ARNIE’S BACK! What a pity his old plots have been regenerated too
FILM OF THE WEEK
Terminator: Dark Fate Cert: 15A2hrs8mins ★★★★★
Linda Hamilton is only 63, but in Hollywood years, especially female action-hero Hollywood years – surely the most unforgiving kind – that makes the original Terminator star about 157. But in the period of conspicuous and deliberate change that the film industry is currently engaged in, of fairer representation and remuneration regardless of age, gender or ethnicity, it also now makes her very employable Hollywood royalty too.
So while it’s lovely to catch our first glimpse of her back in the role of Sarah Connor in Terminator: Dark Fate – emerging from a rusting pick-up with scowl, tight vest, heavy machine gun, the Sarah Connor we know and love – it’s also totally unsurprising that this is very much a Terminator film for these changing times.
With this being released 35 years after the iconic original, Hamilton is no token female presence this time around. There’s also a character who we initially take to be the first female terminator (but actually turns out to be an ‘augmented’ super-soldier) and a young female Mexican factory worker whose survival soon turns out to be crucial to the entire human race.
But even before we’ve had time to think: ‘Hmm, that sounds familiar,’ we’re hit with another example of fast-changing times. When Grace – said super-soldier, played by the Canadian Mackenzie Davis – first arrives, she continues the long-standing, time-travelling Terminator tradition of arriving stark naked. There was a time when the fight that soon results, before she’s stolen any clothes, would have aroused considerable interest in adolescent males. Now director Tim Miller, best known for Deadpool, delivers a sequence that wouldn’t make the primmest maiden aunt blush.
There are two other important things you need to know. First is that while this is the sixth Terminator film to be made, in terms of franchise chronology it’s actually a sequel to the excellent, Oscar-winning Terminator 2: Judgment Day.
And second is that good ol’ Arnie, just as he always promised, is back once again. But hey, you probably knew that – after all, he’s in the trailer and he’s here at the outset, digitally but briefly de-aged, as the new film loses no time in putting the central story of the first two films well and truly behind us.
‘Skynet? What’s Skynet?’ asks a puzzled visitor from the future, clearly knowing nothing of the computer defence system that became self-aware and unleashed nuclear Armageddon when it perceived the human race as a threat. Well, that’s the first two films out of the way.
There’s quite a lot to enjoy here as original director James Cameron – he of Titanic, Avatar and Aliens fame – returns to the franchise as producer and cowriter. Our first glimpses of Hamilton and Schwarzenegger (their brief opening appearances notwithstanding) feel like proper, hairs on the back of the neck moments of film history. There is some nice humour too, with Arnie’s ageing Terminator passing himself off as human and working in soft furnishings, while Hamilton’s Connor, who kicks terminator backside for fun, has lost none of her attitude, as becomes clear when Grace decides it’s time for the feisty trio – pursued by a relentless and very male terminator – to move from Mexico to Texas.
‘You want to try and cross the border with an undocumented Mexican national and a woman who had her own episode of America’s Most Wanted?’ asks Sarah dryly.
But none of this is quite enough to make a decently work-a-day Terminator film into a great one. Surprisingly, some of the visual effects aren’t that convincing. But the main problem is the sheer familiarity of the story. For while there’s a certain pleasure in recognising some of the iconography of the first two films – the sunglasses, the guns, a terminator dressed as a policeman – it’s disappointing to find that Cameron and his writing team have effectively written the same story all over again. Which, when Arnie said: ‘I’ll be back,’ is probably not quite what he had in mind. Shame.