Terminator: Dark Fate (spoiler discussion)

Topic

Discuss the day after Judgement Day here.

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Out Wednesday here, but no reviews until tomorrow I believe. Not a great sign.

Yeah, I have tickets booked for Wednesday but I’m keeping my expectations in check.

But as someone who has enjoyed all of the Terminator movies (and TV show) to at least some extent, I know this is going to be worth seeing.

I’m pretty excited to see this on Wednesday. Is it not showing in 3D at all? That seems interesting for a Cameron production, doesn’t it?

That is interesting. I hadn’t noticed as I just ignore 3D entirely these days.

I’m glad it’s back to being a 15/R, after the 12/PG-13 rating for the last three.

Terminator 3 was actually rated R in the US, despite being a 12A rating in the UK.

Early reactions are looking pretty positive:

https://www.digitalspy.com/movies/a29530513/terminator-dark-fate-review-first-reactions/

https://www.gamespot.com/articles/terminator-dark-fate-early-reviews-say-its-the-bes/1100-6470720/

https://collider.com/terminator-dark-fate-reactions-reviews/

(all pretty similar stories)

I’m wary of all the “best Terminator since T2” comments, as Star Wars gets the same hype for every single movie these days as being the best since ESB, but at least it doesn’t sound like a total flop.

It’s funny that a lot of the reactions are from people who went to a T2 screening that was secretly a Dark Fate showing. In some circumstances that might actually make me annoyed.

It’s a clever move to make sure you are getting reviews from people who are so into Terminator they are going to see T2 on the big screen again. And kind of daring too, as the uber-fans are often the most critical of new material.
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But I think I would also have been pissed off if I was expecting the see T2 and didn’t.
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To put it into perspective, it would be like going to see The Wrath of Khan and being shown Encounter at Farpoint :scream:

Good interview with Tim Miller:

https://www.polygon.com/interviews/2019/10/22/20924152/terminator-dark-fate-director-tim-miller-interview-sara-connor-linda-hamilton

Just to clarify that the writers, the story stuff, was really this team effort where first we had novelists. Again, I’m a sci-fi nerd, so I wanted to bring in novelists to some really broad-swab world-building. Five guys came in and Jim came in for a couple days of brainstorming.

Which novelists?

Joe Abercrombie, who writes my favorite books of all time, the First Law books. He’s more fantasy, but I know Joe, he’s wonderful. Greg Bear was there. Warren Ellis was there. Neal Asher was there. Neal Stephenson was there. That was pretty cool.

He also reveals that when he directed the second-unit action scenes for Thor: The Dark World, he only met the director, Alan Taylor, in passing for ten minutes.

That is a good interview. But maybe strays a little too far into suggesting spoilers at times.

Still, it has me looking forward to the movie that little bit more. Less than 24 hours now!

Hey, the reviews are out now. Some people like it and some don’t. Hopefully that clears everything up.
Bradshaw has done his review but I’m not going anywhere near that until I’ve seen the credits roll.

The reviews I’ve read seem largely pretty positive, and most say it’s the best Terminator film since T2. I’ll take that!

Well that was pretty fucking good.

More later.

Having had time to digest it a little bit, I’m still really happy with it.

This feels like a Terminator film in a way that was only true of the first three movies. But it also feels like its own thing, and that’s largely down to the ballsy decision to kill off John Connor from the very start.

I kind of knew about this before seeing the movie, and I didn’t know how I was going to feel about it. But they make it work. It’s suitability brutal, and genuinely quite upsetting, but it’s a move that not only gives Linda Hamilton some great material and motivation for Sarah Connor, but also frees up the entire movie to tell a slightly different story to T1 and T2, albeit one that follows the template of those movies pretty closely.

But it’s a great template, so that’s fine. And it’s almost refreshing to see a Terminator movie go back to that same basic chase template.

Also, the action is really good. There’s an extended sequence towards the beginning that turns things up high enough that it almost feels like it belongs at the end of the movie. And then the later scenes (especially the big finale) go even bigger and better.

But it wouldn’t be worth anything if we didn’t care about the characters, and both Sarah and Dani are great here (Grace slightly less so – I feel like we never quite get to know her properly beyond the broad strokes). Linda Hamilton in particular really anchors the whole thing and it’s just a joy to see her back in the role.

Oh, and Arnie is pretty good too. His role works better here than the similar concept in Genisys, and he pulls off the combination of humour and pathos needed for this Terminator quite well.

It’s not a perfect movie – some of the dialogue is a bit clunky and obvious, and some of the stand-in concepts for stuff like Skynet are a bit flimsy and under-developed – but they’re minor flaws. For the most part it all works, and it’s also sprinkled with enough callbacks and homages to T1 and T2 (as well as some of the other movies) that it was endearing, without pushing things so far that it becomes a Force Awakens style parade of stuff you remember from the originals.

So very positive overall, and I hope they make a direct sequel.

I’m glad that you liked it so much, Dave, considering how big a fan of the series you are. I obviously really like the first two, and if I ranked the series it would be like this:

T2
The Terminator
Dark Fate
Salvation
Genisys
Rise of the Machines

So obviously, yeah, this is the best Terminator movie since Cameron directed one and I have attribute to some of that to him being the producer here. I saw an interview where he said that he wanted to bring into the twenty-first century and they do achieve that with this one. The Mexico angle worked for me, and I love Grace being a supersoldier with cybernetic enhancements (and hope that we get more of her character in the future). People are only going to merge more and more with their technology, so it’s a cool direction to go. If they’re sending back more advanced Terminators then it makes sense to send back a more capable Kyle Reese. Although holy shit. I wonder what will happen to him in this new timeline?

I would say that this was my favourite Arnie performance since Judgement Day but it’s been too long since I watched the third movie to truly remember him there. You’re right that his character works a whole lot better than Genisys.

I think that for me, this movie ranges from okay to very good, so while it never hits an “amazing” like the first two movies I never felt like it dropped to that Genisys level (although that was okay some of the time). I’ll definitely be checking this out again in the cinema to see whether I like it even more. I’d definitely put it over The Force Awakens, and hope that we get the potential trilogy.

You know, my biggest problem was the reveal of Dani as the new messiah figure. In the moment, it felt too simplistic to keep hidden, but in retrospect I can see it as a Cameron storytelling. Sincere and streamlined. I’ll probably warm to it in future viewings, and it did make the emotional beats in the final fight really hit. “For John”.

Just a few further thoughts that I’ve had:

– Linda Hamilton really does a lot of heavy emotional lifting here, and I like that she gets an arc, even if she’s just a heavily supporting character. Like you said, Grace doesn’t quite get enough development or characterisation beyond the short flashbacks and her dedication to the mission.

– Was anybody else thinking of Alita when we got the future war flashback? It just reminded me of the battle flashbacks in that film for some reason. Maybe I’m focusing too much on the Cameron involvement with both.

– I love the opening shot, with the waves going back and forth, slowly revealing the skull under the sand.

– It was very cool (and fairly subtle) to have “Carl” petting the dog without it barking. I love that it’s not commented on but Sarah obviously knows that it is significant.

I’m sure that there will be more things that come to mind later but really I’m just excited to go back (and hopefully watch it with a better crowd since I think that I was the only one who was laughing at fairly sparse number of jokes (I’m glad that they didn’t aim for a Marvel Studios approach with the humour)).

KandorLives wrote:

You know, my biggest problem was the reveal of Dani as the new messiah figure. In the moment, it felt too simplistic to keep hidden, but in retrospect I can see it as a Cameron storytelling.

That was one of the few clunky scenes for me.

It didn’t help that you could see it coming a mile a way, and all of Sarah’s “you’re just like me, you’re going to have a son who is the saviour” stuff was really obvious foreshadowing (let alone the fact that that idea wouldn’t work with the timelines set out already by the movie).

The reveal scene worked OK for me, but it was the only time the movie came close to an eyeroll moment.

KandorLives wrote:

I love the opening shot, with the waves going back and forth, slowly revealing the skull under the sand.

Yeah, that was great.

KandorLives wrote:

It was very cool (and fairly subtle) to have “Carl” petting the dog without it barking. I love that it’s not commented on but Sarah obviously knows that it is significant.

I didn’t pick up on that! Great observation. I was too busy during that scene wondering how a T-800 could sit on a flimsy deckchair without it collapsing under his weight.

I thought it was fine. Good cast, and decent action, but the script was incredibly dull and predictable, and it mostly felt unnecessary. I don’t know when I’ve last seen a movie with such predictable “twists.”

Genisys had many, many problems, but at least it was trying something different.

That said, it’s still one of the better 2019 blockbusters.

I don’t know when I’ve last seen a movie with such predictable “twists.”

Into Darkness or Spectre, maybe?
I’d rather this have played predictably and actually be executed well than, like you say, be Terminator Genisys.

How would you rank all of the movies in the franchise then?

Also, I’m probably the only person here who sat through the credits (you haven’t missed any teasers, don’t worry) and towards the end of them they play the awesome Terminator theme and it’s been given a Mexican feel. I’d need to watch the film again but I don’t remember it playing during the movie at any point. I thought that it sounded cool anyway.

KandorLives wrote:

How would you rank all of the movies in the franchise then?

I haven’t seen Salvation, and haven’t seen T3 since it was in the cinema. T2 is better than the original though.

KandorLives wrote:

towards the end of them they play the awesome Terminator theme and it’s been given a Mexican feel. I’d need to watch the film again but I don’t remember it playing during the movie at any point

During the very early scenes with Dani walking down the street you hear Spanish guitar music playing strains of the theme. It’s quite subtle and brief but I know that theme so well that I picked it up.

KandorLives wrote:

How would you rank all of the movies in the franchise then?

Probably:

T1=T2
Dark Fate
T3
Genisys
Salvation

Not surprising, as someone posted a not-very-cryptic Tweet about it a few months ago, but interesting:

James Cameron Says ‘Terminator: Dark Fate’ Editing Was a Bloodbath of Creative Differences

From the way Cameron talks about the film’s development, it appears he more or less took control of the movie in post-production. Cameron recently told CinemaBlend he saw Miller’s rough cut at the start of the year and “it was pretty rough, it was pretty long.” The movie transformed in the editing room as Cameron worked with Miller and producer David Ellison “to find the best film that could emerge from” the rough cut.

EDIT: The Tweet, from August:

There is an upcoming major studio release that apparently has turned into a total Suicide Squad type fiasco right now in the editing room with two dueling cuts of the film, a very strong willed exec, and a director who is now entirely unsure what he wants. Not a good sign

— Will Mavity (@mavericksmovies) August 8, 2019

That’s interesting. I had assumed Miller was just sticking close to the Cameron model, but it seems like Cameron had more of a hand in it than I realised.

I watched this yesterday. Mixed feelings as it was really a mixed bag.

Basically Terminator does Force Awakens, only not as good and with two different directors, one of them being Michael Bay.

I thought the cast was great, for the most part. Mackenzie Davies was absolutely superb, both as a kick ass action hero and in the quieter moments. Unfortunately she was given very little material, so she must be shit hot to come out of the movie as the most memorable thing about it for me. She was excellent in her small role in Blade Runner 2049 as well. So watchable.

Hamilton and Arnie were both excellent as well, and thankfully they were given some semblance of an arc or at least a continuation in Sarah’s case. Carl….I’ll come back to that in a minute.
Dani was incredibly bland, both as a character and as an actor. Zero personality or charisma here. I’d have rewritten the script and given Grace a bigger role, once they discovered how good an actor and how much presence Davies has.
The guy who played the new terminator was boring as fuck. Nothing much more to say about him, he made so little impact and carried such little menace.
Is this the best they can come up with?

Back to Carl. As much as I loved some of it, I’m not sure I buy the whole idea with Carl. Totally far fetched in a movie franchise that operates firmly in the viewers ability to suspend belief. (‘Our relationship was never physical’ – really???!!)
It felt every bit like a really desperate attempt to shoehorn Arnie into the movie, and if we were going to go down that road I’d much rather see a movie with what Sarah Connor dealt with after T2 that led to the death of John Connor, it would be far more interesting than the Dani character they’ve cobbled up in two seconds here.
I felt the John Conner stuff was badly handled, just so unceremoniously dismissive of everything sarah Connor went through in the first two movies. What was the point?
We always say, with things like Before Watchmen that we needn’t worry as it doesn’t change what’s gone before but what they’ve done here with Skynet, Kyle Reece, Arnie and most of all John Conner is consign them to the rubbish bin for any future instalments. And Legion is a fucking hackneyed, cliched overused piece of shit name.

One more moan then I’ll wrap it up in a positive note, because like I say, I didn’t hate it, i really enjoyed a lot of it – it just really left itself open to criticism.

The action was awful. Run of the mill crap that we see in pretty much every blockbuster movie that’s hit the cinema in the last 15 years. The camera was zoomed in far too close, so we couldn’t see what was happening. No sense of surroundings in the car chases, just full of fast edits of the gas pedal being pushed about a dozen times and lots of noise and stuff flying about. CGI overload on the fight scenes….. and how many times did we need to see the terminator close up morphing into something else? It wasn’t that impressive the first time and certainly didn’t get any more interesting the 20th.
Utter CGI bollocks to rival IT2. Is this what we are now stuck with, watching computer games in the cinema? I’m really starting to hate CGI, it’s ruining the experience of cinema for me with its ubiquitous overuse.

Did none of them watch T2 beforehand and understand less is more with the CGI? Or how to construct a compelling action scene? Cameron needs to rewatch his own movie and remind himself.

This is the messiest Terminator to date in terms of the action and CGI, Salvation actually looked better, with better designs, and that was directed by fucking McG!

On the other hand, for a two hour movie they kept it interesting for the most part; holding back on who Dani was (even if the reveal is pish), then wondering what the fates of Sarah, Carl and Grace would be. The acting was so good that even without the best script, the drama was compelling and the quiet scenes were very nicely filmed with a few nice touches and some subtly, which was much needed contrast from the noise of the action scenes.

Speaking of subtle, the feminist slant was a subtle as hitting the viewer over the head with a brick and I’m not sure fans of a series with one of the most kick ass female leads in all of Cinema really need hit over the head with that brick when they are already fully on board. Give it a rest already.

This was still a 7 or 8 out of 10 for me, I did no watch checking and it kept my interest throughout with the exception of some of the messier action, during which my anger get me occupied enough to get me through a few mins.

Rankings as follows in relation to each other

T2 – 10
T1 – 9
Genysis – 8
Dark Fate – 6
T3 – 6
Salvation – 6

In relation to the rest of Cinema

T2 – 10
T1 – 10
Genysis – 8
Dark Fate – 8
T3 – 8
Salvation – 7

I think that’s a very fair review Chris.

Chris-S wrote:

Back to Carl. As much as I loved some of it, I’m not sure I buy the whole idea with Carl. Totally far fetched in a movie franchise that operates firmly in the viewers ability to suspend belief.

I think this is an attempt to take T2 to its logical conclusion – the machine has finished its mission and cannot self-terminate, and it’s a learning machine that can ape human behaviour (albeit clumsily in T2) – so what happens next?

Yes, it’s a way to bring old-Arnie into the movie without an extensive CGI facelift, but with the above in mind I thought it worked pretty well.

I’ve just read the thread and I feel like a total contrarian, I hope it still comes across that I i did enjoy the film !

When I do my top ten at the end of the year it will be right up there !
I’m just a bit disappointed in some of the things it did that really annoy me about a lot of modern movies – I expect more from Cameron

Hey, your review was great to read, and it shows that you have a lot invested in this franchise. I also thought that some of the action was shot with camera angles that were too tight, but by the end of the movie it either stopped bothering me or stopped altogether.

I also agree with the love for Grace and the thing that most disappoints me about this not performing well enough to get a sequel is the fact that we have this character and actor who could really stand out with more to do, but we’ll just have to imagine it for ourselves.

Thanks v much buddy

Dave wrote:

But it’s a great template, so that’s fine. And it’s almost refreshing to see a Terminator movie go back to that same basic chase template.

That was almost my exact thoughts leaving the theater and I was happy about it. If something works, why make radical changes? I have always been in the simple enjoyment camp rather than the artistic challenging, deep philosophical, technically risk taking types. I know there are a lot of people like that but i am not one of them.
Did anyone else notice a sense of recognition in future Dani when she meets young Grace?
I am as well in the Mackenzie Davis is great club. My favorite in the original was Reece so I am glad that they did such a good job with the time travelling human this time. I hope she gets more action/scifi roles because she was great in both BR2049 and TDF.
I thought Carl was great. I also agree with the point of him being a learning machine. I liked the “For John” bits. His humor was also subdued, although when I saw Mackenzie Davis on Jimmy Kimmel she said he was very outgoing off set.
Linda Hamilton as Sarah Connor was very solid. Her spite for Carl was authentic and her empathy for Dani was well played.

I think it may be a rough movie for people who have liked T3 through Genisys because it pretty much tosses them in the trash as far as timeline issues.
Terminator Dark Fate 8/10
Mackenzie Davis 10/10

Heavy clicking does not work. so instead of just letting the duplicate stand, I will offer off a positive addition to the thread.

I thought this wasn’t very good. Barely a story at all and the action was a bit too messy for me. The new characters were a waste, but Sarah Connor and Arnie were cool. I’m glad I went to the theater though if only for the deadly duo.

Rocket wrote:

I think it may be a rough movie for people who have liked T3 through Genisys because it pretty much tosses them in the trash as far as timeline issues.

Fortunately that’s only about 4 people.

Sequels often encounter this sort of problem; they have to take “and they all lived happily ever after” and turn it into, “oh no they didn’t!”

I’m more impressed by stories that manage to find a next chapter without trashing the resolution of the previous one.

SteveUK wrote:

Rocket wrote:

I think it may be a rough movie for people who have liked T3 through Genisys because it pretty much tosses them in the trash as far as timeline issues.

Fortunately that’s only about 4 people.

Sequels often encounter this sort of problem; they have to take “and they all lived happily ever after” and turn it into, “oh no they didn’t!”

I’m more impressed by stories that manage to find a next chapter without trashing the resolution of the previous one.

In fairness,the Terminator approach isn’t to say that they didn’t live happily ever after, but that they didn’t live at all!

In that respect maybe the alternate/split timelines approach is preferable. That way people can choose which outcome and which branch of the timeline they prefer, without feeling that it has been erased entirely.

People did choose.

They chose not to go with this one.

I’m not talking about choosing to see the movie or not, I’m talking about how you view all the possible story options in a ‘headcanon’ way. You can choose to favour one timeline as the core of the franchise with everything else as an alternate universe spinoff, you can take them all as equally viable possibilities, or you can feel upset at your personal favourite being overwritten or erased by subsequent stories. It’s the viewer’s choice.

I guess there’s a similar issue with Star Trek at the moment and the branching timelines caused by the reboot movies.

[SteveUK]

Actually delete all that.

I’m interested in writing choices. That’s what I posted about. Scratch the rest.

• This reply was modified 4 years, 2 months ago by SteveUK.

Finally got around to seeing this one. It was decidedly… okay. Which, to be fair, is a marked improvement on other Terminator movies this century. As an action movie it was fine, with the grand plane/dam sequence a suitably exciting finale.  Mackenzie Davis looked like an absolute star so hopefully she isn’t going to be held back from future opportunities as a result of the poor box office here. I was certain that Grace’s augmentations were going to wind up being infected by Legion somehow and so she would turn heel on wossername (I’ve forgotten already, she was so bland).

Giving more time to her could have made for a more interesting movie had so much time not been spent on Sarah Connor and Arnie. The hoops they had to jump through to get them back into the fold were so large they could have fit around Saturn. Nothing about the Carl stuff made a damn lick of sense and only left me disappointed that we don’t get a cheesy, laugh track sitcom about Arnie as a killer robot with a passion for drapery living in the suburbs with a nagging wife and an idiot son. Devoting so much screen time at all on the Connors (speaking of cheesy sitcoms…) even as they tell us that story is done and irrelevant now was a huge waste of time. How many Terminators did they manage to send back anyway?  The original movie suggested it was just one as a last-gasp attempt by the machines to survive.  This movie made it seem like they popped up as often as MCU movies.

It is indicative of the fundamental flaw with this franchise – an utter inability to leave the past behind.  This could have been much better if they had just focused on getting back to the basic chased-by-a-monster premise and ditched the convoluted sci-fi trappings of the Arnie era. Mackenzie Davis would have been a great face for a total fresh start reboot. Casting memorable individuals in the endangered human and evil Terminator roles would also have helped.

I suppose they’ll have to finally go for that complete restart in a decade or so when someone else decides to give it another try.

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Todd

So….It’s terminated?

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Todd

The problem with The Terminator franchise is that it is unable to move forward from the original movie. With the exception of Salvation (which most people seem to hate) is that the movies just keep recycling the plot of the first movie.

If they wanted to keep making sequels, they should have kept moving the franchise forward and, instead of just sending terminator after terminator back in time, they should have made films covering the creation of Skynet, Skynet starting the war against humans, the war against humans, and John Connor ultimately defeating Skynet.

But instead they went with the slasher movie direction, where the terminator is basically Michael Myers or Jason Vorhees showing up to kill a bunch of people and wreak havoc, get “killed” by the good guys, and return for the next movie. Repeat. Repeat. Repeat.

 

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Todd

I liked Salvation… at least it was different… ish…

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Jason

Yeah, Salvation wasn’t a great movie, but at least it tried to move the storyline into the post-Skynet era instead of another round of “lets send another killer robot and Arnie back in time.”

I’d probably give it a B or B-.

I think that one problem with these 80s franchises like Terminator and Aliens is that they’re so tied down to a “star” that they can’t really grow beyond Arnold Schwarzenegger or Sigourney Weaver. I suspect that the studios fear that audiences will reject these franchises without the “star” and the basic formula that they can’t move beyond the first movie. And they might be right, as mainstream audiences are fickle beasts, and they’re going to walk out of the theaters thinking these movies sucked because they didn’t have Arnie or Ripley.

Jason wrote:

Yeah, Salvation wasn’t a great movie, but at least it tried to move the storyline into the post-Skynet era instead of another round of “lets send another killer robot and Arnie back in time.”

I’d probably give it a B or B-.

I think that one problem with these 80s franchises like Terminator and Aliens is that they’re so tied down to a “star” that they can’t really grow beyond Arnold Schwarzenegger or Sigourney Weaver. I suspect that the studios fear that audiences will reject these franchises without the “star” and the basic formula that they can’t move beyond the first movie. And they might be right, as mainstream audiences are fickle beasts, and they’re going to walk out of the theaters thinking these movies sucked because they didn’t have Arnie or Ripley.

Predator is a good example of that. After the first one, it’s been downhill and only the first one featured Arnie.

A good idea might be to stop spending so much fucking money on sequels to cheap movies.

I get that ‘T2’ cost a fortune and then made an even bigger fortune, but taken in context with all the other movies that looks like an aberration.

Call Blumhouse and let them spend $10m per film to make horror sequels to what were horror/action hybrids in the first place.

Or call Netflix and let make something mega-expensive that won’t have to live or die on an opening weekend.

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Todd

What I kinda liked about Salvation is that it was both a prequel and a sequel, depending on which character you’re talking about… it was very much a sequel for John, but a prequel for Kyle. That’s kinda neat.

Unfortunately the movie just didn’t click… Bale’s John was very… meh… and while I didn’t mind what’shisface as the new robot guy, most people didn’t really like him… I guess the movie was also missing something “extra” to push it forward.

But they should’ve continued with that plot line, instead of trying to reboot it, and then scrap everything and do a bland sequel to T2. They could’ve expanded on what happens in the future, since clearly they were never really gonna avoid a war against the robots anyways (the only good thing about T3), so yeah move forward, show Kyle being sent to the past eventually, and John winning the war in the future eventually and be done with it.