Terminator Dark Fate (2019)

There seems to be a popular critique floating around that folks like to apply to sequels. It is about being scornful of how a sequel copies the original film (or films) as if that shows a lack of originality. I think that critique misses the mark (and perhaps is unoriginal itself). It ignores many of the reasons sequels get made and what kinds of stories they may want and need to tell. While I agree there is a danger in just remaking and repackaging the exact same ideas in a sequel, I think that happens more in reboots and remakes than it does is sequels. But I think there is something truly engaging about a film that takes the themes, tropes, plot points, and symbols, re-imagines them to tell a new story, and gives us something that we recognize but subverts the original assumptions.

I think Terminator Dark Fate is that movie.

Like The Force Awakens before it,  Dark Fate fully embraces it is a chapter in a beloved serial narrative, and takes the story ideas from the previous chapters to rework them offering us something new. It isn't a rehashing, it's a revisiting and re-imagining. Like the way a concerto moves through movements, pulling themes from the earlier parts to evolve them into new ways of hearing them, Dark Fate has taken the plot points the characters the themes of T1 and T2 and told a new story with them. In truth T2, considered by many (including me) to be one of the best sequels ever made) did this too. It recycled the ideas of the first film, subverted our expectations about them, and gave us a story structured on the first film that took us to new heights. Dark Fate may not be quite as successful overall but it still follows this tradition and does so better than the previous Terminator sequels did.

While I have enjoyed each of the Terminator sequels in their own way (except T3, that's my line I can't cross) I do think this is the first to truly capture what worked in the original 2 films. The end of T2 is about making your own fate and this is the first time we see a present which isn't dictated by the future. They won, we just find out, quite logically, the humanity not faced with killer robots still finds ways to destroy themselves. In this age of climate change denial this theme is important. Also we now take a story which was about a woman's role being a mother to a man and tell a story about a woman herself being a hero. We also have the story of closed boarders and refugees infused into the tale. Dark Fate brings us something very new in the structure of a Terminator movie.

There was a scene early on which I wasn't sure about at the time, but the more I think about it the more I think it was important to the kind of story this needed to be. And it impacted me in a way I hadn't expected. T2 infused a real sense of emotional weight into the franchise which other films (like T3) have truly struggled to maintain. Here it was back.

Dark Fate isn't perfect. There are things about it I felt could have been better. And as with any time travel movie the story starts not to make sense if you think about it too much. But there was enough here to make me embrace it and give me some new found energy for this story and these characters.

Terminator Dark Fate
Starring: Linda Hamilton, Mackenzie Davis, Natalia Reyes, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Gabriel Luna
Director: Tim Miller
Writers: David Goyer, Justin Rhodes, Billy Ray