Terminator: Dark Fate

Terminator: Dark Fate is part of a recent trend of retconned sequels.  Franchises sometimes produce a series of sequels that eventually bear little resemblance to the original property. The audience may stop coming and franchise may languish for years.  Eventually whoever holds or purchases the rights may bring in someone to right the ship and put things back on track.  If a decision is not made to reboot the franchise then the person brought in may opt for a back to basics approach which will involve ignoring the unloved entries and just making a sequel to the first or second story.  This approach has been applied repeatedly in recent years in horror franchises like Halloween.  Bryan Singer did it with the Superman series.  Superman Returns ignored sequels III and IV and just positioned itself as a sequel to I and II.  Fans of the Alien franchise were excited years ago when it appeared there might be another sequel that disregarded the events of the third and fourth films though it never came to pass.

A primary motivator for a retconned sequel is to use one or more characters killed off in a previous film.  Jamie Lee Curtis’s Laurie Strode has died at least twice in the Halloween series and is still making them.  Freddy Kruger was killed in at least one Nightmare on Elm Street film.  Superman Returns revived Martha Kent who according to a line in Superman III, had passed.  The proposed Alien sequel was going to bring back three popular characters who died in the third film.  I find this trend more annoying in TV shows in which a character who we may have lived with longer dies, is mourned, and then brought back for narrative convenience.  Prison Break separately killed off two main characters that later were resuscitated.  One of them even had lost a head.  

  

Linda Hamilton, who played Sarah Connor in the first two films (and an attraction at Universal Studios) had not wanted to appear in the Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines so she was killed off.  Genysis featured a young Sarah Connor in an alternate timeline, played by Emilia Clarke but the film did not work and audiences did not turn up.  One of my issues was it was odd to see Arnold Schwarzenegger as Terminator interacting with a different actress playing Sarah Connor.

Just as crucially, James Cameron, who co-wrote and directed the first two Terminators, and created the world, was not involved in the series after the first two films.  However he agreed to return to the series as a producer/consultant after being requested by Tim Miller, who was slated to direct the new film.  Miller is most known for directing Deadpool, which I have not seen. Miller recruited Cameron by saying he wanted to make a direct sequel to Terminators 1 and 2 and ignore the others.  Cameron and Miller worked with several writers to develop the story and managed to convince Linda Hamilton to return as Sarah.  Cameron and Hamilton are ex-spouses so perhaps that had something to do with it but more likely Hamilton knew that Cameron’s involvement would ensure the character was developed with a clear sense of purpose.

If you want a look at my thoughts on the other films in the series it is here.

Spoilers below:

In the story a couple of years after T2 John Connor is shot dead by a T-800.  Sarah, stricken with grief and a desire for revenge devotes her life to hunting terminators unknowingly with the help of the same T-800 who killed John.  This film shows what would happen to a terminator that stayed around and grew old which was an interesting idea to explore.  Terminator’s identity as Carl, who works with draperies, seems plausible.  The rest of the story occurs about 25 years later with a Terminator Rev-9 who has liquid metal abilities as the T-1000 but can shift into two bodies and also solve problems just by blending in, is on the hunt for Dani, who is set to be the leaders of the future resistance against the machines.  Dani is played by Natalia Reyes.  Mackenzie Davis plays Grace, a human solider with enhanced abilities who is sent to protect Dani.  Sarah Connor shows up to offer support against the Rev-9 and after several escapes the team tracks down “Carl” who has been sending the messages to help Sarah.  The rest of the story is about Sarah eventually forgiving the T-800 while the four of them battle the Rev-9 in numerous scenarios and eventually defeat it in a power plant.  Both Grace and Carl sacrifice themselves to destroy the Rev-9.

I saw the film on blu-ray, since it was out of the theatres before I managed to see it.  I largely enjoyed it but with some reservations.  It was fun to see Sarah Connor and the T-800 working side by side again.  The first act has beautifully choreographed fight between Grace and the Rev-9 in an automobile factory followed by a thrilling chase which rivals the canal chase in T2.   The escape from the border patrol station and the sequence at Carl’s home also worked quite well.  Schwarzenegger, who is used just enough, is both touching and hilarious in the scenes in which he describes the turns his “life” has taken.  Carl appears right around the midpoint when the film needs some fresh energy and the approach to the character is fitting.  Interestingly the last action sequences featuring him were less memorable, especially the helicopter sequence which had too much CGI to be credible.  Sarah also gets thrown around much more than someone her age should be able to bounce back from no matter how strong she is. 

Hamilton’s presence gives a lot of weight to the film.  Sarah had lost the most in the first two films but at least had kept her son alive.  John’s death takes away the one thing she loved in the world and fuels her determination to rid the world of terminators.  The audience would not have wanted to see a happy Sarah so John’s death was likely a necessary sacrifice though she seems to gain a surrogate daughter in Dani by the end.  I was impressed that Cameron, who spent two films to saving John Connor was willing to off him.  In the end Cameron’s John Connor never survives childhood.  As in T2, Sarah starts out very angry, though this time it is much more embedded, and regains her humanity by the end. 

Natalia Reyes’ Dani is the innocent character whose life is upended in this film, as was Sarah in The Terminator.  The twist is that she herself is on track to be the main leader instead of her unborn child as we immediately suspect.  The turn is less dramatic than Sarah’s as she is already shown to have some leadership qualities from the start but she becomes very brave and resourceful throughout the story.  Dani manages to push aside the grief of losing both her father and brother and move forward with her life.  I appreciate that Dani is both Mexican and a world savior which directly contrasts the narrative that Donald Trump tries to peddle to justify some of his horrific “policies”.  Dani’s father is played by Enrique Arce, who I recently saw playing an arrogant, yet often cowardly bank manager in the first two seasons of Money Heist. 

Mackenzie Davis plays a kind of hybrid human/terminator with a strong tie to Dani is I think a better idea on the page than what translated to the screen and her character’s plight was ultimately the least interesting.  For such a complex being Grace is played a little too one note and I was sad for Dani when she died but did not feel too sad for the character itself.  Grace’s constant cursing was a little distracting and seemed to be there to drive home the point that this was an R rated Terminator film again. 

Gabriel Luna plays the Rev-9.  Luna has the presence for this type of character and the filmmakers come up with an innovative way to make him threatening. However the Rev-9 loses so many fights against the heroes that it seems odd that they keep running away from him. 

The opening of the film is staged for maximum shock as the film opens from a scene of one of Sarah’s sessions when she was in the psychiatric ward and then cuts to a future battle of what the world might have become (similar to T2) to a jump cut of the same beach in the future that has clearly been avoided (the title card says 1998 and Sarah says in the old clip that the attack is coming in 1997).  The lighting is soft and in the audience we relax and feel safe.  Sarah looks content watching John who is only seen from her point of view.  The technology to de-age both Hamilton and Edward Furlong looks seamless.  When the T-800 appears it is in slow motion which has two purposes.  Often when tragedy strikes the people who are most affected by it, and perhaps helpless to stop it, seem to process it in slow motion.  Also it is in keeping with some of the key terminator appearances in T2 (such as when Sarah first sees him in that film, by the elevator).  Sarah is armed with her .45 and tries to stop him but is no match for the terminator.  Interestingly the terminator does not kill her as its mission is now complete. 

A difficulty with this film is, I cannot forget that I have not seen the past three Terminator films, which is what this film I asking us to do.  If the other three films did not exist then this film would be far more powerful.  This may be one reason I why Terminator: Dark Fate was not successful.  T2 came out in 1991 and asking general audiences to ignore three other films, which have similar scenes of Terminators chasing humans, may have been too much.

Another theory I have is that action films tend to market to younger men and they usually drive these audiences.  Dark Fate has three heroic female leads and a secondary male character, who is a much older man from another generation, which may have kept boys away.  Personally I especially liked the idea that the resistance leader was female and that she led with her compassion as much as her fighting skills.  James Cameron movies always have strong female characters (ie Ripley in Aliens, Rose in Titanic).  Star Wars used a female lead in its recent sequels but also introduced two other males who were nearly as memorable which brought in young men and women.

Of course there are countless movies, especially in the action genre, where the women have almost no role of substance so this should not be considered a complaint but I think it may have been part of the reason why young men might have skipped this entry.  

Also, although Cameron’s name is on some of the biggest films ever made, he may not be the automatic draw as he was in the past.  Alita: Battle Angel, a project he had flirted with directing for years but ultimately just produced, also underperformed last year.  I hope this does not happen with the (four!?!) Avator sequels he is currently directing at a budget of $1 billion.

Terminator: Dark Fate is a fun revisit with some old characters and continues the original story but I was not excited by the additional sequels it clearly sets up at the end.  The lackluster box office just about assures they will not be made but at some point the property in one form or another probably will be back.  ***