Hollywood studios are still trying to figure out how to repeat the financial successes of the most famous movies of the past while adding something new to also draw in viewers who might not know the originals. They failed with Star Wars Episodes VII to IX, in my opinion.
But with Terminator: Dark Fate (2019), the screenwriters did a good job of repeating the concept of the original Terminator movie while recontextualizing it for the present day and adding enough twists on the original concept.
In The Terminator, first released forty years ago today [EDIT: I intended to publish this October 26 but made a mistake], Sarah Connor (Linda Hamilton) was running away from a Terminator played by Arnold Schwarzenegger. That was almost twenty years before he was sworn in as governor of California (R, 2003 — 2011). The Terminator will be sent by Skynet from the future to kill Sarah Connor before she can give birth to John Connor, future leader of the human resistance.
In regards to spoilers, I assume you have already seen The Terminator, or you haven’t but don’t care to. I will freely mention anything that happens in The Terminator, but I’ll avoid mentioning the more surprising plot twists in Terminator: Dark Fate.
There are actually four more Terminator movies, plus a whole TV series that ran for two seasons. But from what I’ve read in a few different places, only the first movie and Terminator 2: Judgment Day are relevant to Dark Fate, because Dark Fate and Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines branch off after the events of Judgment Day with two different timelines.
In Dark Fate, we learn that Sarah Connor prevented Skynet’s future, but a new artificial intelligence has taken over and tried to subjugate humanity. That artificial intelligence will send a different kind of terminator to kill Daniela Ramos (Natalia Reyes) before she can give birth to the man who will lead the human resistance against this other artificial intelligence. That’s got to be the reason, Sarah Connor says.
A terminator (Gabriel Luna) of a model unfamiliar to Sarah Connor has just shown up in Mexico. Sarah Connor happens to be in town because she’s been getting mysterious text messages from someone in Texas notifying her of arrivals from the future.
Just like Sarah Connor in the first movie, Dani also has her own protector sent from the future, Grace (Mackenzie Davis), a human with cybernetic components who can almost keep up with the Rev-9 terminator that’s been sent to kill Dani.
It turns out that the same person who’s been sending Sarah Connor those time travel notifications is also the one that Grace has been told to seek out for help. But that means that a fugitive from the law in the United States must accompany an undocumented woman from the future and an undocumented Mexican woman from the present across the U. S.-Mexico border.
Maybe the three women could have used a ladder to get over the dumb border wall. Instead they use a tunnel under the wall. That way it’s all the more surprising when the Border Patrol turn on the lights to reveal they had been waiting all along.
The Rev-9 terminator has blended into the Border Patrol seamlessly, and the three women protagonists, and the viewers, are exposed to the dehumanizing horror of undocumented immigrant detention. Understandably, the movie can’t dwell on this for too long, only long enough for the protagonists to make their escape.
You might start to wonder if Arnold Schwarzenegger is even in this movie. Well, he’s on the box of the DVD, so he’s got to appear in the movie. Maybe his character finds redemption, as maybe he himself might find in real life.
I rate the movie ★★★★☆. The screenplay manages to front-load a lot of action and push explanation to the middle of the movie, but does it in a way that doesn’t leave people confused as to what the hell is going and why they should even care about the carnage on the screen.
Or maybe I would have been confused if I hadn’t seen the first three Terminator movies, which give me an understanding of the basic premise of this movie. Also, this movie passes the Bechdel test much more securely than the original movie. Dare we give it the “woke” stamp of approval?
The DVD, as with many others these days, doesn’t have any special features, so I rate the DVD ★★★☆☆.
Terminator: Dark Fate is rated R “for violence throughout, language and brief nudity.”
People from the future show up completely naked for some reason. It doesn’t quite make sense to me, but that’s the way they’ve done it in every installment of the franchise I’ve seen. Much more concerning for parents might be the partial nudity in the scene in which Grace gives herself a shot of some medication or other. If you’re not a cybernetically enhanced human from the future, don’t inject yourself with anything.
As for the violence, it is gruesome, but it is also a kind of violence that I’ve been desensitized to by so many other violent Hollywood blockbusters. There’s much less violence in West Side Story, but the three deaths in that movie are far more affecting than the dozens of deaths in this movie, some of which might not even be permanent.
The movie runs two hours and eight minutes, but it doesn’t feel like it’s longer than it needs to be.
