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Update: October 30, 2019
Dragonlord’s Review of TERMINATOR: DARK FATE (Spoilers)
Bottom Line: Ruins the mythology so bad that not even the return of Linda Hamilton’s Sarah Connor could save it, Dark Fate is The Last Jedi of the Terminator franchise and personally my worst Terminator film to date.
[Warning: Review will contain spoilers, so do not read any further. Or just read it anyway since the movie is not that good.]
The film starts in 1998, three years after the events of Terminator: Judgment Day. We see Sarah Connor and a 13-year-old John Connor relaxing in a Guatemala beach. The de-aging or CGI effects for younger Sarah and John are very well-done, same also goes to a young Arnold Schwarzenegger whose T-800 character casually walks by and shoots John dead.
Bringing back a classic character like John Connor (with the meticulous likeness of Edward Furlong) and just unceremoniously killing him pisses me off especially if you’re a big fan of T2. This is like killing off fan-favorites Hicks and Newt in Alien 3 or even what happened with Sarah Connor in Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines. Dark Fate is off to a bad start and about to get worse as its female empowerment directive threatens to terminate any prominent character with the Y chromosome.
Skip to the year 2020, an advanced Terminator prototype, the Rev-9 (Gabriel Luna), is sent by the new future A.I overlord, Legion, to eliminate Danielle “Dani” Ramos (Natalia Reyes) who plays an important role in the future. Protecting Dani from the Rev-9 are granny-looking Sarah Connor (Linda Hamilton), an augmented human solider from the future, Grace (Mackenzie Davis) and an aged T-800, Carl (Schwarzenegger).
At this point, the story is getting stale and repetitive with the whole Terminator chasing the savior of mankind shtick. Time travel paradoxes and plot holes are still there which is nothing new for the series, so that gets a pass from me. Dark Fate just wasted its R-rating as it doesn’t really offer anything except for a few profanity and not-so-gruesome kills. The action from director Tim Miller feels too slick and superhero-ish and doesn’t have the grounded or heavy feel typical for a Terminator movie. At times the CGI action looks fake especially when Grace is involved.
It’s great to see Linda Hamilton again in the Terminator universe but her granny Sarah Connor is a bit unlikable at first because she’s trying too hard to act cool and always trying to say something witty. No major complaints with Mackenzie Davis as she was pretty decent in her role (I did hate the gender pronoun gag though). Arnold Schwarzenegger as Carl, a T-800 that has learned to grow a conscience and become more human over the years, was the better character among the bunch and it shows as the movie became a bit more lively when he finally re-enters into the picture. Too bad this aged T-800 concept feels like a rehash since Genisys already did something similar first. Gabriel Luna is miscast and is just plain boring as the Rev-9.
The worst character is Dani Ramos, the new John Connor of this alternate timeline. The diminutive Latina is just not believable as the future leader of the human resistance, even when they show her in the future scenes as the older version. She is just so cringey to watch when she gets all bratty and orders the other more experienced fighters to take a stand and take out the Rev-9. It’s also laughable how she can’t hit the targets (approx. 40 feet away) with her handgun during a shooting range practice but when she is given a semi-auto shotgun, she managed to become a sharpshooter and cleanly shoot off the targets (without damaging the target stand to boot).
They really went overboard with the girl power aspect as the movie seems intent on killing off any prominent male characters. John Connor - dead. Dani’s father – dead. Dani’s brother – dead. Even though they’re robots, they still looked like men, so Carl and Rev-9 – dead dead. Ultimately, Grace, with her short manly hair and flat chest, looked too much of a man. So they also killed her. In the end, only Dani and Sarah survived which sucks if they are planning on making this the first of a new trilogy because they just killed off two of their more interesting characters in Grace and Carl.
Some of the early critics’ reactions for Terminator: Dark Fate dubbed it The Force Awakens of the Terminator franchise. I disagree. Dark Fate is more like The Last Jedi of the Terminator films with its ability for subverting expectations in the worst way and overall destroying the promising mythology in favor of pushing an unwanted feminist/diversity agenda.
Rating: 4.5/10
Dragonlord’s Review of TERMINATOR: DARK FATE (Spoilers)
Bottom Line: Ruins the mythology so bad that not even the return of Linda Hamilton’s Sarah Connor could save it, Dark Fate is The Last Jedi of the Terminator franchise and personally my worst Terminator film to date.
[Warning: Review will contain spoilers, so do not read any further. Or just read it anyway since the movie is not that good.]
The film starts in 1998, three years after the events of Terminator: Judgment Day. We see Sarah Connor and a 13-year-old John Connor relaxing in a Guatemala beach. The de-aging or CGI effects for younger Sarah and John are very well-done, same also goes to a young Arnold Schwarzenegger whose T-800 character casually walks by and shoots John dead.
Bringing back a classic character like John Connor (with the meticulous likeness of Edward Furlong) and just unceremoniously killing him pisses me off especially if you’re a big fan of T2. This is like killing off fan-favorites Hicks and Newt in Alien 3 or even what happened with Sarah Connor in Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines. Dark Fate is off to a bad start and about to get worse as its female empowerment directive threatens to terminate any prominent character with the Y chromosome.
Skip to the year 2020, an advanced Terminator prototype, the Rev-9 (Gabriel Luna), is sent by the new future A.I overlord, Legion, to eliminate Danielle “Dani” Ramos (Natalia Reyes) who plays an important role in the future. Protecting Dani from the Rev-9 are granny-looking Sarah Connor (Linda Hamilton), an augmented human solider from the future, Grace (Mackenzie Davis) and an aged T-800, Carl (Schwarzenegger).
At this point, the story is getting stale and repetitive with the whole Terminator chasing the savior of mankind shtick. Time travel paradoxes and plot holes are still there which is nothing new for the series, so that gets a pass from me. Dark Fate just wasted its R-rating as it doesn’t really offer anything except for a few profanity and not-so-gruesome kills. The action from director Tim Miller feels too slick and superhero-ish and doesn’t have the grounded or heavy feel typical for a Terminator movie. At times the CGI action looks fake especially when Grace is involved.
It’s great to see Linda Hamilton again in the Terminator universe but her granny Sarah Connor is a bit unlikable at first because she’s trying too hard to act cool and always trying to say something witty. No major complaints with Mackenzie Davis as she was pretty decent in her role (I did hate the gender pronoun gag though). Arnold Schwarzenegger as Carl, a T-800 that has learned to grow a conscience and become more human over the years, was the better character among the bunch and it shows as the movie became a bit more lively when he finally re-enters into the picture. Too bad this aged T-800 concept feels like a rehash since Genisys already did something similar first. Gabriel Luna is miscast and is just plain boring as the Rev-9.
The worst character is Dani Ramos, the new John Connor of this alternate timeline. The diminutive Latina is just not believable as the future leader of the human resistance, even when they show her in the future scenes as the older version. She is just so cringey to watch when she gets all bratty and orders the other more experienced fighters to take a stand and take out the Rev-9. It’s also laughable how she can’t hit the targets (approx. 40 feet away) with her handgun during a shooting range practice but when she is given a semi-auto shotgun, she managed to become a sharpshooter and cleanly shoot off the targets (without damaging the target stand to boot).
They really went overboard with the girl power aspect as the movie seems intent on killing off any prominent male characters. John Connor - dead. Dani’s father – dead. Dani’s brother – dead. Even though they’re robots, they still looked like men, so Carl and Rev-9 – dead dead. Ultimately, Grace, with her short manly hair and flat chest, looked too much of a man. So they also killed her. In the end, only Dani and Sarah survived which sucks if they are planning on making this the first of a new trilogy because they just killed off two of their more interesting characters in Grace and Carl.
Some of the early critics’ reactions for Terminator: Dark Fate dubbed it The Force Awakens of the Terminator franchise. I disagree. Dark Fate is more like The Last Jedi of the Terminator films with its ability for subverting expectations in the worst way and overall destroying the promising mythology in favor of pushing an unwanted feminist/diversity agenda.
Rating: 4.5/10
