Terminator Dark Fate Review · 3:41pm May 8th, 2020
Ohhh... ohhh honey, why. Ohhh this is not going to be fun, no, no, no it is not. Ya'll know I love the first two Terminator movies. I have yet to see 3 and Salvation, I've seen the Gen... Gensyis however the hell you spell it, didn't like it. And now I've seen this. ... I did not have fun with this.
And actually, you know what, screw it, this is going to be incredibly spoiler heavy. If you don't wanna read for potential spoilers and still wanna see the movie... don't watch the movie honestly, just ignore the movie as a whole, but hey it's up to you the viewer, I can't control what you want or do. If ya'll wanna watch the movie with no spoilers, you can ignore this entire blog post. But for the rest of you who don't really care and just wanna read my thoughts, feel free to dive right in!
Terminator Dark Fate follows Sarah Connor and a cyborg human who have to protect a young girl from a new modified Terminator who comes again from the future.
Now let me give what pros I've got.
The best actors in the movie are without a doubt, Arnold Schwarzenegger and Linda Hamilton. Both of them are great, and I will admit, it was nice to see them back, Linda Hamilton especially since we haven't seen her in much as of late, but now she's back again. It's just sad that she came back for a Terminator movie... and it wasn't done well. 
And Arnold Schwarzenegger I will admit, it's nice to see you again, and he does get some funny lines here and there. Mackenzie Davis was also pretty decent, she did a good job with what she had. So good on you.
Special effects are... fine. They're fine. Adequate at best. Nothing really impressive, you've seen it before, it's not new.
The action sequences are... okay. If you're an action fan and just wanna see big explosions and shit blow up, you'll get it here, there's plenty of action in the movie. But a good chunk of them feel a bit too tight in some places, and some of the action that happens even the bits that do happen, feels a bit too fake at times. You guys get why I love the action from action movies from the 70s, 80s, and 90s? Because most of the action that happened in those movies were there 100%. This doesn't feel like it.
The score is alright, I will be honest, I do friggin' love the new take on the Terminator theme, props to the music department for that.
But I'm sorry, that's where my pros for the movie end. Because that's it! I've tried to find something else worth enjoying, but I can't! I did not enjoy the movie, at all! And I can understand if this movie was made with the intent to get in new viewers, a new generation, that is perfectly fine. There is nothing wrong with that. HOWEVER, with bringing in a new generation of viewers, there comes certain expectations. One of those expectations is that you DON'T shit on everything that made the original source material loved. And guess what? This movie did that. I don't know if it was intentional or not, I hope it wasn't, but they did it!
In fact, let me give you one of the biggest reasons why this movie sucks. This is following after Terminator 2, AGAIN, and you know what? After the events of Terminator 2, another Terminator shows up out of nowhere and kills John Connor. ... After everything that Sarah went through to protect this kid from being killed, he's suddenly killed right off the gate. You know what movie, screw you. How could you take one of the biggest and likable elements of the classic Terminator 2 and make it completely nothing, how could you? And this is literally in the first few minutes of the movie, this movie started with pissing off every fan of the original movies. Great start movie, just, just great start. Pull an Alien 3 why don't you. Now it wouldn't be so bad, if it was justified, like if there actually was a reason for this to happen. Well sadly no, there is none. It's just replacing him with someone else with the same blueprints of the second movie. 
So... bad enough that Genisyis (why the hell isn't it just spelled Genesis by the way, that's stupid) erased both first and second movie in it's path, but now you guys have also gone again and destroyed everything that made the first two great. ... You can tell I just love this movie to death, don't you.
But even with that in mind, I'm sorry... this is just Terminator 2 all over again! It's literally Terminator 1 and 2 rehashed AGAIN. Woman is being chased by a killer robot, woman teams up with person sent from the future, said teamup takes them traveling to escape the Terminator where more people get killed in it's path, and of course you eventually get Arnold Schwarzenegger back again, yada yada yada, it's the same thing! I've seen this already! I know it's the Terminator franchise and all, and of course there's gonna be people coming back in time once again but come on! It's the same thing all over again! At least with Terminator 3, it continued from the last few movies and continued the time-line, it didn't go back earlier and erase everything the other movies have done! Like what the hell guys, come on!
The movie just drags and drags when we get into the middle. At the start it does have somewhat of a good pace, but the middle just drags on and it's so damn boring, like come on!
Also Skynet? ... Skynet is over now, now the new enemy is coming from something called Legion or some shit, what was wrong with Skynet, like really, what was wrong with that? There is nothing different about it, it's just another killer robot. What's the difference? NONE!
The timeline is royally screwed up. I know it's a time travel movie, and time travel is always iffy in movies, I know that. And I understand if you have to bend the rules to move the plot forward, that is perfectly fine. The problem is it feels like the makers of these next couple of movies can't really seem to get their shit straight.
This movie, I'm sorry, I just.. can't, I can't get into this. The story is a massive mess, and most of this movie falls into meh. I've seen this before, it's not new, it feels like the same action I've seen in many modern movies again and again.
If you like the movie, good for you. But I honestly can't find myself liking it. Just let the Terminator franchise end, we don't need more of these movies. It's time to put it to a close. And yes, I'm saying that, it's time it just ends. There is no salvaging this franchise at this point, I can't see a chance of that happening. What's left to tell? What new stories do you have? There's nothing new! Sure this movie took risks, and on some level I can appreciate that, but if you have no reason to justify that... then it feels like a sad joke.
I give Terminator Dark Fate a 5 out of 10. I would have ranked it much lower, but honestly that would mean everything in the movie sucked. This movie is at the very least watchable, it's a watchable movie. But it's not a great Terminator installment.
Those are just my two cents, I hope you enjoyed them, have a great Friday everyone.
Yeah, I will admit this movie is trying to recapture what made the first two Terminator films great, but it doesn't seem to realize what made them great, namely a great lead character. The problem is, our heroine is dull as a board.
Terminator Time Travel in a nutshell now:
This was something that should have been made differently. Honestly the movie seems to have been made to appease a female audience like they did with reboot ghost busters movie. And of course it many fans hated it. They could have done something epic but just managed to make a mess of things in the movie
"Genisys" is apparently a computing term, meaning "general identification system". So it could be there to serve as some sort of computing reference, although it could also just be, to quote Linkara, "because poor literacy is kewl".
There's a couple of major problems with this movie...
One - the whole plot twist, in theory, could work as a way of taking everything on a completely different track. However, it's such a radical move that basically does a Last Jedi and alienates people who don't WANT to see such an unpleasant thing happen to one of their beloved characters, so it (discounting the rightwing morons who claim that this movie or TLJ are "pushing a feminist / anti-male agenda") just doesn't work.
And two...
The Terminator NEVER needed a sequel. Of any kind!
The original movie was a closed circle. It told its story, and really left next to no room open for a follow-up installment, because we pretty much KNOW how it would all turn out. (Really, T2 is a good movie, but it only works as well as it does by a ton of good luck in its making and at the time of its release.) Trying to continue pumping out Terminator films just never works because the original story is already so complete as it was that there's really nothing new to say or add to it.
5264370
Exactly. There is absolutely nothing new you can bring here. This is one of the few times where I say... Just let this franchise end. It had a nice run, people are still going to remember, but stop making more movies, there is nothing else left at this point.
5264382
I say it should never have been a franchise in the first place. Just the one movie.