Spoilers Terminator: Dark Fate Review and Discussion

[The Wormhole]

It's not a bad movie, quite enjoyable in fact. And if rated on its own merits unattached to the rest of the franchise, it's nearly flawless. Unfortunately, when you look at it in comparison to the rest of the franchise, there isn't really much new here. It's mostly retreading the greatest hits of the first two films while incorporating some plot points from the others. Though if we look at it as a reboot, it definitely works, and finds a way of rebooting the franchise while still staying connected to the original organically that the Kelvin Trek films failed at, IMO.

Linda Hamilton was certainly the highlight of the film, as both the kickass action lead and delivering numerous snarky one liners. Arnold also had a great character arc as the Terminator who learned to be human, and Dani and Grace were also great additions to the franchise. though it was pretty obvious almost right away that Dani herself was meant to be the leader of the human resistance rather than her unborn son that everyone presumes it to be.

While not a perfect film, it certainly was enjoyable and it is very unfortunate that we're likely not getting a continuation of the story set up here.

 

[TRON JA307020]

Maybe it has more to do with this being the fourth attempt at making a Terminator sequel to restore the franchise and not some obsession with blaming liberal politics as you’ve attempted to claim in order to derail multiple threads.

it’s obvious why they changed the premise. Well they left the door open to a sequel that will never happen now. Too bad really.

 

[Qonundrum]

it’s obvious why they changed the premise. Well they left the door open to a sequel that will never happen now. Too bad really.

They'll just reboot it and use a plot not dissimilar to Star Trek 2009 involving an alternate timeline created by someone going back in time.

...which might be the problem as to why T6 cratered in the first place. The franchise sucked starting with T3, the very premise of the "franchise" was too limited at the outset, the first one didn't exactly come off as anything other than a one-off high concept dystopian sci-fi fling... with T2 being a very rare instance of finding something new within the same formula, but just can't be repeated. Enough fans of the series kept 3-5 going, somehow, but finding it odd that the franchise was trying to continue I actually tried sitting through 5 (having missed 3 and 4.) No worries, I slept through most of its inanity and I still have no reason to be compelled to see 3 or 4 as a result of 5's ingrained ability to induce somnolence without the need of a pill.)

What's the reason to see 6? A robot going back in time to help some human save the future and prevent it from happening? It's been done before, both within this "franchise" and in others. They need a lot more to pull it off and the teasers definitely aren't piquing moviegoers' interest. That's not the moviegoers' fault.


Is it really "liberal", "progressive", "conservative", "regressive", "trollive", or any other mishmash assortment of politics? I doubt it. These trends and fads of ____ style are cyclical anyway, just like fashion (for the most part). I did read that certain characters die, and some were probably reading more into alleged reasons for being killed but they saw the movie. I have no desire to and if I had there might be reasons other than their preferred ones.

 

[DigificWriter]

They'll just reboot it and use a plot not dissimilar to Star Trek 2009 involving an alternate timeline created by someone going back in time.

Rebooting it didn't work, and returning to the original continuity hasn't worked, either.

The franchise should've been left dead because it clearly can't generate interest any longer.

 

[thribs]

I still need to know who sent Pops back in the 70’s.

 

[M.A.C.O.]

I think Terminator is done. Three strikes you're out.

Terminator Salvation: May 2009 - Adult John leading the fight against Skynet after Judgement Day.

Terminator Genysis: June 2015 - Reboot/alternate timeline with young Sarah and Kyle set in our present day. Fighting Skynet and project Genysis.

Terminator Dark Fate: October 2019 - Reboot/alternate timeline with John dead. Sarah, Dany and Grace fighting Legion (NuSkynet) in present day.

3 attempts to restart the franchise in 10 years and none of them took hold.

Terminator is at a creative dead end. There's no place to go from here, I'm afraid.

 

[TRON JA307020]

Rebooting it didn't work, and returning to the original continuity hasn't worked, either.

The franchise should've been left dead because it clearly can't generate interest any longer.

Well killing off a fan favorite character and replacing him is probably not the way to restart a franchise. It’s the whole Star Wars is for girls crap that Kathleen Kennedy thought she could make work. So her idea is to kill off all legacy characters in a bad way to do that . It’s not working and fans are getting tired of all these fan favorite characters getting the shaft. Mark Hamil exercised and got into shape for a non lightsaber battle and died on a rock. Nice way to end a great character. TDF did it even worse. Unbelievable that this is considered good story telling.

 

[Awesome Possum]

it’s obvious why they changed the premise. Well they left the door open to a sequel that will never happen now. Too bad really.

They didn’t change anything. A robot from the future is sent back to stop the human resistance from organizing targeting a woman. A protector with some connection to her that she doesn’t know yet is sent to protect her. They go on the run, there are action scenes and they finally stop it after a tragic loss. It just continued Sarah’s story since she’s the main character.

Did you watch the first two films or just the later ones? It’s easy to be mistaken if you ignore the good movies.

 

[somebuddyX]

Just some thoughts:

• Overally it was pretty good. I rated it B+
• Really shocked at the John Connor reveal. I thought I read that he had been recast for this and I was kinda hoping for some variation on the alternate T2 ending, in that John has settled down somewhere with a wife and a daughter. I'm not sorry this didn't happen in this film but that'll probably always be my headcanon for how the events post-T2 played out.
• I loved Linda Hamilton being back as this badass mercenary but leading up to this seeing her in publicity photos I kept wishing this was some other intellectual property TV show where she's some special ops lady fighting terrorists or something. She looks dope. I thought her storyline was really great. I don't get why she couldn't get them back to the US on her own though. She's been a wanted fugitive for over two decades and never been caught.
• I didn't really like Dani Ramos and I kept wondering during the film why no one was bringing up that while she was important to the future Grace came from, that future has already been altered so who knows how things will play out. Also John was important once and that didn't mean squat. Shouldn't the goal of the resistance be to just go back in time and make sure Legion stops getting built in the first place?
• I thought Grace was great and her being enhanced felt like a logical and smart way for the war to evolve.
• I'm not sure how I feel about the future stuff. I like the aesthetic but things seemed too advanced for only 20 years from now. In the Skynet future war the resistance still used modern day vehicles, it was just Skynet who had all the fancy tech. Humans had some laser guns but maybe we just stole them from all those Terminators at the start of T2. Even in the Terminator Salvation future humans just used modern day helicopters and jets.
• I liked seeing Arnie back but I had kinda hoped we were getting a version of Dieter von Rossbach from T2: Infiltrator, the human template for the T-101 T-800s (or Sgt Candy in T3). I liked that he'd become self-aware and as a big fan of Pops from Genisys I felt a lot of similar themes from that which were better explored here.
• The action was okay but it didn't have the same tension from T2. Rev-9 was way too fast and I guess that's intentional but there was no weight to him and I couldn't believe that anything would be able to slow him down. I'm still not sure how Sarah stopped him from. I really liked the plane sequence.
• I don't remember anything about the music and I don't think that's a good thing. Was there any Brad Fiedel score in there, any ominous groaning noises like the ones that made T2 really tense?
• The time travel effect was cool and some neat changes like the ice effects.
• Solid film. I don't care if they make another one, I think this franchise has played out most ideas you could do, except maybe the resistance having a benevolent AI working with their side, ala John Henry/Catherine Weaver from The Sarah Connor Chronicles. It's tough because you want to see new things but if they change too much it might as well be some new intellectual property. This'll sound harsh but I hope this has killed the franchise and it just stays dead for good now.

 

[Ethros]

I still need to know who sent Pops back in the 70’s.

Yeah, has no one ever said what they had planned for that? Given a sequel died a long time ago so they may as well just tell us. Unless they had no idea and were just gonna figure it out later..

3 attempts to restart the franchise in 10 years and none of them took hold.

4 if you count The Sarah Connor Chronicles, also cancelled

 

[thribs]

It’s funny how so many people were shocked about John. I always assumed that was the case going into it. I still don’t think it was the correct choice.

 

[Tosk]

Was there any Brad Fiedel score in there

Yes. I definitely saw several Fiedel cues listed in the credits.

 

[Kirk Prime]

Saw the movie over the weekend. The franchise needs to stop. I understand what they did, but all the ideas were bad. Cameron himself came up with the John Connor twist, and it was about the same as George Lucas coming up with Jar Jar.

SPOILER:





By killing John Connor, they basically took the first two movies and rendered them meaningless. Where the first two movies were about John Connor being the man to save humanity, this one basically said that he never mattered, and if he never mattered, then why did it matter who Dani was?

What did Dani even do? She gave a speech to a couple of jerks?

Putting the politics aside, what did this movie bring to the table? What was in this movie that wasn't in any of the others? What did it add to the story?

If T2 established the "no fate" concept, then what was the benefit of stopping judgement day?

Seems like no matter what, machines launch a war and create terminators to kill humans in the past.

Why wouldn't Kyle Reese be in this movie?

Arnold brought a little zest when he was on screen, but do we really need to see Carl, the Terminator dad? That's like a bad SNL sketch.

I will accept that memories of the original timeline and the existence of T-800s didn't go away, and I will accept that there was another T800 that eventually killed John despite the timeline being wiped out, because if those are their time travel rules, fine. It's not BTTF or Star Trek before Abrams screwed up time travel.

But this movie basically was a retelling of the same story from past movies with nothing new added.

In some ways, it's like The Last Jedi. It wasn't just a bad movie, it took a dump on the good ones.

About the only thing about this movie that I liked as Grace. Of course, she's also not that original. She's Reese on steroids. A tougher terminator requires a tougher human to fight it. But it's the same idea. Grace thought of Dani as a mother figure. Reese was in love with Sarah in a world where the picture was all he had. Not identical, but close enough to not be original. But I did like Grace's action scenes in the first part of the movie.

It looks like this movie is bombing at the box office, and I can see why. As far as I'm concerned, this movie should be terminated and only the first 2 movies should count.

It's a shame.

 

[DigificWriter]

Well killing off a fan favorite character and replacing him is probably not the way to restart a franchise. It’s the whole Star Wars is for girls crap that Kathleen Kennedy thought she could make work. So her idea is to kill off all legacy characters in a bad way to do that . It’s not working and fans are getting tired of all these fan favorite characters getting the shaft. Mark Hamil exercised and got into shape for a non lightsaber battle and died on a rock. Nice way to end a great character. TDF did it even worse. Unbelievable that this is considered good story telling.

Are you even paying attention to anything outside of your own manufactured reality?

This movie failed because the franchise just isn't viable any longer and hasn't been for years, not because of decisions that you find disagreeable.

 

[Kai "the spy"]

Btw, the one recent Star Wars film to underperform at the box office was the one with the white male lead.

 

[Captaindemotion]

Are you even paying attention to anything outside of your own manufactured reality?

*Narrator’s voice: He was not.

 

[Kirk Prime]

This movie failed because the franchise just isn't viable any longer and hasn't been for years, not because of decisions that you find disagreeable.

Decisions like those made in this movie did nothing to help that. They needed a more original idea than to kill off the legacy character and make a female version of the exact same story. It broke no ground, unlike the first two films.

 

[Kelso]

I liked it a lot.

My primary criticism is that the Sarah Connor/T-800 stuff took up time that could've been better used developing Grace and Dani.

 

[Kirk Prime]

This movie would have been better served if it was an original story that had nothing to do with the Terminator franchise.

 

[Skipper]

If they knew exactly why a film flopped, they would produce only top-grossing blockbusters.

Movie-making is not like a exact science, guys.