Terminator: Dark Fate

Official Australian release date: 31/10/19. Viewed: 2/11/19.

Director: Tim Miller

Actors: Arnold Schwarzenegger, Linda Hamilton, Natalia Reyes, Mackenzie Davis

Genre: Action / Sci-Fi

Rating: MA

  

‘Terminator: Dark Fate’ is the sixth film in the franchise, but effectively acts as a direct sequel to ‘Judgement Day’ and ignores everything that happened in ‘Rise of the Machines’, ‘Salvation’ and ‘Genisys’. Since it’s pretending those timelines never happened, it borrows ideas from each of them. Unfortunately, this film’s first few minutes also taint the whole point of T2.

It’s good to see Sarah Connor (Hamilton) back, and (eventually) Arnie as “Carl”. However, the main characters this time are Dani (Reyes) and Grace (Davis). Grace is an augmented human, sent back from the future to protect Dani, a Mexican factory worker. They’re hunted by a Rev-9 (Luna), a Terminator that can separate it’s nanites from its skeleton. Looks cool, but not revolutionary after ‘Genisys’. It’s essentially one big car/helicopter/plane chase.

Since this if from Miller (‘Deadpool’ director), there’s no real humour or fun, which is a shame. Plenty of explosions and good fight scenes, and both David and Reyes are solid, but Arnie has far too little screen time, the film has way too many clunky explanations for what’s happened to the future – pesky time travel! – but the biggest let down is how unoriginal most of it feels and how the Sarah/John Connor storyline that was set up in the other five films seems to be betrayed.

Overall: Good action, but not up to Terminator standards.

Gav's Rating: 3 stars.