‘Terminator: Dark Fate’ (2019)



I know, I’m posting a lot about movies… I’m working at home now, for the foreseeable future (same as everyone else), and my reading time has somehow taken a real hit off the back of this. Seems like I read more, on the bus, than I thought…
I’m hoping that normal service will resume, on that front, very shortly (I mean seriously, I thought working from home would give me more time for reading…) but it’s another movie post today ;o)
I’ve always had a soft spot for the Terminator films, even the rubbish ones. Okay, not the rubbish ones so much; ‘Terminator: Genisys’ was awful wasn’t it? What was that film even about? Anyway… I had a little look in CEX yesterday and somehow, despite the fact that ‘Dark Fate’ was only in the cinema last year, the DVD was there on the shelves. Fingers firmly crossed that it wouldn’t be another ‘Genisys’, I bought myself a copy and went home to watch it.

In Mexico City, a newly modified liquid Terminator -- the Rev-9 model -- arrives from the future to kill a young factory worker named Dani Ramos. Also sent back in time is Grace, a hybrid cyborg human who must protect Ramos from the seemingly indestructible robotic assassin. But the two women soon find some much-needed help from a pair of unexpected allies -- seasoned warrior Sarah Connor and the T-800 Terminator.

So that’ll teach me to give a film a chance… ‘Terminator: Dark Fate’ was pretty damn awesome as it happened. Having said that though, the reason it’s great is basically because it runs along almost the same lines as the first ‘Terminator’ film; a Terminator is sent back in time to kill a young lady who is helped by a resistance fighter.  It’s the same story but I loved the new dynamic between Dani Ramos and Grace; while it hearkens back to Sarah Connor/Kyle Reese, it’s good to see two women helping each other out than just relying on a man. It makes a nice change for the franchise and just in general.
There’s a little more to the film than that though…

In the same vein as ‘X-Men: Days of Future Past’, ‘Terminator: Dark Fate’ resets the canon (and rids us of all the ‘rubbish Terminator films’ after ‘Terminator 2’) sends us along a slightly different path with an explosive opening that drives Sarah Connor along a new path and back into the orbit of Arnold Schwarzenegger’s T800. Yeah, I had the same ‘oh no, not again’ reaction but they do something new with him this time and the whole exploration of ‘what does a Terminator do once the orders stop?’ really works. Schwarzenegger is never going to get comedy though, sorry guys, those moments where he tried just felt a little flat to me.

What ‘Terminator: Dark Fate’ does deliver though is all of the full on action that we’ve all come to expect from the franchise with Schwarzenegger and Gabriel Luna’s Terminators beating the absolute crap out of each other, and the scenery too. In terms of sheer spectacle, it really works.

As a ‘soft reboot’ for the franchise, ‘Terminator: Dark Fate’ works on all levels and was such a welcome change after ‘Genisys’ and even ‘Salvation’ (although that wasn’t bad). All of a sudden, I’m hopeful for the future again (for the franchise anyway, not so much the inevitable conquest of the world by Legion…)

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