Rarely does a sequel surpass the initial film in quality and popularity; it is even rarer for there to be three failed attempts to follow said sequel and for a studio and creative team to still make a fourth attempt. This is the exact situation surrounding Terminator: Dark Fate, which opened in theatres this past weekend. Although already being labeled a box office bomb, it boasts a powerful creative team to back it and has potential which the other three movies lacked.
James Cameron returns as the producer, although Tim Miller of Deadpool fame directs the film. In terms of who stands before the camera, both Arnold Schwarzenegger and Linda Hamilton reprise their roles, with this being Hamilton’s first return since Judgment Day. They are joined by Mackenzie Davis (Blade Runner 2049, Black Mirror) and Natalia Reyes (Lady, la vendedora de rosas).
Terminator: Dark Fate follows Dani Ramos (Natalia Reyes), a young Mexican girl who leads an ordinary life with her father and brother Diego. When a brand new type of terminator known as the Rev-9 (Gabriel Luna) arrives at the factory where she works with the intent to kill her, Grace (Mackenzie Davis) barely arrives in time to protect her. They survive the initial onslaught with the aid of Sarah Connor (Linda Hamilton). Coexisting isn’t easy, however – especially when they need the aid of the T-800 (Arnold Schwarzenegger) in order to defeat this new threat.
The film opens with one of the most iconic Sarah Connor scenes from Judgment Day – a choice powerful enough to cement it as the best sequel to date. It breaks the pattern of opening with the visuals of the decimated near-future while still referencing the decimation of a future that no longer exists. Simultaneously, by focusing on Sarah Connor in one of her darkest moments, the audience sees how the future has destroyed her present. While this is followed shortly with a more typical shot of the future – skulls, machines, and endless shades of gray – the audience is treated to a nontraditional preservation of the traditional formula through reliving Judgment Day with her.
This opening shot reveals a pattern that will continue through the film. What Dark Fate excels at is not being a Terminator film. By not fully constraining itself to the structure and lore of the universe – inventing a new history, in fact – the film is allowed to explore the questions of the interactions between humanity and machines in a modernized way. The film references the best of both films and encourages its new world to stake a claim in the audience’s hearts.
Besides modernizing the questions asked, these references and retcons allow us to say goodbye to the original two films. If you, like me, consider Terminator 2 3-D: Battle Across Time to be a canonical entry to the Terminator universe, I have some rough news for you – the retcons target everything but the initial two entries to the franchise. In doing so, they manage to increase the threat that Cyberdyne and Skynet initially posed, almost enhancing the older films. Seeing one particular scene set in the months after the battle with the T-1000 changes the way Sarah’s closing monologue in Judgment Day will be viewed forever, even if this film does not go down in history as the sequel that succeeded.
With Judgment Day averted, a new technological conglomerate has risen to take its place. Only, it hasn’t risen quite yet – Legion lurks in the not-so-distant future, and of course it will experience a similar rise to self-awareness that Skynet did. This film can’t break the pattern completely, but in choosing Legion over Cyberdyne, new technology is introduced. For one, the Terminator of this film is the fearsome Rev-9, a combination of the two most deadly parts of the various Terminator models. It’s basically the T-X from Terminator: Rise of the Machines, yet between how it moves, how it interacts with the world, and how the black, blood-like exo-skeleton can completely separate from the endo-skeleton, it seems so much more threatening. I’ve dreamed about a Terminator like this. The fight choreographers (I would assume) took the occasional scenes from Judgment Day in which the T-1000’s physical attributes were fully and creatively used in combat and employed them in almost every scene where it could make sense. It is important to note that at times, the CGI and the movements looked silly compared to the 80s quality graphics used to render the T-1000. Still, after an adjustment period, the fights hold ground. The only drawback of having a Terminator this threatening is that it limits how many battles you can actually have with it. In hindsight, the amount was comparable to the amount of fights in Judgment Day – almost exactly so. In the moment of watching the film, the time between fights seemed drawn out, and every time they survived a fight there was almost a moment where I was forced to suspend my disbelief.
In contrast to the advanced nature of the Rev-9, we see the resurgence of the Kyle Reese archetype in Dani’s protector: Grace is a human, but augmented. On one hand, I question the choice of using technology to augment people when the enemy is technology. I could easily foresee someone getting hacked and doing serious damage to their own side. On the other hand, I find this entirely plausible. People today are getting implants that allow them to pay for things with a wave of their hands. Moon Ribas is a cyborg artist and activist, and her fellow cyborg Neil Harbisson is credited as being the world’s first cyborg artist. Augments seem like the natural next step in the evolution of the battle against the machines. And while neither the Rev-9 nor the augment are fully explained, for their roles within the film they are impressively balanced. More importantly than the technological advancements, both of the living machines are the proof that the T-800 and John’s conversation about the fate of humanity is unfortunately true: we seem to be destined to destroy ourselves in one way or another.
The film also maintains the tropes and themes from Judgment Day, many of which I’ve discussed in this article. Sarah is a Terminator, and the Terminator is humanized. This specific trope is furthered through Grace being an augmented human. In this regard, the Rev-9 suffers: he develops something of a personality, but it is the one sided personality of a total predator. It is nearly a duplicate of the T-1000’s sadistic tendencies. Even the progression of the initial fight speedran through the first two films, teasing out memories of the entrapment of the first T-800 in the hydraulic press as well as the truck/motorcycle chase between John and the T-1000. Even later, Dani and Grace have an exchange about the value of Dani’s life that is highly similar to the exchange about the value of John’s life that Sarah and John have in Judgment Day. And, the most morbid of tropes must be acknowledged, too: the protector always has to die.
Terminator: Dark Fate has many strengths, but quite a few flaws. Everyone seemed to know a guy, and while it makes sense within the universe, it was one of a few tropes that seemed more like a deus ex machina than proof of the vastness of the characters’ networks. They comment, if it can be called that, on the treatment of migrants at the border, but at least in the theatre I was at, it was received with a laugh. For a situation so serious, humor of that fleeting nature does it an injustice. Finally, it sets up a sequel in a way that is rather heavy handed, lacking the ambiguity and subtlety that made the conclusions of the first two Terminator installments so charming. Plus, no one necessarily has asked for a sequel yet. If it is to be handled as lovingly as Terminator: Dark Fate was, perhaps it will be a good choice.
Indira Ramgolam is a sophomore in Columbia College.