The Same Old Fate As Ever

Conditions: Cloudy with a chance of callbacks

Film Review: Terminator - Dark Fate

Over the decades the Terminator franchise has both come a long way, and also not really gone anywhere at all.  The effects and mayhem have become bigger, bolder, louder and richer, the storyline and the lore has twisted and turned about, good guys becoming bad, the history of the future being lost and changed.  At some point the entire franchise was even erased from history.  But this latest film acts as yet another reboot.  It's granted some authority given that James Cameron himself is a producer, and it acts as basically a remake of the very first Terminator, with callbacks.  We begin with Terminator 2.

Eddie Furlong as John Connor himself stands in a bar somewhere in South America.  He hasn't aged a day.  He flirts with a girl while Sarah, clad in black, also un-aged, sits quietly.  Arnold Schwarzenegger appears out of nowhere, strides past Sarah, aims a shotgun and John and fires.  John falls, bloody, Sarah screams and Arnold strides off.  It's shockingly violent, not in the actual depiction but in what it does and undoes.  It angers me.  It feels like the studio has become the Terminator, dedicated to kill off Connor so they can move on and make more films in this franchise without having to deal with him any more.  It's upsetting.  With that out of the way, the film can begin.

If they'd used this opportunity to do something different, to focus on a different part of the dynamic, to zoom in on this battle between machine and man with a totally different setting and characters then it might have been worth something.  But like I said, they are just remaking Terminator 1.  Meet new Sarah, here's the new Kyle Reese, and here's the new Schwarzenegger. The pieces are set up in the same places as before and the same game plays out again.  Sure, the effects are more sparkly, but I don't think you can say for example the car chase in Dark Fate is actually better than the car chase in Terminator 1.  And there's a craft in the old films that just isn't here, like the film knows it's a fresh clone.  Scenes between Dani and Grace just don't have the same strength and conviction as the old scenes between Sarah and Kyle.  It devolves into a massive fight sequence at the end, that just feels like the air has finally leaked out.

Linda Hamilton conducts herself well.  She's been happily retired from acting for a long time, but she's totally engaging here.  They even start the film with her monologue from T2, as if to say 'see, this is how serious we are'.  But this Sarah is different.  Losing John turned her into basically a Terminator, a bitter character full of violence.  She tries to be a mentor to the new Sarah but there's an awkwardness there, a distance due to how angry she is.

Arnold Schwarzenegger easily is the best thing about the film.  And he's barely even in it.  He's always been at the top of his game when it comes to these films, and here he's given a new version of the character, a robot that fulfilled it's mission and then had to figure out what to do with the rest of it's ...life.  And so he becomes a Dad.  I could happily have explored that a lot further, it could even have been enough for a spin off.  But times have changed, and modern sensibilities mean that there's not much time left for Schwarzenegger any more.  He's given effectively a glorified cameo, and then sacrifices himself yet again.  Given that he always does that, him sacrificing himself has become meaningless.

Given that this Terminator has yet again failed to be a hit at the box office it's unlikely there'll be a direct sequel, even with the film trying to show Sarah and Dani teaming up to take on the future.  It's probably for the best but you wonder how often is the studio going to reboot this thing?  Two injections out of five.

- Peace out