What to watch on the big and small screens
Sci-fi action. With Linda Hamilton, Arnold Schwarzenegger and Mackenzie Davis. Director: Tim Miller. 16LV.
More than two decades after Sarah Connor (Hamilton) averted Judgment Day, a terminator (Gabriel Luna) is sent to kill autofactory worker Dani Ramos (Natalia Reyes). Luckily for her, Grace (Davis) shows up from the future to save her, swiftly followed by Sarah, who’s shocked to learn that even though she destroyed evil artificial intelligence Skynet, another threat has taken its place.
Hollywood has never met a successful film series it didn’t want to run into the ground in search of profits, and the Terminator franchise is no exception. After the unfairly maligned Salvation (2009) tried something different, filmmakers offered a remix of Terminator’s greatest hits with the revisionist Genisys (2015), which came across as a pale, silly imitation of the classic first film. So hopes weren’t high for this latest sequel.
But thanks to the return of James Cameron as producer and writer, Dark Fate gets the series back on track. It’s tighter, grittier and leaner than the three sequels Cameron wasn’t involved in, harking back to the tense cat-andmouse-chase plot that made The Terminator (1984) and Judgment Day (1991) so riveting.
There’s also room for the characters to interact meaningfully, with philosophical questions and themes slipped in along the way.
In Davis’ Grace, the film has a compelling, heroic figure like Michael Biehn’s Kyle Reese, a courageous but vulnerable guardian angel fighting a ruthless, inhuman foe that’s a clever new twist on the older killing machine models. This creates a real sense of peril missing from the robot-on-robot dustups from the other sequels.
But the film’s true ace up its sleeve is Hamilton’s triumphant return to her iconic role. It’s almost shocking to see an actress looking her age, and Hamilton imbues Sara with a fitting weariness. Yet she’s still as tough as nails, unpredictable and even dangerous, and it’s thrilling to see an older actress dominate an action film. Arnie also returns in a supporting role and seeing him and Hamilton scrapping will delight fans.
Cameron’s films have always had strong female characters, but Dark Fate is even more feminist. It even organically works in some topical themes such as US immigration issues. Though it can’t compete with the first two classics, Terminator: Dark Fate is a propulsive and visceral movie that packs an emotional wallop.