Review - Terminator: Dark Fate (2019)

Directed by: Tim Miller
Written by: David S. Goyer, Justin Rhodes, Billy Ray, James Cameron, Charles H. Eglee
Starring: Mackenzie Davis, Natalia Reyes, Linda Hamilton, Arnold Schwarzenegger
IMDb Link

The Terminator movies hadn't really had a good movie since 1991. T3 is a fine action movie that throws away the best story elements of T2; Terminator: Salvation is better than people give it credit for but between the drab colour and poor direction the action never feels particularly engaging; Terminator: Genisys is monumentally bad despite trying something interesting with the time-travel stuff, never actually making sense of any concept it comes up with and messing up almost everything it tries. Needless to say, I was not excited for Dark Fate, which is why I found it all the more surprising that I came out of it ready to recommend it.

The movie opens by literally killing John Connor. It's a ballsy move that failed spectacularly in Genisys, but here it's not done for a cheap twist villain; it reforges Sarah (Linda Hamilton) meaningfully as a character (and conveniently brings Arnie back in to the story) in to a tired, wounded version of the savage mama bear she was in T2. While that brings her back in to the story, the plot itself focuses once again on an old comfort zone: two cyborgs come back in time to kill someone that's important in the future, with the particulars swapped around a bit. The good robot (Mackenzie Davis) is actually an augmented human named Grace, the bad robot (Gabriel Luna) is nanoliquid over an exoskeleton so it can sometimes be two robots and is as generally indestructible as the T-1000 was in T2, and the new target, Dani Ramos (Natalia Reyes), is important a new future that was created when they stopped Skynet at the end of T2 (turns out they go on to make something that's not demonstrably different from Skynet anyway; this time it's called Legion). The differences are a little convoluted and the film has to dedicate a couple of scenes of exposition back-to-back, which drags the pacing down in the middle; the film also makes about as many references to T2 as I just did for everything it sets up. That said, the broad strokes are as familiar as the twists are expected, so while the film does dull its experience at points trying to evoke the same horror at humanity's annihilation as its predecessors, the throughline of exactly what the characters are doing and why is never lost.

What's more is that aside from the exposition dump the film manages to keep its focus on the characters and the action, which are the film's two biggest strengths. Hamilton's performance as Sarah is excellent; she manages to be as much of a stone-cold badass as she ever was, and yet evokes a sad reflection of who she once was, a soldier who fights now because her purpose was taken from her. Seriously, I'll give credit to everyone else in a second, but Sarah as a character is easily the most tragic here, and Hamilton is capable of expressing every single wound in her soul while never forgetting how strong she is. Meanwhile, the best new character in this movie is Davis' Grace; she evokes a single-minded desperation juxtaposed against her powerful frame, her strength and her speed betrayed by her fear, a rabid need to protect that which means the most to her. It's very much in the same vein as Kyle Reese in the original, and when considered alongside her augmentations, she essentially gets to play the role of both sorts of protectors we've seen; an attempt to have a character that can do the action scenes of T2 but play the emotional beats of the original. Dani sometimes feels more like a prop than a character, and Reyes sometimes feels a little wooden in her performance, but these factors are mostly remedied in the final act, where she sort of has an arc and Reyes at least hits the right emotions due her character's climax. Arnie's role as yet another T-800 who grew a conscience (this one's named Carl) is one that I feel I'm not capable of criticising; it's Arnie, he's a hero to me, I'd just end up running in circles trying to explain all the ways in which he's great even though his acting has never been his strong suit. Gabriel Luna is a surprise hit here as the new evil Terminator (a "Rev-9" model): his character blends perfectly, even switching up accents at key points to put people at ease, and at the same time his approach in the action scenes is completely animalistic; he's ferocious, unyielding, and the perfect reminder of why the Terminators are so scary, and yet so robotic in his programming that he'll make mistakes when his target is in sight.

This speaks to the credit of everyone who worked on the action sequences as well. The scenes with the Rev-9 do an excellent job of showing just how unstoppable he feels, but also how he can be stymied and even defeated. Likewise, Grace is a revelation when she comes up against him; the two are in an ever-escalating arms race with one another, as she constantly weaponises her environment and he uses his abilities to adapt. These fights have a rhythm, a pulse-pounding pace that to some genuinely jaw-dropping moments of pure action. This gets taken a step further when Arnie gets thrown back in to the mix, his own simple brute force contrasted with the fast and fierce fighting styles of the others with sheer weight; he's theoretically outclassed, but hits harder than either of them, and it all builds to a brilliantly choreographed final fight, where Grace and Arnie's strengths are played together with such measured harmony that you briefly forget about all the heavy exposition, all the bad dialogue, the twist so poorly hidden it baffles as to why they tried, or the way this movie feels overcrowded, and just revel in some truly well-done action. That's what makes this movie the only good sequel to T2: the action feels like something out of one of James Cameron's films, and it works so well that the film's shortcomings fall by the wayside in its most important moments. 

The Short Version: "The best Terminator movie since T2" isn't exactly a high bar when you look at every other Terminator movie, but that same look will show you just how much better Dark Fate is. Its action scenes are exhilarating, its characters and performances poignant (if not a little hammy due to dialogue), and its story not nearly as convoluted as it could have been; it never reaches the heights of its classic predecessors, but between these core strengths, the movie is surprisingly and consistently engaging.

Rating: 7/10

Published November 4th, 2019