"TERMINATOR: DARK FATE" (2019)

Terminator: Dark Fate
Directed by Tim Miller
Story by James Cameron & Charles H. Eglee & Josh Friedman and David S. Goyer & Justin Rhodes; Screenplay by Goyer & Rhodes and Billy Ray
Starring Linda Hamilton, Arnold Schwarzenegger and Mackenzie Davis
Running time: 2 hours and 08 minutes
MPAA rating: R for violence throughout, language and brief nudity

by Hunter Bush

I'm a big fan of the trope I think of as "The Titular Line", when a character in a movie says the title of the movie they are in. Sometimes it's so synonymous with what the movie is that taking note of it is pointless, like someone saying "Ghostbusters" in Ghostbusters. What I enjoy is seeing if the writers and actors can make some of the clunkier subtitles sound natural. So, around an hour twenty into Terminator: Dark Fate when characters start really throwing the word "fate" around, I perked up. But it wasn't to be. The best you get is Natalia Reyes' Dani at one point saying "Fuck fate!", which is... pretty close.

Picking up after 1991's Terminator 2: Judgement Day (and erasing the 3 subsequent installments from the timeline) Fuck Dark Fate starts off pretty strong before hitting a second act slog that ruins the momentum. We learn that Sarah Connor (Linda Hamilton) accomplished what she set out to do: save humanity from Judgement Day, the day when a sentient computer program would wipe out huge swaths of the population with nuclear warfare before unleashing an army of killer robots to eradicate the survivors. But much like a killer robot from the future, time marches on and now humanity has a new savior-to-be and the killer robots have a new target: Dani (Natalia Reyes).

Sidebar: I know the nickname Dani (here short for the lovely Daniela) existed before Game of Thrones gave it a new pop cultural resonance, but now that it has, nobody should name their protagonist Dani for a while. Just let it lie for like ten years and then you can fold it back in. I find it hard to believe that no one brought this up. See also: Midsommar.

So Daniela (See? See how easy it is to not use it?) is our new focal point; integral to the survival of the human race in some distant war against a sentient AI that will rise up to kill its creators. Same shit, different Terminator. But not really. In 1984's original Terminator, the titular killbot was a T-800 model - a 400 lb. metal skeleton in a synthetic Arnold Schwarzenegger skin-suit - who was defeated before he could kill Sarah. In Judgement Day, another T-800 joins Sarah in protecting her son John (Edward Furlong) from a T-1000 - a model made from liquid metal - which could form arm blades and change shape but mostly just looked like Robert Patrick in a police uniform. The T-1000 was also defeated. In Dark Fate the latest and most nigh-unkillable of all Terminators, the Rev-9 (Gabriel Luna) is actually a Terminator 2-for-1 deal: a liquid metal one riding on a metal skeleton one. Regardless your feelings on the now-negated Terminator sequels, one thing they always did was try to up the ante with a new Terminator; one that could do something different and act as a new challenge for our protagonists. This is just the same Terminators we've already seen, but again and more. Once that concept is exposed (almost immediately but also: in the trailers) the novelty wears off pretty quick.

Protecting Daniela from the Rev-9 is Grace (Mackenzie Davis), a soldier sent back from the future, echoing the O.G. Terminator plot. Grace however, has been upgraded: she's an "Augment" - a cybernetically enhanced human with reinforced bones, increased senses and reflexes, a heads-up display and a minor healing factor - the cost of all which is that she needs semi regular shots of a cocktail of meds to keep her from overheating and convulsing herself into a coma. They are shortly joined by Sarah Connor (Hamilton, naturally) who has spent the years since she saved humanity's bacon hunting and killing Terminators whenever they rear their invariable very shiny heads.

In filmmaking the maxim du jour is "Show, don't Tell" and to that end: the first third of Dark Fate is watching three extremely competent, kickass women managing to stay one step ahead of the Terminator Twofer despite being mostly outmatched and outgunned. It's leading-by-example feminism and of all the things that Dark Fate seems thematically concerned with, its feminist stance is the one that worked the best for me. The fact that it makes it almost the whole movie without drawing attention to how feminist it's being is also a plus. When a filmmaker drops a line as clunky as "You're not going to give birth to some man who saves the future, you are the future", what they're really saying is "Do You Get It?" and though there will always be some part of me that resents feeling talked down to by my entertainments, there is another (less hot-headed) part that understands the reasoning. I guess we've reached a point, as a society, where we can no longer afford to be subtle. The concept that women can lead an action franchise shouldn't feel like a stance in 2019. But it does and it is. And that fact is just radically depressing, but I digress.

Even when Ol' Arnie joins the gang halfway through, though he is given character development he's essentially being used as a tool, or more accurately a weapon - albeit one that makes solid quips and has great banter with Linda Hamilton. Karl (Schwarzenegger) as he is known, is also the catalyst for what ends up being the movie's best handled theme: living a life with purpose. That's a solid theme in general but the metatexual way it addresses Schwarzenegger & Hamilton's legacy in this franchise really connects. The problem is that it's introduced too late to really land. The entire third act is one Michael-Bay-eat-your-heart-out action spunktacular after another and it's hard to ruminate on a theme while trying to keep track of which CG blur is the one you're rooting for.

Gang. This movie was written by 6 people. The story came from 5 of them, then the screenplay was written by 2 of those 5 plus an additional 1. And what's more, it shows. Someone wanted to spend the necessary time building Grace & Daniela's characters and reintroducing Sarah Connor to new audience members, but that means sacrificing screen time for Schwarzenegger and since the back end is just a series of action spots without time for character building, all of that has to happen in the middle, which slows the pacing WAY down. Too many cooks in the kitchen. Not to mention the thematic dropped threads of both: our modern symbiotic relationship to technology (surely the semi-symbiotic Rev-9 spun out of that concept, as did a throw away line early on about the omnipresence of cellphones and cameras) and - believe it or not - something about US immigration policy (which culminates in a literal punchline about how they're not called "prisoners" they're "detainees"). Both of these subjects are somewhere in this film's bones but get lost along the way.

Ultimately, Terminator: Dark Fate is just another Terminator sequel, about as good as any other post-Judgement Day sequel in all respects save representation. Having the film almost exclusively carried by women calls into question why that's such a revolutionary concept in franchise movie making. Having Grace need to give herself regular injections allows viewers with medical issues to see an aspect of themselves in this badass super soldier who refuses to quit. Having almost all the major roles played by non-white or non-male actors throws contrast on every film which can't manage to do that.

I wish I could say that the movie wrapped around this representation was more than just fine but I can't. Perhaps if, like time, the Terminator franchise continues to march inexorably forward, the next installments will be more cohesive and satisfying, and if not, if this is truly the Terminator franchise's final fight then at least it landed some truly righteous blows for equality before the little red lights went out in its eyes...

Don't worry gang, I'm not crazy! There will definitely be more Terminator movies! I was just being poetic! After all, how can there ever be a final installment of a franchise when its catchphrase is "I'll be back."?





This piece was written for Moviejawn where you can find plenty of stuff to read in addition to what I've written.

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Long Live the Movies!