Terminator: Dark Fate

In 1998, three years after defeating the T-1000 and averting the rise of the malevolent artificial intelligence (AI) Skynet, Sarah Connor and her teenage son John are relaxing on a beach at Guatemala. A T-800 Terminator, sent from the future before Skynet’s erasure, arrives and shoots John, killing him.

In 2020, a cybernetically-enhanced young woman named Grace, and a more advanced Terminator model, the Rev-9, are separately transported from the future to Mexico City. The Rev-9 infiltrates a factory where Daniella “Dani” Ramos works alongside her brother Diego. It attempts to kill Dani, but is thwarted by Grace, who escapes with Dani and Diego in a car. The Rev-9 pursues them in a truck, and reveals its ability to split into two separate entities: a powerful endoskeleton, and a mimetic polyalloy exterior.

The Rev-9 kills Diego and corners Grace and Dani. Sarah arrives and temporarily disables both parts of the Rev-9 with explosives. After acquiring medical supplies for Grace, Dani, Grace, and Sarah retreat to a motel.

Grace reveals that she has been sent from 2042 to protect Dani. Sarah believes that, like her, Dani is destined to give birth to the future Resistance leader. Sarah says that she knew where to find them because in the years since John’s death she has received messages detailing the arrivals of Terminators, which she then destroys; each message ends with the words “For John”. Grace notes that neither Skynet nor John exists in her future. However, humanity is threatened by an AI called Legion, designed for cyberwarfare. In this altered future, Legion seizes control of servers worldwide and humanity fails to neutralize it by detonating nuclear devices to create an EMP. Legion then builds a global network of machines to exterminate the human survivors.

Classification: 15 Classification: PG