Terminator: Dark Fate Movie Review

The last of the long line of Terminator movies, Dark Fate saw the return of franchise Icons Arnold Schwarzenegger and Linda Hamilton. It starts out with the usual, someone is sent back in time to save the future. One to save the future of humanity and one to save the future of the machines. The setting is approximately 25 years after the events of Terminator 2, the ending of that movie should have tied up the future. What we learn though, is that even in a different timeline, machines gaining sentience can still lead to similar outcomes.

Grace (played by Mackenzie Davis) is an augmented soldier sent back in time by the resistance to save Dani Ramos (played by Natalia Reyes) who is a key figure in the future fight against the machines. The Terminator (played by Gabriel Luna) is a little bit similar to the T1000 from T2. In fact the basic premise really isn't new or unique here.

The twist though does take this in a new direction. Back in 1998 3 years after Sarah Connor had saved her son John Connor finally with the help of a reprogrammed Terminator in the events of T2 one of the several Terminators sent back in time by Skynet catches up and kills John Connor, even though Skynet no longer exists in the future. This is shown in a flashback sequence which does a pretty good job recreating the younger, late 90s looks of Linda Hamilton and Edward Furlong.

The main narrative takes place in 2020, Rev-9, the model of Terminator played by Luna is sent to Mexico City to kill Dani. Grace, who is the augmented soldier sent back to protect her, is from the year 2042. Rev-9 disguises itself as Dani’s father to infiltrate the automotive plant where Dani works. We soon see this Terminator has 2 movies, a liquid metal and an exoskeleton, which can separate when needed to provide more ruthless killing efficiency. Grace arrives in time to help but is overmatched by Rev-9 but before long Sarah Connor soon shows up to save the pair.

They escape to a motel where Sarah reveals she has been hunting Terminators since her son was killed and tracks them after being sent coordinates from an unknown person on their whereabouts. At this point we have yet to see who this person is but it's not hard to guess that it would be a T-800 played by Arnold Schwarzenegger.

After some near misses and escapes for the trio from Rev-9 we end up at a point where they are able to get off the grid a bit. Grace reveals that she was sent back with a tattoo of coordinates, which she was instructed to go to if they ran into trouble. They decide to check them out and end up at a house in the country with a Carl’s drapes house out front. We soon see Schwarzenegger Terminator, aged now pretending to be a family man, raising a child (not his) with a woman. The comedy picks up and we get some hammy moments, which while amusing, I think we start to see the direction of the film change a bit.

The climax, which, like every previous movie in this series, has a somewhat predictable premise, how do we kill this impossible to kill machine. I won't completely give away the ending but we know that no matter what happens the machines will always come back in time to try and wipe us out.