Terminator: Dark Fate (2019)
Directed by Tim Miller
Decades after Sarah Connor prevented Judgment Day, a lethal new Terminator is sent to eliminate the future leader of the resistance. In a fight to save mankind, battle-hardened Sarah Connor teams up with an unexpected ally and an enhanced super soldier to stop the deadliest Terminator yet.
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9 films that influenced Terminator: Dark Fate
What critics say influenced Terminator: Dark Fate
Dark Fate will undoubtedly get some negative comparisons to titles like Star Wars: The Force Awakens for toeing a bit too close to the nostalgia line but one of the more interesting things it borrows from it (aside from some cute winks to camera) is something becoming more prevalent in storytelling as a whole today: reminding us all we’re important.
Posturing itself to be something akin to the solemn-eyed nostalgia trip that The Force Awakens was to Star Wars, this Tim Miller directed movie ignores the franchise’s multiple past continuities in the aim of crowning itself as the originals’ lone worthy heir… It’s still not even in the same sport, much less ballpark, as those movies, but it’s the closest we’ve come.
It can best be compared to Star Wars: The Force Awakens in that it returns the brand to form by paying homage to classic plot threads while using legacy characters to guide new leads in taking the wheel.
Dark Fate essentially borrows the formula of Star Wars: The Force Awakens: It mostly re-enacts the plot of a past film in the series, while bringing back the key players in the original cast and teaming them up with a younger and more racially diverse cohort of new actors.
Terminator: Dark Fate reminds me of Star Wars: The Force Awakens.
The filmmakers have lifted a page from “Star Wars: The Force Awakens,” taking a temporal sidestep that sets up a new future to give us two very different terminators and two very different protectors while the story remains very much the same.
I can hear you groan at the beaten-to-death cliché lifted from founding father James Cameron’s all-out action sequel Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991).
What truly makes the movie special is that Linda Hamilton returns as Sarah Connor, the first time she has reprised the role since Terminator 2: Judgment Day back in 1991.
All of which means while I can recall most of "T2" nearly thirty years after it was released, I can't remember a thing about the subsequent follow-ups and had to look up their plot synopses just to jolt my memory.
Following T2, which is largely hailed as a sequel that surpassed the original (and for good reason – its action sets were bigger, Arnie’s dialogue was funnier, the plot was twistier, and the story had more depth and heart), the splurge of failed sequels fell short blending the dark genre elements in with the sense of reckless, full-spirited enthusiasm that made Cameron’s films so indestructible.
That’s OK here, because the succeeding iterations since “T2,” starting with 2003’s “Rise of the Machines,” were defective.
In Mexico, unsuspecting factory worker Dani Ramos (Natalia Reyes) is the new target for the kind of chameleon, liquid-metal terminator that was so frighteningly effective in Terminator 2. Also dropping naked from the future comes Grace, a “human with augmentations”, charged with protecting her (Mackenzie Davis of Black Mirror/San Junipero fame, nailing her atypical action role).
The game is on, building to a highway chase that pays tribute to a similar scene in Terminator 2 while suggesting (as did the recent Hobbes and Shaw) that today’s action filmmakers are starting to learn the lessons of Mad Max: Fury Road.
In this, as in Mad Max: Fury Road, the film’s makers trust chiefly in women to be the ones who stand up, ostensibly with the understanding that men have erred — and had their chance.
That the future of humanity here lies in the hands of a young Mexican woman and not a white man seems like both an awesome bit of progressive representation and an intentional stick in the eye to toxic fanboys who spend time hating on Mad Max: Fury Road and the 2016 Ghostbusters for daring to make female characters the focus of genre films.
Aliás, é um exercício curioso e revelador comparar O Exterminador do Futuro 6 a outro exemplar recente de uma franquia icônica da década de 80, Rambo 5, e observar suas similaridades e diferenças.
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Similar to 2015's Jurassic World , this is a satisfying piece of revisionist history that redeems a once-great franchise after its dismal sequels.
We’ve now seen it work multiple time, some better than others, with titles such as J.J. Abrams’ Star Wars: The Force Awakens, Colin Trevorrow’s Jurassic World, and David Gordon Green’s Halloween.
It’s the same cheap ploy Jurassic World mined to ridiculous success.
In the world of franchise reboots, there are hits (“Star Wars,” which is closing out it’s Skywalker saga in December after 40 plus years) and there are misses (“Jurassic World,” ring a bell?).
As with Jurassic World , Ghostbusters: Answer the Call , and Star Wars: The Force Awakens , Dark Fate takes a heavy back-to-basics approach.
We’re in the late stage of Schwarzenegger’s career, and like Sylvester Stallone in Creed, we need one more role to sum up his legacy and examine what he means.
It’s less of a Solo in The Force Awakens and more of a Rocky in Creed.
Like The Force Awakens and Creed, Dark Fate brings the old heroes up to speed with new heroes, a mentor-mentee relationship blossoming as they face an evil that rings many bells to the previous generation.
Davis has previously played geeky, understated roles in The Martian and Black Mirror , but here she transforms into a badass action star — a worthy successor to Hamilton, who is also wonderfully rough and rugged.
She rarely is given a meaty part in films, only supporting roles like in The Martian and Blade Runner 2049 .
The formula has been applied almost to the tee since Star Wars II, including in the new “Halloween” and “Rambo” films most recently.
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One of the defining themes of the series has always been keeping John Connor alive, and it’s inarguably a bummer seeing his character callously tossed aside here (see also Aliens’ Newt and Hicks, The Fly’s Veronica Quaife, and Kingsman: The Secret Service’s Roxy for comparable slights).