My Thoughts on Terminator: Dark Fate · 1:19am Jan 31st, 2020
I was five when I saw Terminator 2: Judgement Day for the first time. Maybe six. Somewhere around there. My dad rented it on a VHS tape and watched it and let me sit there and watch it too.
My mother was horrified, which is a whole ‘nother story that from my perspective is pretty funny.
Anyway, my point is I saw T2 at a very young age and loved it. I mean, why wouldn’t I have loved it? Robots from a future where machines have risen up against man? And one’s a good robot while the other is a more advanced shapeshifting robot made of liquid metal?
Okay, I don’t need to explain to most of you why T2 is both so iconic and so good. Most of you know. And if you don’t, well, it’s really hard to go in blind, but the less you know past “An AI losing a war against mankind in the future sends back a machine to change the past by killing the kid responsible for the victory of the resistance” the better.
So why tell you this? Because I’m always interested in a new Terminator film when it comes out. I like the premise. I like the action. Drop a trailer for a new Terminator film and I’ll likely go see it. Save 3. 3 was … well, there’s a reason I’m not even bothering to italicize the title.
Actually, in fairness the other Terminator sequels haven’t been that great either. Salvation was at least somewhat novel but ultimately didn’t click for me, despite at least being memorable. Genisys was … How to explain this? Oh, I know. I literally forgot that the movie existed after I saw it. It wasn’t until a youtube algorithm spat me a link to a fight from it that I remembered “Oh yeah, this was a thing!”
Amusingly enough, a friend of mine said almost the exact same thing about it last night, noting that he too completely forgot the film existed after seeing it. Compared to T2, well … ouch.
Note: It does have some cool moments that are worth hitting on Youtube. So there is that.
But with all that, I was still excited for Terminator: Dark Fate. And at long last, I finally got to see it. So now, I’m going to tell you what I think about it.
I liked it. A lot.
No, really. I enjoyed the action. I loved Gabriel Luna’s fantastic portrayal of the REV-9, with plenty of very clear callbacks to the iconic Robert Patrick’s role as the T-1000 (if memory serves, Luna even stated in an interview that he underwent some of the same training to achieve the same effect). I enjoyed seeing Linda Hamilton again, and even if some of her lines were a little over the top I felt it worked as she’s clearly someone who’s still not over the … well, that’s a massive spoiler alert, so heads up, we’re going deep into spoiler territory here. If you want to avoid spoilers, well … stop reading here. And know that I enjoyed it quite a bit. It’s not T2, but it at least deserves a place on my shelf alongside it.
