Here is JOE’s review of the sixth – yes, SIXTH – Terminator movie.
When did the Terminator series lose you?
Obviously the first two are stone-cold classics, the original essentially being a time-travelling slasher movie, and the sequel doing the Alien-to-Aliens sequel route by making a hugely tense blockbuster out of a horror.
2003’s Rise Of The Machines had a fantastic fire truck chase scene and that ballsy, bummer ending. 2009’s Salvation had that awesome one-take helicopter crash and some great actors elevating an otherwise weak-sauce entry.
Honestly, 2015’s Genisys was the first properly bad Terminator movie, which is why it pains us to say that while Terminator: Dark Fate does kick off in almost T2 fashion, by the end you will be getting whiffs of Genisys’ stagnation off the series.
We quickly learn that while Sarah Connor (an always welcome Linda Hamilton, making her first return to the series since T2) did stop Skynet from pushing the button on Judgement Day, what she really did was just kick the problem into someone else’s garden. So another WWIII-starting A.I. will get developed by humans (this time named Legion) because apparently we just can’t help it, another evil robot (Gabriel Luna) is sent back in time to kill the once-and-future saviour of humanity (Natalia Reyes) and a good robot (Mackenzie Davis) has been sent back to protect her.
So far, so T2. Right down to its first proper action sequence, which begins with a kinetic, violent fight scene between Luna and Davis and evolves into a huge car chase, with enough wanton destruction to make you feel that director Tim Miller (Deadpool) might have the formula right this time.
The scene ends with the arrival of Sarah Connor – who has been hollowed out by decades of personal tragedy – and together the trio of ladies must make their escape from the new Terminator – which appears to be both an Arnie-type exoskeleton and the T-1000 liquid metal model – to try to formulate a plan to shore up somewhere and get ready to fight back.
However, it is right around here that the movie screeches to a halt and dumps a solid hour of backstory, exposition, and attempts at character development, with barely a sniff of an action scene to be seen until the finale.
There are some interesting nuggets in there; Reyes’ future hero is Mexican and has to actually cross Trump’s border wall to get into America and save the planet from destruction. During an early discussion about why the Terminators are targeting her, Sarah Connor talks about how they’re “afraid of your womb” and a room full of weaponry barely gets blinked at when the gang need to arm up, because “This is Texas”.
Also, the return of Hamilton as a sci-fi scream queen, hitting some of the same notes that Jamie Lee Curtis did in her long-delayed return to Halloween, is sometimes fantastic. You’d almost wish the entire film had focused just on her, as it opens with that “They blow apart like leaves” monologue from T2 and the rest of the film reminds us just how mesmerisingly magnetic Hamilton actually is.
But no, instead we focus on Mackenzie Davis’ cybernetically-augmented human and super-sad backstory and while she does handle the action scenes with aplomb, her misery-guts character just doesn’t make her much fun to be around.
And when the action does eventually comeback, it is solid and exciting and bombastic, but there isn’t enough of it spread out across a 134-minute, reportedly $200 million Terminator movie.
You also might have noticed that we haven’t mentioned Arnie at all, and that is for the best. He rocks up quite late into the mix and when he does… oh boy. What should have been an iconic moment – the reunion of Sarah Connor and the T-800 – is immediately undercut by the explanation of what the Terminator has been up to on Earth over the last few decades, waiting for Judgement Day to arrive, and it is jaw-droppingly mishandled.
At that, you’d almost find yourself on the Terminator’s side and hope they put an end to it all.
Terminator: Dark Fate is released in Irish cinemas on Wednesday 23 October.
Clip via Paramount Pictures
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