The 35-year-old Terminator franchise now contains six movies, two seasons of TV’s Sarah Connor Chronicles and a handful of webisodes. But increasingly, its convoluted time-travel plots amount to the screenwriters shaking up a Magic 8-Ball and seeing what floats to the top. “Reply hazy.” “Ask again later.” “I’ll be back.”
Terminator: Dark Fate may be chapter VI, but returning writer/producer/creator James Cameron considers it a direct sequel to Terminator 2: Judgment Day. It opens with a brief prologue in 1998 before moving to present-day Mexico City. There, factory-worker Dani Ramos (Natalia Reyes) has been targeted by a Terminator model Rev-9 played by Gabriel Luna. (Fun fact; Rev-9 was also the shade of Kristanna Loken’s lip gloss in 2003’s Terminator 3.)
Also arriving from the future is Grace (Mackenzie Davis), an enhanced soldier with a mission to protect Dani. And from the present (but also like a blast from the past) is Linda Hamilton as Sarah Connor, reprising the role she last played 28 years ago in Judgment Day.
While it’s great to see older female action heroes – at 63, Hamilton is just four years shy of Liam Neeson – the setup of something from the future trying to kill someone, while someone from the future tries to stop it, is easily the weakest link in Dark Fate. It’s a little too close to all the other Terminator stories, and I lost track of how many times the protagonists had to basically run away from the seemingly un-killable Rev-9.
The action sequences start out as boffo before gradually shading into gonzo. An early chase on a Mexican highway, with the Terminator literally ploughing up the road in pursuit of his quarry, is perfectly paced and thrilling. Less effective is a scene inside a military transport, in which the aircraft plummets from the sky while the passengers make their escape on a Humvee that crash-lands next to a hydroelectric dam. It’s a little hard to follow, though it does pull off the rare action trifecta; land, sea and air.
So on the one hand, Dark Fate features some intense action set-pieces, including the helicopter crash that has become something of an obligation for the franchise. On the other, a gruel-thin plot that amounts to “Move! Now!”
And yet, sandwiched in the middle, the screenplay manages a few deep thoughts about the nature of free will, forgiveness and retribution, much of it channeled through Schwarzenegger’s character. If Grace’s implants have made her something more than human, his T-800 remains a little less – but not by much, and always striving to close the gap.
And the seriousness with which he takes every assignment, whether assassination or fetching a beer, makes for some great comic relief. Hamilton’s character, meanwhile, exists on a diet of potato chips, alcohol and wrath that will endear her to many critics.
The film ends with the promise of more to come, which is also de rigueur for the franchise. But with Cameron back on board, it also effectively wipes out the timeline of the third, fourth and fifth movies – and you may recall that 2015’s Genisys, set in 1984, effectively rebooted the original story already.
It resonates with a line from Dark Fate, about a Terminator “carrying out orders from a future that never happened.” With each new film reaching further back into the past to tweak parts of the franchise history and kill off others, it’s clear who the real Terminators are; the filmmakers, and the audiences. And they’ll be back.
2.5 stars
Terminator: Dark Fate opens across Canada on Nov. 1
Copyright Postmedia Network Inc., 2019
