Terminator: Dark Fate
I’LL BE BACK… TO BASICS. ARMED WITH SOME FAMILIAR NAMES, TERMINATOR: DARK FATE WIPES OUT ITS OWN PAST TO RECLAIM THE FUTURE
History is a flexible tHing in tHe
Terminator universe. timelines are there to be tweaked, the past amended, the future rewritten.
it’s a fourth-dimensional battlefield and now even the franchise itself is meddling with everything you knew to be true. Terminator:
Dark Fate may technically be the sixth film in the apocalyptic skynet saga but it’s out to convince you it’s the third: a direct sequel to
T2: Judgment Day that obliterates the accumulated screen mythology of the last two decades. all those underwhelming reboots and requels piled on the shelves of your local Cex? Crushed like so many human skulls beneath gleaming, mechanical heels. yes, everything from 2003’s Terminator 3:
Rise Of The Machines to 2015’s Terminator: Genisys – even tV’s The Sarah Connor Chronicles – is officially consigned to the skip marked alternate realities. Consider them multi-million dollar apocrypha. or maybe they’re just “bad dreams”, as producer James Cameron cheekily suggests. BaCk To BaSiCS
returning for the first time since T2, Cameron is the key weapon in the fight to torch and rebuild the franchise as a blockbuster proposition. He launched it all with 1984’s
The Terminator – a lean, brutal, star-making showcase for arnold schwarzenegger as the remorseless man-machine – and took it to the realm of next-level spectacle with its 1991 sequel, enshrining linda Hamilton as an action icon along the way. Cameron serves as producer on Dark Fate and worked closely with director tim Miller, who was equally committed to a back-to-basics approach, scything the tangle of continuity to recapture the essential muscularity of the series.
“Jim knows the Terminator franchise like no other,” says Miller, who also helmed 2016’s
Deadpool. “at one point he handed me all these sheets of paper and said, ‘these are all the cool ideas for action scenes that i’ve had over the years.’ Pages of stuff like, ‘and then a helicopter does this… and then a tank does that…’ or scenarios or locations or vehicles or whatever. it was this big long list of shit that he had written down over the years, and it was just so great.
“Jim is one of the smartest guys you will ever meet. He’s highly meticulous. He always has an opinion. is it always an opinion i agree with? no. Does he always like my ideas? no. but there’s a healthy back and forth that i think leads to the best result. i really like the ideas that we ended up with in the movie and it’s an honour. i can’t even tell you. He’s one of my favourite filmmakers ever. even when my ideas don’t win, i get it. He’s fucking James Cameron! What are you gonna say? no?”
While the original films focused on the quest to protect John Connor, saviour of mankind, Dark Fate sees skynet target a fresh victim: Dani ramos, a street-smart young woman from Mexico City, played by Colombian actress natalia reyes. Dani’s so crucial to the timeline that a spanky new model of terminator is on her tail. incarnated in the form of Agents Of
SHIELD star gabriel luna, the rev-9 has the power to separate into two fully autonomous units, doubling the threat level.
“Dani’s the new prey,” reyes tells SFX. “she’s scared – she knows what it is to be chased by a terminator. she’s the one that he wants to kill. at first Dani doesn’t really understand why she’s being followed. if she’s no one in the world, just a girl who goes to work every morning like millions, why is she so important for the future?”
but the future is also looking out for Dani, dispatching a cyborg super-soldier named grace to safeguard her existence. all corded muscles and grime-stained singlet, it’s a departure for Mackenzie Davis, best known as sweetly nerdy yorkie in the acclaimed “san Junipero” episode of Black Mirror.
“it’s the greatest leap i’ve ever taken!” laughs Davis, who transformed herself into a credible transhuman commando with four months of training and a diet that left her heartily sick of meat. “i still watch the movie and i’m like ‘What am i doing there?’ it’s just not a genre i ever thought i would be proficient in or desirable for. i typically move with quite a gangly, awkward inefficiency, and to play somebody whose body was a weapon that required peak physical performance to protect the people most important to her… i still feel surprised to see myself doing the stuff i’m doing in the movie.
“she’s half-machine but had an entirely human mind until the point that she decided to do this, so she has human memories and empathies. she doesn’t have that kind of terminator strength that doesn’t allow for intense compassion and vulnerability, which really appealed to me. the way i’ve been thinking about it is it’s like getting plastic surgery, like a breast job or something. you’re still completely what you are. you’re just enhanced. she comes from a time when this is a decision that certain people make to defend their humanity. one of the most gracious,
It’s just not a genre I ever thought I would be proficient at or desirable for