Terminator: Dark Fate

This review may contain spoilers!

I have enjoyed a lot of these Terminator films for a while and this is another good instalment in the series. I would give Terminator: Dark Fate a 7.5/10.

Terminator: Dark Fate is the sixth instalment in the Terminator series and yet another direct sequel to Terminator 2: Judgement Day. In Dark Fate Skynet has fallen and a new threat has arisen, Legion, a military AI hellbent on the eradication of the human race. Augmented soldier, Grace, is sent back in time to save Dani Ramos, the future leader of the human resistance before Legion can kill her first. How the film enhances the Terminator universe is really interesting, I think the way in which the threat of Skynet being dismantled as it was by the end of T2 was well done and the heightened threat of Legion was extremely impressive. The film utlised a number of flash forwards, used the enhanced human fighter and the new Rev-9 model terminators to really hook you into the action; the stakes felt higher than ever and it was a real thrill to watch. I think seeing Grace's journey unfold as she went from being a scavenger, to resistance fighter, to an enhanced human was powerful and you saw the levels of sacrifice a person would be willing to go for a cause they believe in with her. Perhaps the best storyline was that of Sarah Connor's, seeing her lost and alone after a tragedy in the past I thought it was a great direction that she was a rogue Terminator hunter now. Watching her grapple with her past and having to trust Grace and Carl felt like a good journey for her character and you saw a lot of what happened to her reflected in Dani. The cinematography throughout this film makes you feel very present in the action, it was such an immersive experience that kept you in motion and hooked you with fantastic visuals. The special effects throughout the film were the best this franchise has seen; whether that be from the designs of the various Terminator models, post-apocalyptic settings or mid-air plane collisions this spared nothing in an effort to leave the audience wowed. The score for Dark Fate was adrenaline fuel if ever I heard it, perfect for the grand scale blockbuster this is and with multiple callbacks to some of the famous tracks from the original films.

Linda Hamilton, who played Sarah Connor, is unapologetically the toughest person in any scene and does not back down for a fight even if she's entirely outmatched; Hamilton wears the years of grief and futility her character has known really well and you understand her bitterness. Mackenzie Davis, who played Grace, is an exceptional fighter who is unbreakable and determined to see the purpose of her mission through to the end; Mackenzie's struggles with being made augmented give her role a lot of complexity which is only heightened by her tearful recounting of the future she has come from. Diego Boneta, who played Diego Ramos, is a really charismatic and altogether innocent young man; Boneta really sells you on the sibling chemistry between him and Reyes which makes his scene of self-sacrifice really profound. Diego Luna, who played the Rev-9, was instantly a classic Terminator model akin to a performance as memorable as Schwarzenegger's was back in the day; Luna is entirely remorseless, precise and dangerous in every scene he is in.

However, the best performance came from Arnold Schwarzenegger, who played the T-800/Carl. Schwarzenegger is the face of these films and has spent more time with them than any other cast member from the franchise. I think experience like that really shows in this film because every scene he's in his performance feels very purposeful and reasoned. He has all the classic rigid and stoic mannerisms that make the T-800 so famously mechanical and inhuman. But by inhabiting this role for so long he also has the capacity to play against what you know and present a humanlike Terminator in the form of Carl. It's not an easy character by any stretch but emotions like guilt, regret, love, sympathy and loyalty come through in how Schwarzenegger presents Carl but he's very good at showing these emotions in a limited capacity to make you believe he has gone as far as a machine can to being human. I also have to say he is just about the funniest performance you'll get all film, his serious yet passionate explanation of what living as a man who owns a drapery is like is probably my favourite scene.

This film was nothing short of stunning blockbuster material, but it suffers from one big issue that a number of blockbusters fall prey to. This film has a lot of stunt or effects heavy action scenes and these are offset with big lengthy moments of dialogue and exposition, giving insight about the characters and feeding the audience key information. Any film like this has to find the moment of balance between these types of scenes and Dark Fate really struggles with finding this balance; not at first, but certainly as the feature wears on. Action sequences begin to get repetitive or they don't seem to find an ending, the flip side is we get long moments of lengthy explanations from characters that just come across as dialogue heavy. A major problem the film suffers with is the Terminator's new target: Dani Ramos. As a character Dani is very black and white, there's never much given to her in terms of depth; but the film tries to do a 'big twist' and reveal that unlike Sarah Connor it isn't her son that will save the world but her. This revelation might have surprised a lot of people back when they were making T2 but it wasn't a huge shock and as a role Dani is far from convincing as humanity's saviour. The film ties itself strongly to being a sequel to T2 but in the first two minutes of the film kills off a fan favourite main character in a pretty underwhelming way, while the movie is riddled with great fan service this part is going to be hard to watch if you're a Terminator fan.

Natalia Reyes, who played Dani Ramos, is the weak link in an otherwise solid cast; Reyes plays quite a two-dimensional character who sees things in a very black and white way and is truly a hard sell as Earth's ultimate saviour.