Terminator: Dark Fate
Terminator: Dark Fate is the sixth (and final?) film installment in the Terminator franchise and more or less ignores the movies that followed Terminator 2. It flashes back briefly to events that would have taken place a couple of years after Judgement Day ended, then skips ahead to the near future where humankind is once again threatened by an impending apocalypse caused by killer robots. It stars Linda Hamilton, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Mackenzie Davis, Gabriel Luna, and Natalia Reyes and was released in US theatres on November 1, 2019. Terminator: Dark Fate is rated R for sci-fi action and violence, strong language, and nudity and runs a tight 2 hours and 8 minutes.
I watched Terminator: Dark Fate in a very small 48 seat auditorium along with about 15 other folks during a Discount Tuesday evening showing on 11/19/19. Since half the cast was people of color (in fact, the the majority of the first 20 minutes of the movie are subtitled because the characters are speaking Spanish), there were several jokes that I noticed the people of color in the theatre were laughing at along with me, while the white people there didn't get them. I consider myself a fan of Terminator: I really liked the first two films, thought the third started to go off the rails, highly enjoyed the TV show, and didn't bother with the 4th and 5th movies. Dark Fate is an excellent addition to the mythos, and the fact that nerdbois have shat their collective drawers in anger over it thrills me. However, it will be incredibly disappointing if their vitriol has cautioned others away from seeing it and the poor financial performance has ended the series. We'll see if it gets additional life from the home video/streaming crowd.
If you're not a fan of spoilers, you'll want to wait to read any further before you see the film for yourself, because I will discuss things that are pretty spoilery. You've been warned!
Like I mentioned earlier, Dark Fate partially rewrites the ending of Terminator 2 and therefore eliminates the 3rd, 4th, and 5th movies (and the TV show) from the continuity. The movie starts with Sarah Connor doing voiceover about how only three years after they defeated the T-1000, she and John were living peacefully in Guatemala, but another T-800 found them and managed to kill John. Then we time jump to 2020 in Mexico City, where we meet Dani, a working class young woman just trying to get by. A modified human woman and an advanced Terminator "Rev-9" model arrive from the future, and then the action starts. After a rousing freeway chase, Sarah Connor shows up, blows the Rev-9 away and helps Dani and Grace (the future lady) escape. Eventually, the group meets up with the same T-800 that killed John twenty two years ago. Sarah, obviously, is not on board, but Grace and Dani feel they can trust the robot because he's spent the last couple of decades living with a human woman and helping raise her son. As "Carl" puts it, he's "incredibly efficient at changing diapers, doesn't complain, is a good listener, and very funny."
The two biggest issues that internet geniuses seem to have with this movie are: John dies in the first 5 minutes (in a flashback, no less), and is replaced as savior of the human race by an Hispanic woman. I saw one review where the guy acknowledged that he hated John in T2 because he was a crybaby bitch-boy (accurate), but was "shook" by the fact that Dark Fate killed him off. To which I say, why? The only thing I can think of is that he didn't like the fact that a lady could perform future John's same functions with no issues. That reviewer couldn't fathom why this film would not only throw away the previous three films, but also the first two films by killing John off.
Clearly, I disagree with that take, and I'll tell you why. The key message of Dark Fate is not that John Connor is humanity's savior, it's that humanity is worth saving. John didn't need to survive and become the leader of the human revolution because if we're being honest, he didn't stop the machine uprising anyway. We only need a leader, someone who can be a beacon for all of us to rally together around and fight back. If humans are anything, they're resilient and are always willing to follow a strong leader, whether that leader be a privileged white male or an impoverished Mexican woman.
There were a couple other moments in the film that I really liked (that emotionally stunted man-children did not, natch). The first was Grace's take on the "Come with me if you want to live" which was, "Come with me if you don't want to die in 30 seconds." Then there was Sarah flippantly saying, "I'll be back" to Dani and Grace before going to blow up the Rev-9. The T-800 got to say, "I won't be back" and there was a brief moment where he contemplated the signature sunglasses, but then decided against them. And finally, during the scene where it was revealed that Dani herself (and not her unborn son) was the leader of the future revolution, Sarah angrily said, "You're not the threat, it's your womb." That statement kind of wraps up assholes attitudes towards women in general, and they're (just like Sarah was) dead wrong. They underestimate women time and again, and reduce them to nothing more than a set of genitals/organs and a pile of hormones when they are much more than that. These dumbasses are so surprised at the sort of attention that is being paid to women in media/entertainment, the workplace, society, etc now because they don't pay the correct attention to women in the first place.
Terminator: Dark Fate was exactly what I wanted to see from this franchise: solid action, familiar characters further along their arcs, killer robots from the future, and cautious, but hopeful optimism for the future. The fact that angry white dudes on the internet hate it is just the icing on a big ol' delicious cake.
I watched Terminator: Dark Fate in a very small 48 seat auditorium along with about 15 other folks during a Discount Tuesday evening showing on 11/19/19. Since half the cast was people of color (in fact, the the majority of the first 20 minutes of the movie are subtitled because the characters are speaking Spanish), there were several jokes that I noticed the people of color in the theatre were laughing at along with me, while the white people there didn't get them. I consider myself a fan of Terminator: I really liked the first two films, thought the third started to go off the rails, highly enjoyed the TV show, and didn't bother with the 4th and 5th movies. Dark Fate is an excellent addition to the mythos, and the fact that nerdbois have shat their collective drawers in anger over it thrills me. However, it will be incredibly disappointing if their vitriol has cautioned others away from seeing it and the poor financial performance has ended the series. We'll see if it gets additional life from the home video/streaming crowd.
If you're not a fan of spoilers, you'll want to wait to read any further before you see the film for yourself, because I will discuss things that are pretty spoilery. You've been warned!
Like I mentioned earlier, Dark Fate partially rewrites the ending of Terminator 2 and therefore eliminates the 3rd, 4th, and 5th movies (and the TV show) from the continuity. The movie starts with Sarah Connor doing voiceover about how only three years after they defeated the T-1000, she and John were living peacefully in Guatemala, but another T-800 found them and managed to kill John. Then we time jump to 2020 in Mexico City, where we meet Dani, a working class young woman just trying to get by. A modified human woman and an advanced Terminator "Rev-9" model arrive from the future, and then the action starts. After a rousing freeway chase, Sarah Connor shows up, blows the Rev-9 away and helps Dani and Grace (the future lady) escape. Eventually, the group meets up with the same T-800 that killed John twenty two years ago. Sarah, obviously, is not on board, but Grace and Dani feel they can trust the robot because he's spent the last couple of decades living with a human woman and helping raise her son. As "Carl" puts it, he's "incredibly efficient at changing diapers, doesn't complain, is a good listener, and very funny."
The two biggest issues that internet geniuses seem to have with this movie are: John dies in the first 5 minutes (in a flashback, no less), and is replaced as savior of the human race by an Hispanic woman. I saw one review where the guy acknowledged that he hated John in T2 because he was a crybaby bitch-boy (accurate), but was "shook" by the fact that Dark Fate killed him off. To which I say, why? The only thing I can think of is that he didn't like the fact that a lady could perform future John's same functions with no issues. That reviewer couldn't fathom why this film would not only throw away the previous three films, but also the first two films by killing John off.
Clearly, I disagree with that take, and I'll tell you why. The key message of Dark Fate is not that John Connor is humanity's savior, it's that humanity is worth saving. John didn't need to survive and become the leader of the human revolution because if we're being honest, he didn't stop the machine uprising anyway. We only need a leader, someone who can be a beacon for all of us to rally together around and fight back. If humans are anything, they're resilient and are always willing to follow a strong leader, whether that leader be a privileged white male or an impoverished Mexican woman.
There were a couple other moments in the film that I really liked (that emotionally stunted man-children did not, natch). The first was Grace's take on the "Come with me if you want to live" which was, "Come with me if you don't want to die in 30 seconds." Then there was Sarah flippantly saying, "I'll be back" to Dani and Grace before going to blow up the Rev-9. The T-800 got to say, "I won't be back" and there was a brief moment where he contemplated the signature sunglasses, but then decided against them. And finally, during the scene where it was revealed that Dani herself (and not her unborn son) was the leader of the future revolution, Sarah angrily said, "You're not the threat, it's your womb." That statement kind of wraps up assholes attitudes towards women in general, and they're (just like Sarah was) dead wrong. They underestimate women time and again, and reduce them to nothing more than a set of genitals/organs and a pile of hormones when they are much more than that. These dumbasses are so surprised at the sort of attention that is being paid to women in media/entertainment, the workplace, society, etc now because they don't pay the correct attention to women in the first place.
Terminator: Dark Fate was exactly what I wanted to see from this franchise: solid action, familiar characters further along their arcs, killer robots from the future, and cautious, but hopeful optimism for the future. The fact that angry white dudes on the internet hate it is just the icing on a big ol' delicious cake.
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