\In a dystopian future with humanity’s survival remaining uncertain, the leader of the resistance sends an augmented human protector back in time to prevent the seed of rebellion from being squashed before it germinates into a full-blown movement. The world has been taken over by an all-consuming artificial intelligence called Legion. If this sounds familiar to you minus a few details, you might’ve guessed that we’re talking about a Terminator movie… Well, we are! Terminator: Dark Fate. The film released this weekend and we had an opportunity to go see it this past Sunday and thought we might as well leave you with our initial impressions.
Linda Hamilton reprises her role as Sarah Connor, the woman who in previous incarnations was the mother of the resistance leader, John Connor. She returns as a war-weathered and battle-hardened mentor to Daniela Ramos, played by well-known Latin American actress Natalia Rivera. The story hinges on two main points. The Terminator universe has taken a turn that would’ve been a course correction when Sarah Connor defeats Skynet only to have her son gunned down by our favorite musclebound Terminator, Arnold himself. Since then, she’s been receiving mysterious text messages from a seemingly Terminator omniscient benefactor. She has been using this information to track and destroy the mechanized invaders. This is when she stumbles on Dani, a factory worker from Mexico City who seems to be attracting chaos wherever she goes. And that’s about as far as we’d like to go in discussing the plot here on the blog. Be warned, our video review does contain a couple of spoilers for those who wish more spoiler free experience. So, if you are someone who wants a more spoiler free experience, please skip the video this time around.
This is a very welcomed entry into the Terminator franchise. It brings the series back to its roots and tries his hand at some actual storytelling which we did not see during Terminator: Salvation or Terminator Genesys (despite my undying love for Emilia Clarke). One thing we both think Terminator fans might be disappointed in is the lack of fear and suspense in the more recent entries. We definitely hear you; however, we see this as a move away from that type of film into a more action oriented speculative fiction venture. For us, this is a welcome change as there have been many films and stories that placed technology as the central antagonist in dystopian worlds since the first two Terminator films, which were decidedly more suspenseful and horrific (at least to our childhood memories). Linda Hamilton’s performance as Sarah Connor is top-notch. She comes off as the kind of mentor you would want in a world on the brink of destruction (think the Jedi master from The Force Unleashed). There is a minor plot twist which many of us will see coming if we are well acquainted with the series but it’s a well met change from the traditional narrative in our opinion.
Also, on display are several callbacks to previous entries in the series, both in terms of lines delivered by returning characters and visual callbacks to James Cameron’s masterful work. There are one or two superfluous scene transitions during action sequences that would’ve better served the film had they been left out (Captain Gimpy’s opinion) but overall, it doesn’t hurt the film. In fact, both of us left the theater wanting to rewatch the first three Terminator films, which is far more than either of us can say about the previous two installments to the franchise. If you are a Terminator fan, and you’re open to the possibility that the series might be entirely rebooted, this film is definitely for you. If not, we are sure there will be another sci-fi epic to tickle your fancy.
Cinehorde Review 