This may in fact be the first Terminator movie to have this much discourse behind it. In previous times audiences seemed to be in agreement over the Terminator films, the first two are good, the rest are bad, end of story. Terminator: Dark Fate is the first one to split audiences, with some claiming it to be a return to grace for the franchise as a worthy sequel to Terminator: Judgement Day while others claim that it is just another bad Terminator film. I for one fall more into the latter category as Dark Fate was simply a film I didn’t care for, I didn’t hate it per se, but I definitely didn’t see it as comparable to either of the first two Terminator films. That being said I also have the advantage of having never seen the supposed bad Terminator movies, simply because well, people said they were bad and the story had a satisfying ending at two, I had no desire to see them. So with this in mind I simply passed off the praise for Dark Fate as people taking an okay Terminator film and putting it into perspective of being the first Terminator film in nearly 3 decades to not be bad as that alone inflated the praise.It wasn’t until this tweet from film critic @VyceVictus “All the praise for TERMINATOR: DARK FATE I read is from those enjoying solid R-rated action or moments of genuine pathos with characters old and new. Arguments against it boil down to....the same things dipshits are mad at THE LAST JEDI for. That should tell you everything.”
This is what peaked my interest in deciding to discuss this film, as waiving off the criticisms and claiming it’s on the same level as the unwarranted criticism on The Last Jedi is not only unfair but unnecessarily hostile, so I’m here to talk about why people like me don’t like Terminator: Dark Fate.
*Spoilers Ahead*
Our film begins directly after Terminator: Judgement Day by showing that before Skynet was destroyed they had sent multiple Terminators into different times in history to ensure that John Conner would be killed, one of which succeeds in killing him while still a child. Cut to present day where it turns out Sarah Conner has been hunting these Terminators as an anonymous assistant has been feeding her the time and locations of these Terminators appearances. Later on in the film it is revealed to be the same Terminator that killed John and in those many years with no purpose he was able to grow a conscience, even found himself a family, and in an attempt to apologies to Sarah he gave her this information in order to give her purpose.
Meanwhile it turns out a brand new cybernetic overlord system named Legion has still destroyed the future and they have sent back their own version of the Terminators to kill Dani Ramos, who will be the future leader of the human resistance. Sent back to protect her is Grace, a human with robotic implants to make her more enhanced and able to fight off the Terminators one on one. Now teaming up with Sarah Conner and the Arnie Terminator they try to fight off the new Terminator and protect Dani along the way.
What would you say is the main theme of the original Terminator films? Because I think there’s one line that sums it up rather well: “The future's not set. There's no fate but what we make for ourselves.”. This was the whole reason why Sarah & John fought to destroy Skynet, why the T-800 has to sacrifice himself, in order to prevent the apocalypse and save mankind. What this film tells us is that it was all bullshit and for nothing as even with Skynet gone humanity will always fuck up and create a robotic apocalypse to doom themselves…lovely. Isn’t that swell? Knowing that the best films of this franchise don’t matter? That everything our characters did was utterly pointless? I’m surprised more people weren’t actively offended at how this film spits in its history.
Furthermore is the idea that the aging Terminator is seeking redemption by killing future Terminators seems somewhat hypocritical? Let’s look at this: Aging Terminator kills John Conner-A child and this franchise’s protagonist-and now with no purpose he eventually grows a conscience and feels guilt, so he decides that by having Sarah hunt down and kill these future Terminators, who assuming they’re the same models as Aging Terminator because they really enjoy reusing this model, these future Terminators would have shown up, realised they had no purpose due to John being dead and they also would have eventually grown a conscience, the difference being of course they didn’t have to kill a child to reach that point. Also how did Aging Terminator know where the Rev-9 (Legion’s Terminator) would show up? They’re from a completely different future.
Not that it matters if John is dead, because now we have Dani, a character who is going to go on and play the exact same role that John would have…for no reason. This film very much just wants to pick and choose which part of its legacy it wants to keep, and in someway that’s okay. For example, they still want to use the robotic apocalypse even though it was destroyed in Judgement Day so they simply create a new one that somehow functions the exact same as the previous one, seriously there is not an iota of difference between Skynet and Legion. Now granted while that is a huge thematic issue I’m not necessarily too fussed about letting that go because Skynet was always just a plot device, if the robot apocalypse doesn’t happen then there’s no franchise (Almost as if this shouldn’t have been a franchise and was meant to end at two films). What’s not as easy to forgive is the death of John, like I said, the former protagonist of this series to be unceremoniously killed off for the sake of introducing a character who will play the exact same role in the exact same future fighting the exact same robot apocalypse….Seriously how were more people not pissed off with this blatant disregard for the previous films!?
Not to rewrite the film too much because it’s always easier to write things in hindsight but how much better would this film have been if John had lived and he has to team up with the aging Terminator? Think of the role an adult John Conner has to play in a world where he’s not a heroic leader, he prevented the end of the world but also prevented the thing that made him important in the first place, him and the Terminator now purposeless soldiers of a future that never happened. But let’s not go too far into the what ifs, that doesn’t help anyone.
There are elements of the film that do work, the first thing that stuck out to me was the de-aging of Sarah and John in the opening scene. There are plenty of films that are taking advantage of the de-aging CGI and for the most part I look at them and go “Hey, that’s a lot like what that actor used to look like”. This was the first time where I was convinced that this was actually the actors in the 90s and this must have been a deleted scene from Judgement Day. There is also the fact the film continues James Cameron’s anti-authority stance but with a modern outlook.
In an extract from The Futurist: The Life and Films of James Cameron, by Rebecca Keegan Cameron discussed his reasoning behind making the T-1000 A police officer. The idea of the authority figure who abuses their power and dehumanises those they view as inferior to them. In which this film continues that trend by representing the Rev-9 as a border patrol officer trying to hunt down a Mexican citizen crossing the border into America. That’s some tasty social commentary right there. It is unfortunate it has to come on the backhand of such poor writing but I still appreciate the message being there, especially when many blockbusters feel the need to take a neutral stance on these issues because morality is relative when it comes to box-office.
Terminator: Dark Fate is not an awful film, I’d even go as far to say it’s not a bad film, a bad Terminator film definitely, but as a stand-alone sci-fi action flick, it is decent enough to warrant a watch. Unfortunately it is not a stand-alone film, context matters, context changes how we view these things. I’m sure tons of people who enjoyed the film do so because they know Terminator can be so much worse, but for me this is the bottom of the barrel, it is not only a bad sequel, but it in turn attempts to harm the prior films by picking and choosing what is worth keeping, what was important and making all the wrong decisions along the way. So hopefully that answers @VyceVictus that there is more to dislike with this film than just pedantic nitpicking.
-Danny
