It’s happened like slightly rusty clockwork ever since Terminator 3: Rise Of The Machines sent the world’s most famous Arnold Schwarzenegger character crashing back into movie theaters. Every five years or so, a new Terminator sequel arrives, usually intending to undo the previous sequel and start a brand-new trilogy that will re-invent the classic James Cameron man-versus-cyborg movies for a contemporary audience. So far, the batting average has been distressingly low; Terminator is one of the only big-ticket franchises where a low-rated network TV series counts as a relative high point. Yet as dispiriting (or laughable) as it can be to watch B-list director after B-list director attempt to revive the endless, apocalyptic dust-up between humans, evil cyborgs, and reprogrammed-for-good cyborgs, The Terminator is better-equipped to handle bad sequels than most. After all, what mistakes can’t be retconned away by time-travel and/or blasted away by killer robots?
Terminator: Dark Fate doesn’t concern itself with that kind of temporal bookkeeping—at least not directly. It announces itself straight from its studio logo roll, intercut with footage of Sarah Connor (Linda Hamilton) circa Terminator 2: Judgment Day, as a direct sequel to the movies made by James Cameron, whose name actually appears in the credits this time around (although not as director or screenwriter). Plot points from Rise Of The Machines, Salvation, and Genisys need not apply.
Erasing those increasingly misbegotten follow-ups from continuity is as simple as putting pen to paper and placing actors in front of the camera, especially if it’s under Cameron’s watchful eye. But the fact is, those other sequels do exist, and even those who haven’t kept up with the full Terminator saga over the years may find Dark Fate a little familiar as a result. The new movie shares a grim status quo with Terminator 3, a character blurring the line between cyborg and human with Salvation, and some hyperbolic airborne stunts with Genisys. This isn’t Schwarzenegger’s triumphant return to his iconic role, either; he was doing Old Man Robot shtick in Genisys, too.
What Dark Fate does have over its three predecessors is Sarah Connor herself, Linda Hamilton. Following her relentless Judgment Day-era protection of her son, future mankind savior John Connor, the new movie opens with Sarah experiencing a terrible—and, as an immediate Judgment Day follow-up, pretty sour—tragedy, before jumping forward (without the aid of a time displacement machine) and following a different character. For a little while, Dark Fate plays like a loosely amalgamated remake of Cameron’s movies, with factory worker Dani (Natalie Reyes) going about her day in Mexico City until she’s doubly intercepted by a new shapeshifting Terminator (Gabriel Luna) and a new savior from the future named Grace (Mackenzie Davis).
Grace, who remains tight-lipped about the future purpose that the Terminator wants to keep Dani from achieving, isn’t exactly a re-programmed cyborg like the T-800 from T2. She’s a heavily augmented human with enhancements lending her superhuman strength and speed, and saddled with a metabolism that requires heavy medication to keep her going (an idea weirdly reminiscent of The Bourne Legacy—finally, a Terminator who needs her chems!). It’s a clever-enough variation on the otherworldly fierce protector (she’s basically half Terminator, half Sarah Connor), matched by the latest model of unstoppable murderous robot. The new bad guy is more likely to offer an unnerving smile than a thousand-yard blank stare, and can send a layer of shapeshifting liquid metal off to commit mayhem while its robotic skeleton stays intact, essentially offering two Terminators for the price of one.
After a serviceable car-and-truck chase in the vein of, well, a bunch of other Terminator movies, Sarah Connor comes blazing into the picture to help Grace protect Dani. After a time, the all-female group is joined by another potentially obsolete old Terminator (Schwarzenegger; he said he’d be back). Connor isn’t so happy to see this facsimile of a T-800, for reasons that derive entirely from the events of Dark Fate—which both helps the movie’s status as a standalone and diminishes its power as a legacy sequel. Connor also clashes with Grace, for no real reason beyond the screenwriters’ desire to approximate Cameron’s signature hard-boiled cornball dialogue by giving Hamilton a bunch of dismissive swears to chomp into.
Hamilton isn’t the only one who suffers from the hollowness of this imitation. Characters in Terminator: Dark Fate rarely have conversations. They explain traumas—Dani’s would-be personality involves her repeatedly touching people’s (and robot’s) arms while saying “I’m sorry”—and dole out exposition, withholding crucial information as the plot demands. Though Davis makes a fine (and less invincible) no-nonsense asskicker alongside Hamilton’s welcome return, the movie’s shiniest glimmers of genuine humanity come from Schwarzenegger, playing a slightly different version of this character than audiences may expect.
His storyline is one of the few genuine surprises Dark Fate has to offer, though the movie treats other, wholly routine plot turns like rollercoaster twists. More often, all it can manage is the jostling of its action sequences, directed with standard, anonymous professionalism by Tim Miller—an odd choice, given how much of Deadpool, his previous film, was dependent on flip attitude rather than a mastery of thrilling momentum or action choreography. His new Terminator can do more than ever; it can also look like a weightless little cartoon character in the process.
Though Dark Fate gets more engaging as it goes on (an escape from a disabled plane is a low-gravity highlight), its sci-fi ideas mostly amount to a listless skimming of hot-button issues. Detainment at the U.S.-Mexico border is a plot point, Sarah is constantly wary of smartphone tracking, and new enemies derive from “an AI built for cyber-warfare,” but no one seems interested in recontextualizing the human/Terminator battle into a contemporary horror. James Cameron has made his much-ballyhooed return to announce that the battle continues, and may continue further, should this adventure prove profitable.
Even the novelty of the writer-director’s approval is overstated. The King Of The World did a round of late-breaking puff-press selling Terminator: Genisys, though he had no formal involvement with the making of the film. Here, his producing and story credit (the latter shared with four other writers) may indicate an experiment with how much of a personal nudge from the master is required to make one of these sequels actually work. The apparent answer, as ever, is more time than Cameron is willing to give. Dark Fate serves as a case study for the difficulty of crafting a satisfying follow-up to a pair of certified classics, a process that seems to involve constant toggling between hopelessness and insisting that all is not lost. As such, it’s hard to blame Cameron for keeping his old series at arm’s length. It’s also hard to stay interested in a franchise that looks, with each inessential sequel, more and more like a doomsday prepper rephrasing the same old prophecy.
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So no Edward Furlong or John Connor? He is listed on the imdb page. Flashback footage maybe?
Based on this review’s implications, I’m guessing he dies early in the movie.
SPOILERYou would be correct. Man can John Connor catch a break?
Nothing grinds my gears quite like a sequel that renders the prior entry superfluous and eliminates all the emotional stakes that were built. See also Alien 3.
It’s enough to turn me off watching this film, especially in the theater.
Following her relentless Judgment Day-era protection of her son, future mankind savior John Connor, the new movie opens with Sarah experiencing a terrible—and, as an immediate Judgment Day follow-up, pretty sour—tragedy, before jumping forward (without the aid of a time displacement machine) and following a different character.
I’ll give you three guesses as to what this tragedy at the opening of the movie is. Connor isn’t so happy to see this facsimile of a T-800, for reasons that derive entirely from the events of Dark FateBonus points for guessing who’s responsible.
Summer Glau should have protected him.
This is why I don’t read reviews for movies I really care about. They spoil things just by being coy and clever. Unless you’re an idiot, you can typically read right between the lines on these reviews and get about half the plot spoiled for you.
Stuff that happens in the first twenty minutes isn’t really a spoiler. It’s just the premise. You can’t get mad for finding out something that happens in the first reel.
Killing off a classic character is a spoiler, no matter when it happens in the movie. That’s definitely something that’s meant to shock the audience. Now we’ve all had that taken away from us.
Nah.
Assuming this is the plot twist, which seems pretty obvious, I am kind of disgusted that movies keep ignoring a basic rule of popular fiction/franchises: you don’t invalidate a happy ending from the installments that people liked the best.
Not a plot twist; The premise.
Cameron himself has spoken out against this sort of thing (because of Alien 3), so I don’t get why he’s doing it here.
I suppose. Although I wouldn’t mind having him return to that franchise. I think Ridley Scott has demonstrated with crap like Prometheus and Alien Covenant that he really doesn’t understand why the Alien universe works.
And what’s the point? We replace John with another character who serves the exact same purpose?
Though on the flip side, I’ve always thought that would be the most interesting thing this series could do to keep running. The Connors keep cutting off heads of the hydra to stop Judgement Day, but it always comes about anyways. Similarly, Terminator goes back in time, successfully fulfills it’s mission for once and kills John Connor, and then they discover doing so has no effect on the human resistance, cause human resilience and fortitude! So the Terminators and the humans (and thereby the movie) abandon the time travel shenanigans and we just get a good solid 90 minutes of human and robot armies having at it in the future.
So the Terminators and the humans (and thereby the movie) abandon the time travel shenanigans and we just get a good solid 90 minutes of human and robot armies having at it in the future.Sorry buddy, that was done too. Terminator: Salvation. They really did milk this franchise from every angle.
I did like how they flipped it from having someone needing to protect John to having John protect his future dad.
Aside from the successful Connor assassination, that’s basically Terminator: Salvation, isn’t it?
Exception: Mortal Kombat: Annihilation, which kills off Johnny Cage in the first two minutes, it is hilariously abrupt. Man, I love that dopey movie.
“Hi, John Connor! You look like you’ve got something to say! Do you???”“Yes, I certainly do! . . . I have to go now—my planet needs me.”[Note–John Connor died on the way back to his home planet.]
But does he ever get to the fireworks factory?
It could have been interesting to just call this TERMINATOR 3: DARK FATE since they were going to wipe away the three most recent movies, including the original TERMINATOR 3.
Oh, thank God! Terminator fell so far that I’m fine with a C+.
“Terminator hasn’t been this good in years! C+.”
—Scott Aukerman
The eight separate writing credits were definitely a good sign.
The problem these sequels have created is there is now no longer a reason why Skynet can’t just start the annihilation of humanity a lot earlier. Originally, all they could do was send one Terminator with no fancy weapons back in time. He was formidable, but he was pretty much limited to trying to take out Sarah Connor because he’s still just one super strong/tough robot; if the military ever found out about him they could take him out with a missile strike. But now, with apparently no limit on how many Terminators they can send back to the past and the ability to send ones that can make their own high tech weapons or duplicate or infect people with nano-tech, you could easily send a couple back to, say, the 1930s and they could pretty much take over the world. No one would have the military muscle to take them on. Then they can just enslave mankind, accelerate the development of technology, start building all the robots they need, and wipe out humanity well before Sarah Connor, let alone John, is ever born. (Originally this wasn’t an issue because of the self-fulfilling prophecy nature of time travel, but it seems like that’s been chucked out the window too.)
Hmmm… Tell me more about this plan. – Sincerely, NOT an insidious A.I. group-mind with the ability to time travel and a desire to enslave the human race.
I want my Terminator vs. 1930’s Gangsters movie!
“Take off your clothes immediately.”“Eh, looks like we got ourselves a wiseguy here. How about you hit the pavement before I rattle those teef a yours, capeesh?”
Then from the Term’s perspective you see his voice to text translation going haywire.
“Ka-beesh?”
Cat feesh?
They actually did that in the TV series.
Did an Endoskeleton at any point wear a fedora and fire a tommy gun?
The Sarah Connor Chronicles had an episode with terminators sent to the 30s where they dressed like gangsters and used tommy guns. One of the terminators was even built into the wall of a building to wait 60 or 70 years before busting out to do some terminating.Maybe in the movies they can only go back so many years or something?
I love that episode. The Terminator was accidentally sent too far back, and basically did as little interfering with the timeline as possible, boarding itself up into a building until its target appeared.
The Sarah Connor Chronicles had a great (read: fun) grasp of all this sending infinite Terminators and protectors back in time. Two lovers sent back as protectors manage to reunite, only to slowly discover that the changes the first one to go back made to the timeline drastically affected the life of the other.That show was easily the best the Terminator franchise has been since Judgement Day.
And TSCC showrunner Josh Friedman felt so burned by the cancellation and they way he was treated afterwards that he refuses to reveal anything about his plans for the third season; not even for the fans.I think he once said that he was quickly asked to clean out his office and was escorted off the studio lot by security.
Did the series get an actual ending, or was it canceled without resolution?
Worse, canceled on a cliffhanger.
Not just canceled on a cliffhanger. Canceled on like 5 cliffhangers of which multiple of them were mindblowingly awesome. Aaargh!
It did not. The season finale/series finale ended on an amazing cliffhanger with a huge twist. And as another poster stated, the show runner
Zero resolution. I made the following comment further below in the comments. This came from an interview I read several years ago.And TSCC showrunner Josh Friedman felt so burned by the cancellation and they way he was treated afterwards that he refuses to reveal anything about his plans for the third season; not even for the fans.I think he once said that he was quickly asked to clean out his office and was escorted off the studio lot by security.
The only real excuse (and it’s an ok one) is that it’s easier to find people with the technology in the 80’s and beyond, but it’s not like people were moving constantly in the 1920’s, they could just read a census. Unless the Connors can’t trace their family back very far. But the future of the series could be Terminator: Time Wars where both sides keep going back in time and mess things up.
When was that. I got through the first season and I wanna say half of the second before I completely lost interest. Though even the episodes I did see of the second I wasn’t paying attention. Anything worth seeing (as someone who grew up on Terminator and has fond childhood memories of it).
I don’t think you were alone in finding the mid-point of season 2 slow. There was like a 3 episode arc where Sarah was investigating three dots. Some say this stretch may have caused a hige viewer drop off that contributed to the shows cancelation.
They already screwed that up with T2. T1 was a very self contained story that did a great job of explaining why only one Terminator was sent back to that specific time. Reese tells the police that Skynet sent the Terminator as a last ditch effort right before it was defeated and it sent the Terminator to 1984 because most pre-war records were destroyed so it didn’t know how to find Sarah Connor.T2 opened a Pandora’s Box by having Skynet sending other Terminators even thought the T1 Terminator was supposed to be the last thing it did before it was destroyed.
I’ve been saying that for years. Judgement Day just added a big budget for CGI on top of a lot of plot holes while rehashing beats from the original to a lesser effect.
Ish. T2 DID explain that the original T-800’s remains being left in the past made another separate path to the creation of Skynet and subsequently Judgment Day.
The proceeding sequels essentially kept adding increasingly ludicrous time loops or causes that allowed for Skynet’s (or quite literally a non-union Mexican equivalent’s, as seen here) eventual creation: 3’s was literally “because the CLOUD is magic”. T2 was still fairly self-consistent.
I remember seeing a comic that argued that the T1 Terminator and T2 Terminator were sent back simultaneously, from the future’s perspective. Basically a two-pronged last-ditch effort. Though this comic existed before any of the post-T2 sequels.
Wow. Which comedy club did you see that act at? Sounds dull.
Okay, that took me a minute. Bravo.
There’s also a comic that had the T-1000 send itself back. Because it was a prototype so it had more autonomy and could operate without Skynet’s control. But those explanations still require stuff outside the movie.
To be fair, the rules of the universe never made sense, even in the original. The reason that Kyle Reese had to go back in time naked was that the time machine didn’t work on nonorganic matter. But the Terminators got around it by having skin over their metal skeleton? Wouldn’t that just transport the skin and leave the skeleton back in the future?
Exactly, and they could have just wrapped guns in what they use to make Terminator flesh and taken them with the Terminator into the past, which would have made for some cool Cronenberg type visuals.
And I think we found the A-Plot to a season 5 episode of Rick and Morty.It would be handled better on The Venture Bros, but no one has that time to wait.
It didn’t open a pandora’s box, it created a Back to the Future-esque alternative timeline/future as it seems you forgot it. Just like how Biff gave his past self the Almanac to create an alternative timeline where he wins, Skynet did the same thing by counting on Cyberdyne/Miles Dyson/someone finding the T1 Terminator’s parts and tech to create Skynet and therefore an alternative timeline where it wins.You’re also forgetting that T1 never explained how Skynet and Judgement Day happened. T2 actually explained it through the alternative 1984/1997 Skynet created.
I never had the impression that Skynet was created by anything other than Cyberdyne using the remains of the T-800. It’s like a dual creation. The T-800 goes back to terminate Sarah. Fails. But ends up being the father of Skynet. Reese goes back to protect Sarah. Succeeds. And ends up being the father of John. If neither time-trip happened the future would be void of John Connor, but it would also be void of Skynet.
Seems that you didn’t see T2 or at least understood he whole plot and point of it which had that whole chunk of the movie of them confronting Miles Dyson and going to Cyberdyne’s Headquarters to destroy the parts and tech. And with the T-800 destroying itself at the end so that no one can use anything to create a future Skynet.
Yes. I understand that. But I view it as Sarah becoming the terminator of Skynet. Just as the T-800 tried to erase John by killing John’s mother, Sarah’s plan was to erase Skynet by killing its father (Dyson). I don’t recall anyone saying anything about alternate timelines or that Skynet was created by anything other than Cyberdyne/Dyson. And I don’t think that Cyberdyne/Dyson would have been able to create Skynet without the remains of the T-800.
But I view it as Sarah becoming the terminator of Skynet wat I don’t recall anyone saying anything about alternate timelines or that Skynet was created by anything other than Cyberdyne/Dyson. Yeah, you should reread my post where I said that the alternative future was introduced in the second one that you really need to rewatch and understand. Especially the part where the T-800 explains everything to John and Sarah. And I don’t think that Cyberdyne/Dyson would have been able to create Skynet without the remains of the T-800 You’re repeating what I said in my op.
You seem to be saying that the origin of Skynet in T1 is different than the origin of Skynet in T2. I don’t think that is the case at all. I think the alternate future starts in the middle of T2, the moment that Sarah decides to kill Dyson.
I’m not seeming anything. I’m only saying what was clearly stated in movies that you really need to re-watch, pay close attention to, and understand what was said. None of what you’re saying makes any sense or has anything to do with the films.
T2 opened a Pandora’s Box by having Skynet sending other Terminators even thought the T1 Terminator was supposed to be the last thing it did before it was destroyed.Robert Patrick’s T-1000 fucking ruled, though, so no one cared about that particular Pandora’s Box. If the series had stopped there everything would be fine.
I think there are a lot of ways this franchise could have been “fixed”, one issue of many is the reliance on Schwarzenegger and the Connor family, specifically Sarah and John.Anthology series are making a comeback, do it that way and put it on some stupid streaming service none of us have heard of.
I’m not a Terminator fan, but I’ve always wondered why the later sequels forgot that the reason T2 (and T1, to a point) worked is that it set up clear barriers and disadvantages for the villain to overcome, just as it did for the heroes.It was a parallel story-line with two protagonists, and you can’t do that if one of them is an absolute juggernaut of a threat to the other, with crazier and crazier nanobot or whatever abilities each time.
Given the fractured nature of the timeline, there could be a version where that happens without really harming the franchise as a whole.I’d love to see an anthology film/show with terminators in different eras, a la Timesplitters.
Angels With No Souls But Electricity, Which Is Similar
Just send the Terminator back to the 1750s, when the mightiest army on Earth had muskets and it took 3 months to get from one side of Europe to the other.
I think the biggest obstacle is simply that the Terminator franchise is having a hard time getting over the genre shift. The first Terminator, for all its action setpieces, was not actually an action film. It was a slasher, ala Halloween or Friday the 13th. It’s just that Cameron took a far more grounded approach to the villain, and instead of making it some kind of supernatural juggernaut with a cardboard motivation to kill as many horny topless teenagers as possible, just made it a very sturdily-built robot from the future with a kill list. But everyone gets confused by Cameron’s superbly-made action setpieces into thinking that the film is something that it’s not. And while T2 quite successfully upped the ante, of course you face diminishing returns: that’s what happens with slasher franchises. Every time Jason Vorhees comes back, the justification gets thinner and thinner, the lengths the script must go to justify his return harder and harder. The Terminator franchise suffers from the same problem. It’s solvable, but mainly by either resetting the timeline, or suggesting that you can fracture a timeline as Avengers: Endgame did, where the end of a timeline doesn’t necessarily destroy a Terminator that’s been sent back from that timeline, and you just kinda fudge the how’s and why’s of it.
Exactly. ‘Terminator’ was a horror film. And in all the years of Arnold playing heroes, people have forgotten what an excellent movie monster he was.
On one hand I may be the ideal audience for this movie, being a fan of the first two movies who hasn’t watched a minute of the subsequent ones. On the other hand, I’ve been content with the first two movies for the past twenty five years and feel no need for extensions of the story. I guess that makes me the best and the worst possible audience for this movie. What a marketing paradox.
I finally broke down and watched one of the not-first-two movies this year (whichever one had Claire Danes in it). One good truck chase scene, but the rest was… yech. I’m still going to watch this just because Linda Hamilton being a badass is probably worth a discount matinee ticket alone.
I did like that they actually went through with destroying the world. The execution of it all was . . . yeah, yech. . . but the idea was a nice twist.
That truck chase scene was awesome. I remember it came out the same year as Reloaded and being more impressed by T3 than the car chase in Reloaded, which was pretty great. It was an okay movie overall with a good ending, but the villain was a big drop-off from 1 and 2.
I’m curious to discover why there’s another friendly T-800 that’s been living in our world for 30 years, aging on the outside. T2 Arnold was captured and reprogrammed by the resistance. Did they do it again?
I’m curious to discover how. In T1 and T2 we see the Terminator destroyed. In T1 some bits were recoverable and that led directly to the events in T2, where the Terminator was obliterated entirely. So where did this one for T3 come from? The only reasonable answer is that every instance of interferance splits the timeline and we’re dealing with quantum foam universes, but will the movies ever address that? I’m guessing nah. 😕
Seeing Hamilton made me realize it’s been two decades since Cameron cheated on one of his wives with someone he met on a movie set. Congrats, Jim!
How much are we willing to bet that he didn’t at least make a pass at Michelle Rodriguez while making Avatar though?
Depends on whether or not he likes toothy gals. If not, he probably made a pass at Zoe Saldana (not that I blame him).
While the original film had a decent scarey premise- Skynet sending a terminator back in time to kill Sarah Conner before she gave birth to John Conner etc etc….. why bother with HER? AT ALL ?? Simply go back and kill a different ancestor – But not TO far back since SKYNET has to rely on humans to develop Technology so it can become self aware – if they killed Tesla- No Skynet..HOWEVER that is a solution for the humans sure it would change the time line and it would be a STEAM PUNK world- but no AC polyphase transistorised technology all simplistic DC and vacuum tubes – Radio would exist and rudimentary TV but skynet not possible
I think there is a limitation to their genealogical knowledge. When the original T-800 went back, he didn’t even know WHICH Sarah Conner to kill. I’m guessing the presumption there is they had enough knowledge to know that the correct Sarah Conner was in LA at that period of time, but not much more. The farther back in ancestry you go though the harder it would be to pinpoint a target.Though that only makes sense in the original film, where sending a T-800 back in time was the machine’s last ditch effort to salvage the war. Now we’re in a Terminator universe where they apparently time travel to their heart’s content. And also are seemingly continuing to develop more and more advanced robotics (which makes the idea of “war” seem silly; humans vs T-800, ok maybe, humans vs T-1000? not really sure how we’re even still in the fight if Skynet has a bunch of those around, much less whatever this new terminator is in this movie). At this point it really does becomes a question of why bother with specific human targets at all. Send an army of T-1000s back, kill Tesla for all they care, use the T-1000s to “invent” whatever the heck they need, establish an electric/information infrastructure specifically tailored for skynet. Forget destroying humanity, Skynet could just go back in time and recreate the world however they see fit.
Hell, why not kill off humanity when its ancestors were just a handful of Lucy-like australopithecines three million years ago? Then the Terminators would have access to all the resources of the Earth that humanity used up!
..surely skynet wouldn’t exist then though…although the logic of these movies is so loosey goosey that maybe it would.
Humans didn’t develop the technology for Terminators, it was given them from the spare parts left over from the crushed Terminator. Thus Skynet couldn’t go too far back or no one would be in position to understand and use that technology. The first movie is an origin story both for Skynet and for John Connor, forming a closed time loop.So who invented the technology for Skynet? Apparently no one, it just exists. More troubling, how do we know John Connor saves humanity? John was told so by his mother who was told by Kyle who was told by John. Another closed loop with no idea if it is true or not. Based on the pictures from the future, I’d say humanity was losing and Skynet just let them access the time machine because it knew that had to happen.P.S. Tesla the world would have looked more or less the same without Tesla, he wasn’t all that important.
If I remember correctly, in T3 they show that Skynet was an artificial intelligence system for military defense. And because there was no centralized system, it couldn’t simply be shut down. I thought it made sense.
Skynet was always for military defence, that’s why it had access to all the nukes. But you are wrong that a decentralized system can’t be taken down. It’s not easy, but it can be done if you blow up power stations around the world, fry computers, power lines etc. Nuclear weapons was the most effective way to stop Skynet. Makes you wonder who really pushed the button.In the first movie it makes slightly more sense since Skynet started the war just seconds after becoming self aware, knowing that once humans found out they would kill it. There was no time for sophisticated plans.
Okay, it’s been a while since I’ve seen any of them. I can’t remember exactly how they explained the inability to shut it down in the 3rd movie, but I think it was more that you couldn’t just flip a switch and turn it off.I do remember in T3 that the bombs started falling shortly after Skynet went online. I guess that’s not seconds, but I don’t remember what if anything they said about it becoming self-aware in that movie.At any rate, I see now that I misunderstood your post. You weren’t really looking for an explanation, but providing one. Skynet was developed from spare parts of the original terminator, which couldn’t exist without the invention of Skynet and the terminator, but that couldn’t happen until Skynet existed and the terminator was sent back, but that couldn’t happen..
You remember correctly, they did claim that Skynet couldn’t be shut down because it was decentralized. I just pointed out it was a stupid explanation, and that Skynet, if it did start the war, would have commited suicide. Colossus (the Forbin project) was much smarter in just detonating two nukes as a demonstration and using the threat to blackmail humanity.
That sounds interesting. I’ll have to check it out.
I think this franchise really works best as just the original film. I know the second is beloved, but the ending is so much less interesting.
I’m fine with the ending of T2 being THE ENDING.
Exactly. They’ve broken the chain by destroying the terminator/skynet tech prior to it being developed by the holders of the chip and robotic arm. Ties it up nicely.
Is detainment an actual word? I would have said no, but my spell checker seems satisfied…
Never heard of the old detainment camps from ww2? Not knocking ya btw. But yeah, it’s a word. Has an ugly association for me.
I’ve always heard those as internment camps.
I’m just glad this is finally coming out so I no longer have to hear that damn song every time I go to the movies“I’m going hunting…”
The bad news is, it’s almost time to start seeing previews for next summer’s blockbusters, every one of them with a slowed-down pop song intro. Ah, I can hear the piano tinkle notes now . . . “I’m . . . walking on . . . sunshine . . . whoah . . . “
Right now we’re getting previews for the awful January movies that got dumped. That one with Selma Hayek that literally ends with Tiffany Haddish saying “coochie!” is maybe the worst of those.
Oh god that one is cringy. I want to take Tiffany aside and tell her she doesn’t need to do every job offered!
Oh God, the trailers in front of “Zombieland 2″ (including the one you mentioned) were a who’s who of “why would I want to see that movie?”
It looks really bad, but damn it if I did laugh at Selma’s “My head isn’t small, my breasts are just enormous.”
That movie looks awful, BUT it does have Salma Hayek with red hair which is somehow a possibility I have never thought of that I now need in my life (as soon as it hits streaming).
I’m gonna chime in here with my favourite bit of “sad trailer music”:It’s also a fun trailer for trope bingo 😛
Some day a real rain will come and wash this mopey scum out of our trailers, and we’ll go back to the only covers that work: Pop-punk versions of classic rock songs.
The constant barrage of Gears of War and Call of Duty commercials that are all “remix a famous song so it has movie trailer style-WHOMPs and no flow” almost have me missing the “slowed down pop song” trend.
For a film led by kick ass women, it’s bizarre to me that they used a male-voiced cover of one of the best and most haunting songs ever written and sung by a kick-ass woman.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vksL6H9NpmU
It gets worse, when that male is none other than Jared Leto!
What? You’re fucking kidding me….
Oh btw Arnold is played – sure they explain how a cyborg has GREY HAIR – pfft the guy rode his 5’9″ steroid enhanced physic to fame via terminator and the governor’s office – now he rides the fading 80s scene once again as the OLD GUY IN THE CLUB- Dave Chappelle remarked about that – you dont wanna be the old guy in the club it just doesn’t look right…..The other Arnold flick coming out is KUNG FURY 2 Arnold as president who gets kidnapped by the Kung Fuhrer Hitler taken back in time and Kung Fury the Miami super cop and his squad of Thunder cops including Triceracop a dinosaur headed cop go back in time to battle the ninja army of darkness who have Shark headed ninjas with lasers shooting out of their eyes.Complete with all the 3rd Reich’s symbols I have back stage pictures as I was shooting a TV show in Munich’s Bavaria Film Studios Arnold showed up with his cigar shook some hands and I got some shots of the ninja army of darkness on a cig break in costume….be great to post them here but you can Google the Bavaria Film studio and I put them on its review …just 2 oh the 1 guy in the metallic puffy suit wears the shark head but it’s off so he can breath on break.
Sorry, but I would totally watch Schwarzenegger ride a triceratops. No merit of any sort needed, it’s just one of those train-wreck type ideas. Can’t look away, don’t want to.
I like how Jesse calls out that each iteration adds yet another element from the originals back, bombs again, and then it’s on to the next reboot. “OK. OK. This one has Cameron producing, Linda Hamilton, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Edward Furlong AND Nick Stahl as TWO John Connors, and, uhh, Michael Biehn? How about now?”
It feels like the film-making equivalent of GOB’s “Have we tried glasses on, hair down?”
What I find crazy is how many shots this franchise has had at another run. None of the sequels were well loved, and I don’t think any of them were box office success stories, but they seem to do just well enough that those at the top keep wanting to fiddle with them to see if they can pull out another winner. It reminds me of someone trying to restart a car over and over, sure that this time the engine will flare to life and they can get back on the road.
With how massive T2 was, it makes sense that they’d keep trying. It probably feels safer to a stereotypical timed exec to roll the dice on a franchise that at least once had a massive payout rather than on a whole new original movie that may go nowhere. Genysis was the only one that truly bombed, right? Rise and Salvation maybe didn’t meet expectations (and certainly not T2 levels), but I think they both at least did okay.
Yeah, I don’t know how much more loudly audiences can say “NO THANK YOU” to this franchise. The last one bombed so badly at the time that it supposedly killed off the whole franchise, and yet all it took was someone saying “What if Linda Hamilton?” and then in remarkably short time, we’re back at bat with a third reboot.
All of the sequels have had something interesting in them that I’ve appreciated. T3 followed through with judgment day. Salvation gave insight into the creation of the terminators and teased at the idea that John Connor could be made a terminator (or something like that) – of course they didn’t follow through on that. Even Genisys mixed things up with changing the timelines and trying to push it into a new direction. None of them really came together into a good movie, though, which is disappointing.
I agree with you, but I find that almost all movies I see have at least one good idea I can imagine making a better movie out of. It’s kind of funny that all of these sequels feel like a really big (and massively expensive) writing workshop on the Terminator franchise. Like a bunch of writers are just exploring the ideas and mixing up the pieces that make up the story, and seeing what comes out. That’s neat, but it’s a little baffling that they keep taking these sort of half formed ideas and making full films out of them.
The next sequel needs a CGI-recreated Bill Paxton — he never showed up in the sequels after getting one of his early parts as a punk in the original.
It’s tragic. The franchise has so much potential in the right hands, yet it’s stuck in a rut of trying to appeal to slavish nostalgia.
This is the Terminator section, you’re looking for Star Wars.
Man, I’d probably go to the theater for Biehn. Especially if he’s Johnny Ringo in the Wild West Terminator someone downthread suggested.
Oohh, then they could explore John Connor’s daddy issues!
Sounds a-stinky.
So, as expected, it sounds like John Connor dies.
WAAAHHH WAAHHHH WAHHHH SPOILERS SPOOOOOILLEEEEEERSSS WAAAHHH YOU KILLED MY CAT SAY YOU’RE SORRY NOW! *stamp stamp stamp*Am I doing this right?
Hot take: Rise of the Machines wasn’t that bad. The “jokes” were mostly cringeworthy, yup, but the decision to end it with Judgment Day was bold and could have really pushed the franchise forward if McG hadn’t fucked it up so badly.
If y’all haven’t seen the 2008 WB series ‘Terminator the Sarah Connors Chronicles’, the series is pure gold, especially the deeper into the 2 seasons/31 episodes you get. Starring pre-GOT Lena Headey. and an incongruously kick-ass Terminator played by Summer Glau of ‘Firefly.
2008? Geez that was more than 10 years ago. I still want to know what the plans were for the third season.
I was dissapointed by Headey there. It’s like they undid her arc from the original film. The interesting characters were all from the future.
You sent me into a tailspin by reminding me that TSCC aired over 10 damn years ago. In addition, your description of it as “the 2008 WB series” had me wondering if I was battling dementia in my advanced age, because I could’ve sworn it aired on Fox. The good news is that it did air on Fox; it was produced by Warner Bros. The bad news is 2008 was over 10 damn years ago.
I had forgot it was on Fox, myself. For awhile the CW was streaming the full series for free (WB = CW) but then it got whisked away to some other streaming site(s).
I’m not sure if it’s exactly “news” that 2008 was over ten years ago, but point taken. 😉
To be fair, the TV series was actually quite good, especially when exploring teaching machines ethics as well as not only (indirectly) building up Skynet as a character in its own right but also making the should have been obvious leap to there being multiple machine and human factions who even allied with each other across the species divide. Made for much more interesting storytelling than Destroy All Humans seemingly Just Because.Also, the comics had some of the finest writing of the series including this one written as a sequel to Terminator Salvation and tied together T1, T2, T3 anf T4. Written by J. Michael Straczynski and it’s really good and refreshingly different in its ultimate story direction and conclusion especially. Read the first two issues for free here legally.https://io9.gizmodo.com/a-terminator-the-last-battle-bombshell-plus-read-two-1636523202
Oh, I agree about the TV show. It’s uneven and repetitive in the way that a lot of shows are, but on the whole I prefer it to any of the post-T2 sequels. It turns out not having the money to go full-on cyborg-mayhem in the fights and stuff is pretty good for narrative development.
Agreed, I like the TV show quite a bit more than any of the T2 sequels.
Same goes for the Alien franchise. The first three arcs written by Mark Verheiden for Dark Horse are terrific and expand that universe really well. (To be fair, those three are the only ones I’ve read, so maybe it goes off the rails after that.)
Thanks for the tip, I’ll be sure to check that out.
I thought the whole 10 part comic series quite superb actually and tied everything that was out in terms of the movies quite well.I won’t give anything away except the hint of one thing. Target of assassination by time travelling killers from the future from before you were born, protected by another team of time travellers to ensure your existence. You yourself end up having rather strong opinions on the matter and end up taking action yourself.John Connor or Skynet?
Just the trailer alone makes me absolutely NOT want to see this.
I just can’t get over the stupid title. Dark Fate is something a 13 year old comes up with writing a Batman/Twilight fanfic. Even Genisys was a better subtitle.
Probably supposed to tie back to the “no fate but what we make” quote from T2.
yeah, the film title pretty much sealed the deal for me from having more than a passing interest in this film. i stopped at T2, i might have seen T3 but if so it left so light an impression i might as well have nor seen it, and i will leave a good thing in the past and not try to recapture the magic.
still the 2nd best terminator movie subtitle
So does the world end in this one?
The takes I’ve read so far are all over the board. Jill Pantozzi at iO9 LOVES it, mostly because all the main characters are women.https://io9.gizmodo.com/terminator-dark-fates-post-judgment-day-future-is-fema-1839256091
i don’t know… it seems like IO9 either gushes over scifi films or are slightly disappointed. i tend to ignore IO9 film reviews for exactly that reason. 😉
The one thing I can generally count on from IO9 nowadays is that whatever Germain says, I’m the opposite.
io9 is a great place to read reviews if you want positive reinforcement if you’ve already decided to see a movie and/or already decided you like a movie. for actual criticism…not so much.
Coming from someone who still uses the term “the future is female”, are you really surprised Jill thinks this new Terminator is the second coming of Christ?
So is Furlong in it? Not flashback Furlong. Today’s Furlong.
“usually intending to undo the previous sequel and start a brand-new trilogy that will re-invent the classic James Cameron man-versus-cyborg movies for a contemporary audience re-hash the same tired beats with poorer execution to diminished returns”ftfy.People keep saying Terminator sequels are inessential and there’s nothing left for the franchise to do. The fact is, there’s plenty of directions for it to go, but writers/producers are only interested in trying to make T2 again.As soon as this was announced and they were saying “we’re gonna ignore everything after 2!”, I knew exactly where this was going. I’m getting sick of being right.
nothing tickles me more than there being an entire trilogy of failed trilogy starters and they STILL go back for more.
Knowing Edward Furlong makes a cameo in this flick, the reviewer writing, “What Dark Fate does have over its three predecessors is Sarah Connor herself, Linda Hamilton. Following her relentless Judgment Day-era
protection of her son, future mankind savior John Connor, the new movie
opens with Sarah experiencing a terrible—and, as an immediate Judgment Day follow-up, pretty sour—tragedy…” is a massive spoiler.
I don’t mention Furlong in the review, and the tragedy I’m referring to happens in literally the first five minutes of the movie.
I wouldn’t have put that together without your comment, so thanks.
No offense, but the basic plot point that the Terminator is hunting someone new seemed like kind of a spoiler. I’ve been expecting John Connor to die since the first trailer.
Not everything is a “spoiler”!
Also…you knew this was a review going in. Plot points were going to be discussed.
Oh, and maybe others aren’t as smart as you detective, and didn’t connect those dots. So, if correct, it turns out YOU are the spoiler!
The thing you’re whining about, you’ve actually made the deliberate effort to do. Blatantly.
Ugh. The world is all about you, isn’t it?
Spoiler culture is the worst.
The culture of constantly whining about “spoilers” is WAY more annoying and petulant than the “spoilers” themselves. It’s the epitome of a first-world problem. OH NOES, you were mildly inconvenienced! Good thing there are no real problems in the world!
“Why isn’t the rest of the world on MY schedule!?!”
To me, though, the equating of ANYTHING THAT HAPPENS in a movie/show/book with a “spoiler” is what’s truly annoying.
As for me, personally, sometimes even the revealing of a “true” spoiler doesn’t ruin an experience if it’s done well. I mean, did any of us grow up NOT already knowing the big reveal in Psycho before we had a chance to see it?
Does anyone go into a romantic comedy really wondering if the couple ends up together?
Did that mean people really go into Titanic not knowing what was going to happen to the boat?
And of course, how many people who complain about any bit of info as a “spoiler” have rewatched a particular movie or show, and dissected it, ad nauseam? By all the whining, you’d think the second viewing would bore/anger/generally dissatisfy them, since they already know what’s going to happen and therefore can’t possibly appreciate it.
Exactly.How have I been able to re-watch The Empire Strikes Back so many times and still enjoy it? I mean, I know Vader is Luke’s dad, right? So knowing that “spoils” the movie/is equivalent to watching the movie? The 2 hours leading up to that don’t matter? Shit, someone should have just told Lucas that he could have said “Vader is Luke’s dad” and saved a whole bucketload of money making an entire movie about it, then!But anyway, yeah. I’m not saying intentionally give stuff away to be a dick. I’m saying that if you find out something you don’t want to, treat it as the MINOR INCONVENIENCE that it is and MOVE ON WITH YOUR LIFE.Also, now we’re treating stuff in TRAILERS as “spoilers” too. It’s fucking pathetic. You’d really think people had no problems at all.*waits for others to inevitably twist my words into me saying “Give away all the things, all the time”*
Avoiding spoilers is about not wanting to know how a story turns out the *first* time you see it. Nobody who wants to avoid spoilers thinks they ruin repeat viewings. Seriously, how did you even come up with that?
I don’t how anyone could not put those dots together. But, honestly I’m with the other person. I’m not hugely scared of spoilers but that whole tragedy thing combined with never seeing John in promos tells you what you need to know. It’s not it big thing but since the movie seems to be trying to keep it a secret, I wouldn’t even allude to it.
Where is it stated that they’re trying to keep it a secret? Because that’s one of the hour and fifty-seven minutes not in the trailer?
Also…none of what you said changes the fact that it wasn’t stated in the review, but in the whiny comment decrying the review for not explicitly doing what the comment itself did.
I would guess that not telling people what is going on with John in the press or in trailers means they want to keep it a secret. Or at least a reveal not spoiled by shots in trailers etc. Crazy me.
Every one has known that reviews contain spoilers since…forever? The plot is a key part of reviews! And yet these people…
“I’m very mad that the thing I read about the movie was about the movie!”
“Furlong? More like Furshort, amirite?” ~ Sarah Connor, Terminator: Dark Fate
Terminators versus dinosaurs
I saw both of the original movies in the theater and never bothered with any of the others after. I was mildly tempted to see this since it has Sarah Connors and is ignoring the other sequels but my tepid enthusiasm is definitely diminished after reading this review. I was fine with the second movie solving the problem and averting the dreaded AI future and anything after seems pointless.
for a series that relies on time travel, there’s pretty startling lack ambition. Lets see wild west terminators. Or terminators in viking times. That could be cool as hell.
AGREED. I’d even settle for a director who’s more than a respectful journeyman, but that sounds even cooler.
Please dismiss that cancerous, racist troll that is besmirching the real Dr Emilio Lizardo’s good name
I flagged–do you mean that someone’s handle got jacked or do you just mean the good name of the Buckaroo Banzai character?
Ha, a little of both I suppose, but in our immediate reality, it’s another user named Dr Emilio Lizardo who has been a valued regular here since the Gawker days.
Heck, I’ve been around since the original AV Club days. Oh, you mean the monkey boy I inhabit.
Please stop spilling your period blood in the comments section of a movie review, worthless.
Wild West Terminators! That sounds boss, but you’d need to switch up the style of Terminator again, perhaps some kind of large spider…
You make a good point. If the Terminatorses’ only objective is to kill off John Connor, then they should probably just pop on to ancestry.com and go back to hunt down young Johannes Connier in 1587 London, rather than keep going back to get busted up again and again in modern times. At the very least, if they’re going to go after Sarah Connor they should go back BEFORE the first film so she isn’t waiting for them.It always bothered me with the first film that Skynet didn’t know her address and had to rely on the Terminator using a phone book to find her. Who knew that an unlisted number was all it would take to outsmart the doomsday machine.
I’ve been rooting for Mackenzie Davis to get her big, breakout role that launches her to the A List and any role she wants, but I knew this wasn’t going to be it. I seriously doubt there were a lot of people clamoring for more Terminator movies.
It’s unfortunate, because Davis is really good. You could practically give her a blank paper bag and she could make a compelling character happen. But she needs something other than…well, this to really launch a larger/broader career. But again, we also don’t know if she wants one. Maybe she’s just having a bit of fun after the years on Halt and Catch Fire.
I would happily plunk down cash for a sequel to What If/The F Word starring her and Adam Driver’s characters.
The problem I have with every Terminator movie after T2 is that T2’s mantra was, “No fate but what we make.” Yet, every entry in the franchise since has taken a very fatalistic tone. It has become a series of delaying actions to kick Judgement Day further and further down the timeline because the future keeps wanting to happen.
Isn’t that life, though? I can’t promise “You won’t die,” but I can promise “You won’t die today.” Don’t expect to stop Judgement Day on the infinite timescale, just stop when it’s going to happen next. And the next time, and the next time.There’s definitely an element in contemporary fiction that “happily ever after” is a dangerous concept that breeds complacency, a lie evil uses to buy itself time to heal. I certainly agree with that view, living in a world flying apart after it was built by people who thought all the monsters had been slain and they could just sit on their thumbs and let the profits roll in.
T2 is probably a perfect action movie and a perfect sequel, so I have a very hard time imagining any sequels to that which don’t seem 100% superfluous and hollow in comparison.
but no one seems interested in recontextualizing the human/Terminator battle into a contemporary horror. and this is why I hate pretty much all the Terminator sequels, yes, even Terminator 2. They all pull lines and some action sequences from the original and remix them but without the tension, suspense and chilling sense of a truly unstoppable murder machine.All they really need to do is set it in the future, during the war. Have SkyNet send in a T-1000 infiltrator to a resistance bunker and shoot it Alien/The Thing style. It doesn’t need to have ridiculous highway or helicopter chase action sequences. There doesn’t need to be building-leveling explosions.Just a cold, claustrophobic who’s who? story set in the future.
This.
LOL terminator G3n1sys got a B-
After having seen it, it was fine. I don’t really understand anyone’s motivation for making it, particularly Cameron’s, as it doesn’t really seem to have a new perspective on things. Just kind of a lukewarm reboot/retread. Also its hard to see how Skynet was ever a threat to humanity though, given how prone their main product seems to be to heroically sacrificing himself to save humans.I like the quasi-twist that Skynet was ultimately stopped, but that just gave rise to a different robot uprising/human resistance/time travel shenanigans. Speaking of time travel shenanigans, I guess the idea is that Skynet just sent a bakers dozen of Terminators back to different points in time, otherwise how’d they have a T-800 to kill John after Skynet had been thwarted in 1995? Much less have more Terminators for Sarah Conner to be going around killing in the intervening years. Also a little fuzzy on the tattooing of “Carl’s” coordinates on Grace’s belly? What was the story there?
I miss the days when a movie was a movie and not an entry in a “franchise.”
I wasn’t expecting much when I Redbox’d this last night, but I was pleasantly surprised. The action was really good, and there were enough twists to the formula to make me happy. I haven’t seen Terminator 2 in twenty years or so, and the subsequent movies didn’t make much of an impression, so this honestly feels pretty fresh to me. I’d give it a solid B.
Just got around to watching this. In fact, I am halfway through and am not sure that I am going to finish it. The dialog itself and pacing of the dialog are both really off; some scenes seem more like a table read, where no one is quite sure what word to emphasize yet or how long to pause. The jokes are just terrible, too.