm T-3000 (T-GEN). Now, in the new film, we have Gabriel Luna as a two-for-the-price-of-one hardcore skeleton plus dark liquid shape-shifting REV-9 (T: DARK FATE).

As the depiction of the Terminators in the films changed, so too, by necessity, did the depiction of what the future looked like. With an ever-shifting future to incorporate into their mercurial narratives, the films’ timeline coherence became clumsier and more unwieldy as the series progressed.

If there is a model five-part film sequence in Hollywood, it would be the original PLANET OF THE APES films. Starting with PLANET in 1968 and working through a nuclear apocalypse in BENEATH, a return in time by a couple of apes to the present of 1971 in ESCAPE and then the apes’ growth, breeding and the fight for dominion in CONQUEST until the final BATTLE (coming only five years later in 1973), special make-up technology had evolved only a little since John Chambers’ original Oscar-winning turn. It meant the film-makers had a consistent set of apes being depicted; it meant they could focus on story. And they did. The five films complete a perfect loop.

When it came to re-entering the Terminator world with TERMINATOR: DARK FATE, James Cameron felt a need to wipe clean the future (past) of all the T-films that had followed T2. He wanted to start over.

 There’s something to be said for such a bold approach; but I think it’s okay to admit that something has been lost, too.

*SPOILERS*

T-fans cared for John Connor, much the same way his mother Sarah did. They wanted him to survive each film. We cared about the rise of Skynet. When the future sent back Kyle Reese in T1 and the T-800 in T2, it wasn’t the world we cared about being saved… it was John Connor. Cameron’s films worked not only because he knows precisely how to control tension in action film narratives, but because they were often about something essential, primal even. ALIENS is a mother protecting her surrogate daughter; THE ABYSS is a marriage being saved; TITANIC is two lovers saving each other; T2 is a mother and surrogate father saving a son.

In the opening of T: DARK FATE, Cameron willfully dismisses two things the films had been predicated on – the need to protect John Connor and the rise of Skynet. Some fans have been up-in-arms about this transgression in an online wildfire not seen since Rian Johnson mistreated the Luke Skywalker legacy in THE LAST JEDI.

If you can get past these essential changes – and why should you not, for this is a work of fiction and the creator is the one doing the retooling – then T: DARK FATE can be enjoyed for being a TERMINATOR movie that isn’t up to the level of T1, T2 and T3 (an under-rated gem) but is better than T-SALV and T-GEN and delivers some good tense wham-bam chase sequences and a few moments of terrific Arnie levity. Also, it’s nice to see Schwarzenegger with a beard looking his age. He looks lovely.

I wanted more from it; I wanted director Tim Miller’s Deadpool thumbprint to be more visible; I wanted Linda Hamilton to be less awkward; I wanted the Mexico border stuff to be more pertinent and daring (instead it’s just contemporary dressing).

The first act, when the threat kicks in, is very good, giving Mackenzie Davis many opportunities to shine on-screen as the cyber-enhanced Grace before Linda Hamilton and Arnie turn up (and they can’t help but steal scenes and step on Mackenzie’s moments). 

The first act car chase is good enough, too (we have high standards). And just when the film looks like it might sag in the middle, Arnie turns up and it all gets brighter, even if his present circumstances (he is Carl, bringing an echo of Cameron’s TRUE LIES to the film, a curtains & drapes salesman living an unphysical relationship with a widow and her son in the woods, and they do not suspect him of being unhuman) do not bear much scrutiny. 

In the grand tradition of screen sci-fi, the film tries to probe in some of these quieter scenes what it means to be human but unfortunately the writers / director don’t put in enough effort and appear to give up, perhaps because it is too familiar a trope and has all been done before in other better films. Not to worry, more crash-bang chases soon come and the film delivers a good fight sequence at the end. 

Nothing is surprising; but Miller does bring some interesting imagery to the game in his depiction of the REV-9 doing battle with both the T-800 Arnie and the enhanced Grace.

Where will the series go from here? Only James Cameron and the ever-evolving state of digital film VFX know the way.