Sunday, November 10, 2019

Terminator: Dark Fate (2019)


I've been a fan of the Terminator franchise since watching the first movie on VHS at my friend John's house. Since then, I've watched every movie as well as Sarah Connor Chronicles.

As a fan of the franchise, I'm not going to spend this blog post revisiting just how totally off the rails it's become except to say.... "it has". [The first 5 minutes of Half In the Bag details it well, if you care.] And it's kind of hard to pinpoint exactly where it went off the rails. Most people think it's T3, though I enjoyed that one (especially the end). And it made sense to try to make a movie in the future like Salvation (though that didn't work out).

Either way, the people who own the rights to Terminator really have had nowhere to take it for at least a decade. Dark Fate now makes the second attempt at a complete reboot in that timeframe. Their fatal mistake in the last reboot was putting the franchise in the hands of Jai Courtney. ("Stop trying to make Jai Courtney happen... it's not going to happen!")

This time though, they didn't try any time travel trickery. They simply disregarded everything Terminator that you may have paid good money for and spent precious waking hours watching since 1991. They said "screw you, loyal fans who have watched all of these other things we made! We're doing it right this time." Fair enough.

So how was the movie?

ImageLet's get to the meat: the result was pretty entertaining... for a while. It features a truck chase, which takes a page from (*checks notes*) Terminator 1, Terminator 2, Terminator 3.... but they totally did it differently because the truck chase was at the beginning of the movie. The chase was entertaining! And Grace, the "augmented human" played by Mackenzie Davis, was pretty badass in that scene.

No spoilers in this section but you know Linda Hamilton and Arnold are in this by now, right? That's because they're featured on every poster, and a ridiculous amount of money was spent marketing this movie. If you didn't know, there's a picture nearby of aforementioned marketing.

Where the movie started losing it was the second act, and it really started to suck in the third act. The second act is almost 100% nostalgia and "Fun & Games" around Arnold's terminator character, as well as Sarah's story. I mean, as a die hard fan of the first two Terminator movies, I enjoyed it. It had some interesting and (in the case of Arnold's character) funny things about it.

But the third act was just filled with impossible, stupid action and VFX insanity. There was no story and I was ready for it to end for the last 20-30 minutes.

I would generally recommend this movie to fans of the franchise but no one beyond that. See below for more thoughts on that.

JSS Rating: It's a Good, Bad Movie. The filmmakers know they weren't making Citizen Kane, but it was enjoyable nevertheless.



What was the point?

--- Spoilers --- 


The thing I'm left wondering about Dark Fate is... what were the producers trying to do with the movie? It makes no sense.

They brought back Sarah, Arnold, and John. Then killed John [even though Skynet was already doomed and the whole point of a Terminator changing the future was that if you killed someone, they won't be in the future, so if Skynet never existed, why was there a terminator to kill John? Fine, whatever. This movie does not have the rigor of Primer]. Then they introduce us to Dani, tell us that she's the new John, and Grace, the "augmented human" badass who Dani recruited.

It's some sort of Force Awakens handoff movie? Is that what they wanted to do? The old generation to the new generation. Except, at the end, they kill Han Solo Arnold... but they also kill Grace?! Leaving us with only Sarah and Dani. Sarah is now going to teach Dani to be a Prepper, but stops by a playground first, as Sarah is wont to do.

But, um, there's one catch to this: we're really only left with Dani to carry a future movie of the Terminator franchise. And who wants to watch another of these movies with Dani.... the person who barely does anything in this movie? What are they going to do for T7, start off with Dani in a mental institution? C'mon.

Except I'm not sure we have to worry about any of this sequel talk because Dark Fate did very poorly at the box office. The theater we saw it in had replaced the sign with Joker before we walked out... and we saw it on the first week!! Like Blade Runner 2049 (which was a far better movie and proper sequel), the built-in audience for this franchise is apparently small. Especially internationally, nobody cared about this movie. And the break-even for Dark Fate is almost half a bil.

So I really, really, reeeeaaally hope they end this franchise here now and forever. It's played out, there's nowhere to take it, and no one cares to see it anyway. At this point, I'm just happy no one has digitally altered T1 and T2 and I can still share those with my kids when they're old enough.