But it took nearly 3 decades and a string of "unauthorized" sequels to finally get to the point of bringing a real, canon sequel.
There have been many movies which I eagerly anticipated, but Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace and T3 I think had the distinction of being the most intensely anticipated movies by myself that I can remember. Not saying I didn't await some other films with huge passion and anticipation, but the wait for those two I remember being unbearable because I was such a fan of those mythologies.
I'm sure it's safe to say that generally it was thought of the Terminator series as finished in 1991 (with a great "appendix" directed by Cameron in 1996, Universal's Terminator 2 3D: Battle Across Time) - it left no loose endings and Jim Cameron moved on to different stories which far surpassed his Terminator fame (Titanic). So I was shocked when I flipped through a Movie Magazine (Cinema) in a store one day in 2002, and saw a multiple page article on Terminator 3: Rise Of The Machines. Even more shocking was the fact that it was not directed by James Cameron, and Linda Hamilton and Eddie Furlong weren't around either. For me Cameron and Terminators were something inseparable, like George Lucas and Star Wars (which ironically are now separated as well) and the character of Sarah Connor was the main character of the story. To basically have every single person gone from all the previous Terminator movies other than one actor was mind boggling.
To illustrate it better for newer generations, it's as if Warner Bros asked Christopher Nolan and David Goyer to do a 4th movie in the Dark Knight saga, and they'd refuse and say they finished their story (which is exactly what Cameron said to the producers in the early 2000's - "I said, "I'm just not that ... Ahhh, I mean, I told the story." ), and WB would go ahead and hire different directors and writers, only retaining Bale in the title role, recast everyone else and made a 4th film as a direct continuation. The Bale analogy isn't even fair because in case of the Cameronless Terminator films, the main character was either gone or recast. So, would you give it any credibility or consider it a legitimate or authorized part of The Dark Knight Saga? Especially if Nolan would have completely nothing to do with it and openly disliked the films and the directions they went in? Only that Terminator was even more so Cameron's than TDK was Nolan's, because Nolan did not come up with the Batman character, did not design the suits, the vehicles, did not storyboard the movies, did not write the script, which is everything Cameron did with Terminator. Not to mention complete change of other creative personnel such as in the music, editing and cinematography department.
Still, I couldn't wait, and other than for Phantom Menace, I don't think I was ever as hyped as for T3. I knew the trailer by memory, had the T3 magazines, T3 comic books, novelization and counted days till its release. I didn't know at the time that the writers actually were never even fans of the films and actually literally hated T2 and thought of the first as mindless dumb fun. One of the writers, John Brancato, revealed years after in his blog (that is still up as of this writing) that while he thinks the first movie is fun, he doesn't really think much of it
Holy cow, freakin ego on this guy. He actually admits in the same blog he and his co-writing partner, Michael Ferris, got the job only because Jonathan Mostow was their college friend and they took the job only for money
Sure, it's not unusual to take an assignment for money, but have some integrity: don't take something you think nothing of, and at least have some respect for those who are fans of what you call thrash, not openly brag about hating it and making money off of it
At the time T3 was in theaters, Brancato avoided talking about T2, but did not hold back his remarks how the original is a stupid dumb movie appealing to the lowest common denominator. Below, quote from John Brancato from bbc.co.uk from 2003
So he hated it so much he couldn't stop himself from belittling its fans and those who enjoyed and loved it.
At the 2003 Premiere of T3, his writer partner, Michael Ferris, was actually asked on the carpet about the inconsistencies with T2, such as John's age, which he simply brushed off. The interview was posted in movies.about which is now defunct but still accessible via webarchive
The movie played it as safe as possible, which I didn't mind at all. It was more like a fine Arnold Schwarzenegger's turn-of-the-millennium action film, something like Eraser perhaps. An Arnold Schwarzenegger action vehicle. The worst part, other than a very obvious lack of knowledge in the Terminator lore, was making the Terminator purely a comic relief throughout the entire movie.
So while actually a good film, it did not feel like part of the first two films at all especially once you revisit the classics, which is ironic since it played all the same beats and used the same formula. But a different look, feel, music, director and most importantly, cast, made it feel like a separate Arnold Schwarzenegger film rather than something connected to Jim Cameron films. Admittedly, and to give credit where credit is due, the cast was great, and they went for really good, dramatic actors. They could easily get some model-looking pair and sexualize Kate Brewster, yet they went for class and really good actors. Still, there weren't any human characters in it that the first movies were actually all about! A re-casted character is virtually a new character anyway you slice it, lets face it. And Sarah Connor was absent, replaced with a different female character. She was the narrator and main character of all the previous Terminator movies,, it was her story and her character arcs. So all you had was Arnold Schwarzenegger with new group of people doing some action. Again, it didn't feel like an actual continuation of the story of the characters from the previous entries since Sarah was gone and John was recast. It was closer to Eraser or 6th Day than Terminator movies. But it did have its own specific visual look, tone and design and I applaud it for it. And yes, the ending was brave.
After seeing its ending I remember thinking in the theater "well, at least this is the last one for sure since they nuked the world" since I thought and still do, that more than 3 movies is diminishing any6 series, plus I assumed a movie set in a future would have been tonally and thematically too different. I had no idea the series will become like Halloween or Friday the 13th, and didn't know what a ludicrous atrocity is coming, titled Terminator Salvation which I despise as much as one can despise a movie. My experience with it was very different. I didn't wait for it, I wasn't interested in it, I didn't care for it. I thought the idea of setting it in the future takes away everything from the first 3 films, and underline the fact it's all a fictional world - if we can't connect to it on that level anymore, then why should we care. Sure, Star Wars happens in a fictional world, but it's a world we see from the very first shot, we are introduced to it as such from the beginning, while in a way WE used to be at stake in Terminator movies (And the Star Wars world could still be our universe, just a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away). To have it now being a fully scifi thing in different reality just felt so disconnected to what made this series. Plus, one of the main aspects of the series that was so appealing was the fish-out-of-water element, the idea of characters from another world/time interacting with our society and world, how they react to it and how we react to them. That was the core appeal and signature aspect of it, and it absolutely does not mean that every film has to be repetitive. It's not a plot, it's a core element, an essence, like the fact that in Back To The Future we jump around time affecting it, or in Matrix, an idea of the world that's an illusion and characters from the actual reality interacting in it. Try making a Matrix movie placing it only in the future, without our reality/presence. And if you want to accuse me of being afraid of new directions and wanting the same thing over and over again, then re-read what I wrote because that's not what I'm saying at all.
But it wasn't really just that, it was seeing the god awful costume designs (where women looked like supermodels with pearl white teeth and guys like hip hop music video stars or forgotten Mortal Kombat characters), ridiculous, 80's cartoon-like machines in the form of Transformers, fish robots, motorcycle robots, terminators that look like Goombas from the 1993 Super Mario Movie (T-600s) and the worst of all, hybrids - the Marcus character which represented the B movie exploitation version of the Terminator from the straight-to-VHS movies like Cyborg, Cyborg Cop, American Cyborg, Nemesis, Replicant - all those cheap knockoffs always represented cyborgs as behaving and being like humans, or being a mix, with human brains often, rather than being actual machines. And we've seen it with Metallo in Superman. Marcus brought that into the lore since he had a fully cybernetic body with human brain. And Skynet instead of being an eerie, almost alien-like, cold machine/computer (or at least a software) who was completely alien to human emotions was now cliche, appearance changing sassy b**ch played by Helena Bonham Carter, explaining her/his evil plans like cliché villains in cartoony movies making evil villainous faces....oh please.
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And yet again, a complete character change - new characters come in, and the ones that we knew are all recast, so just like completely new characters. By that point the series wasn't about any person or human being, it was just different group of people from movie to movie fighting robots and a Strecth Armstrong at the end. Since T3 the series wasn't about people anymore but about either Arnold Schwarzenegger's cyborg antics or fighting robots
This film also doesn't even have a villain or any story, which is something truly amazing in a bad way. It's a bunch of characters wandering on a desert like in a video game walkthrough, encountering boss character after boss character after each segment. At the very end one character is kidnapped into a facility and you have to free him, but that comes at the very end of the film. It doesn't have any plot or even any central villain. It's a very juvenile video game type of a film with a PG13 certification, and it feels like a movie made for specifically 13 year olds. Sometimes it gets a little free pass for some simply for the fact that Christian Bale is in it (who years later said it's the only movie he regrets being in), but next to this , T3 looks and feels like a film aimed at actual mature audiences rather than video game crowd. Salvation is the exact opposite of everything in the original two films, in which the future and the whole scifi element was just a little framework for the human story of Sarah Connor to hang on. The original two were the kind of scifi people who aren't into sci fi at all watched with intensely. Salvation is a series of fights between shouting Christian Bale and fish robots and giant robots among explosions, with laughable excuse for a redemption story in which it isn't even explained what the character did in the first place. It's laughable that such a dumb cartoon has such a desaturated cinematography, trying to masquerade for something serious.
Then, a good few years later, yet another company that had now acquired the rights, Skydance, began production of Terminator Genisys. I was appalled, thinking 'why would they desecrate the mythology further'? It had became like Robocop, which was once a mighty entity helmed by the great Paul Verhoeven and Irvin Kershner and ended up its life as children tv series and horrible made-for-cable tv movies. Then I read about the Back To The Future concept in Genisys and saw just one production photo from the hospital garage. I hated it, afraid that by incorporating scenes from the original films, it'll diminish them directly and stain the original movie. But, after seeing the trailer, I made a complete 180 - I was hooked. I mean, as much as one can be hooked on another glorified fanfiction, funded by a large company. At that point the mythology was years or actually decades past its Oscar winning, box office record breaking level. Yet, I thought it looked very promising and began anticipating the movie more and more. Bought the 'Making of' book and it looked like it was shaping up to be an big, expensive epic take like never before, taking place in many cities and times, recreating scenes from the original film like the Psycho remake and being in 3D. And Laeta Kalogridis, the writer of Shutter Island, was one of the writers for the film. Some degree of anticipation was on, even if it was another "fanfilm" with no connection to Cameron, other than the producers giving him an early screening seeking his opinion
Genisys was a Marvel version of the Terminator and it was of grand proportions, and made in a modern hyperbolic superhero genre style, in a very lightweight tone. It was a fun comic book movie filtered through Marvel's lenses - people weren't shaking, crying or breaking down facing danger, they were just cracking movie jokes and one liners. But the movie's scope was apparent right away, when just within first few minutes of the film we got to see San Francisco blasted by nukes, nuclear attack on the world, a giant final battle between humans and machines involving machines of all kinds and more plasma fire than in any other film, and the main characters getting back in time. The opening is pretty huge and not that bad. Some great sets and nice cinematography
The first 1/3 of the movie is like The Best Of of the first 2 films and a mix of fanfic ideas, with the original movie scenes recreated in 3D, Arnold vs Arnold, the T-1000 back, a digital evil John Connor, jumping around time - all the "cool" ideas for very young audience, as some of it I thought of as a youngster when I was entering my teens. I don't mean it in a derogatory way, I'm just illustrating that those are very comic book ideas for a younger, superhero/comic book audience.
They Marvel-ized the mythology trying to appeal to the Marvel movie crowd, but that alienated the lifelong fans and they failed to really reach the modern audience because the movie wasn't really exceptional or memorable enough.
Skynet is being played by the Dr Who guy, repeating the personified supervillain angle on it, rather than being an emotionless eerie intelligence of the originals (or even T3). Genisys is often mentioned as the movie with the worst casting choices possible.
Sarah Connor is being played by Emilia Clarke of the then insanely popular Game of Thrones, the film is directed by a Marvel director (who helmed Thor 2) - again, it had a great scale but it felt more like a big budgeted comic book, and the cartoon/Marvel tone of the film felt completely, utterly disconnected from the adult, grounded first 2 films, like its predecessor. It definitely feels like a light superhero version, albeit with good intentions as the makers of it were truly fans who really tried to make a modernized version. The idea of an old T-800 was one I was looking forward to since there is so much one can explore, but other than his rather cartoony appearance where he resembles an SNL version of his old self with the Bill Clinton wig, his older age isn't really a factor other than few hand "cramps" he had.
Let's go back to the casting thing again. Again, new actors, so new set of people, new group, another film, another group, another actors, fighting robots. Clarke's Sarah is very different than any other version, a modern coming of age type, and Jai Courtney's Reese isn't the Reese we knew at all. The hypersensitive, PTSD-ridden soldier is gone, replaced by a more common, witty talking action lead. And that was by design, the tie-in material and extras made it clear they were going for different iterations of the characters, but those didn't sit well with the older audiences and failed to capture the younger comic book audience too it seemed. At least this one was an innocent fun. At least in the first 1/3rd until they jump into 2017, then it becomes a very generic superhero flick. I do think it did ok in creating a good father/daughter relationship between 'Pops' and Clarke's Sarah.
The movie underperformed (at least in the US), like its predecessor, and lots of moviegoers moved on.
Then I've heard that James Cameron is teaming up with Deadpool's director Tim Miller, whose work I've heard him praising in an interview before, to clean the slate and bring in the legitimate sequel to 1991's Terminator 2: Judgment Day. My jaw dropped. I never believed it's gonna happen. I knew the filming hasn't even started but the anticipation has begun and it was eating me alive that we will have to wait to see it for so long. AND in addition to all that, Linda Hamilton was back! So not only the involvement of Cameron was a jaw dropper, even thought as of then I thought will only be that of a producer, but with Linda Hamilton back it meant the real story will continue because for the first time since Cameron had his mythology taken from him, the actual main character whom the original films were about was back. I don't know how many times I've watched this interview with Cameron and Miller that day.
Much later when the first trailer dropped, I was still fairly optimistic and very interested. I got mixed feelings with the second trailer, but after seeing the cast at the Comic Con, seeing how great Arnold Schwarzenegger looked, and especially when James Cameron announced that Eddie Furlong was coming back as John Connor, it became something else.
Once Furlong was announced alongside Linda, my anticipation went through the roof. It couldn't possibly get better it seemed. It was like a jackpot: Cameron/Linda/Eddie. Ding ding ding. It didn't matter in The Force Awakens that Luke Skywalker was only seen in the very last scene with no dialogue. He was there! For the first time in decades! And that is cinema magic. After all these years, we saw that character again. But the question I and the entire internet was asking was, "where's John"? And that only added to the excitement.
When the European poster came out I loved it and bought it right away (The US one which ended up being the US cover for the standard BluRay and DVD is horrendous). I've met Eddie Furlong for a second time weeks before Terminator: Dark Fate premiere and got him to sign the poster, but could not squeeze anything out of him as far as the amount of time he's in the film. The reason I asked was because around that time the plot leaked online. At first, I didn't believe it was genuine but then things were beginning to add up. The leak is what eased me to and prepared me for the shocking opening of the film.
I saw the movie twice within 24 hours , during pre-premiere on which there were only a few people, and then in a packed theater with a somewhat confused audience. Not confused by the plot, but by the tone of the film, which differed so much from the last two. There was a family with 3 children there, all around 10 years old, and before the film started they were eager to have fun and lots of laughs as the parents said, "like on the last Terminator". This is what the series had become. At one point during the movie, sometime soon after Dani's brother Diego had been killed in a car crash, the father of the children was apologizing to his wife, explaining that the last ones were fun and funny and they all had a good time. Pity that the Terminator name has became synonymous with, but it has turned into Arnold's vehicle as Jim Cameron once said, and it became more Arnold's at that point. Cameron's words. That was T3 and Genisys, while Salvation was like Spiderman/Transformers video game.
What I loved right away is that as oppose to those "Auction Sequels" as I call them since they were made by the highest bidder companies, with the existence of Terminator: Dark Fate, the story that Jim Cameron finished with T2 actually remained finished and its ideas and resolutions were honored. The enemy, which was Skynet and its future, IS defeated and gone, like it was in T2, and Sarah faces new obstacles and new threat.
It has always irked me that in Cameronless films somehow, with no explanation, Skynet was still being developed and was still Skynet. (And no, there were no backups. Both Dyson and the Terminator were so sure they were willing to die). This rendered all the sacrifices and actions of T2 futile, something I hated. This, plus it makes no sense whatsoever. If you change one detail, a chain reaction occurs which leads to different events. And postponing development and start of a war by years changes everything. How movie-like and illogical it is that Skynet was still called Skynet. Thus, according to Tim Miller in a Collider interview (and logic), Kyle Reese does not exist in Dark Fate timeline. How could he, if he was born after the war (according to the original war date and his age). The events of the war brought his parents together, perhaps they were refugees from different parts of the world or US at least, perhaps this one night of his conception was a moment of peace and safety for them. If the war happened after Reese's initial birth date, how could he exist?
So again, what I enjoy the most in Dark Fate is following what has been said back in 1991 - Skynet and the war has been prevented. Skynet was done (and by the way, I love that subtle moment when Sarah finds out that indeed Skynet does not exist anymore, that little smirk and glow in her eyes, a little moment of personal triumph and satisfaction).
There were no outlets for it to happen, Dyson and the T-800 would mention any other possibility. Ironically, the fact that Dark Fate actually follows through and respects T2's events is one of the biggest complaints from fans, which from a certain point of view I understand but don't agree with. Skynet is gone, really gone, and over 20 years had gone by and the war didn't happen. So the Terminator mythology's alpha villain, the equivalent of Cobra of GI Joe, Voldemort and his forces of Harry Potter, Megatron and the Decepticons of Transformers or Machines of Matrix - defeated and gone. It was like TMNT 3 movie without Shredder. New villain and threat arrives, while similar, at the same time very different. Much of the explanation about Legion, the new AI that attacked humanity has been cut from the film, but the interviews are enough to piece its background. It was an anti-terrorist program which has gone rouge, as would any AI, according to Cameron, that would be self aware, as no thinking entity would want to be a slave or feel threaten by a shut down. Legion's army is black and very different and modern design wise. The Rev-7s with their shiny muscle-like black texture, tentacles and digitigrade legs, look like alien creatures/monsters from modern cinema (Venom anyone?), even echoing the ones from Independence Day little bit. This update was needed to bring the series truly into modern times.
A supercomputer and chrome robots with hydraulics are ideas and look of yesterday (even thought they're one of the best designs in movie history). Legion is a anti-terrorist program with an army of Revs who are made out of light but hard black carbon metal with ribbon data cables controlling the joints.
Dark Fate is also the first Terminator movie in which Stan Winston's team, nowadays called Legacy Effects, are not involved in any way in the terminator effects, and instead only help out with manufacturing the makeup on Arnold (there actually hasn't been any animatronics or puppets made for Rev-9, he was purely CGI). That is actually in a way helpful to put the point across that its a different enemy and different machines and come from a different designer in the film and in real life.
Anyway, I'm not perhaps a big fan of designs, ( let's be honest, I think Rev-7's are crap) but I LOVE the fact they're so radically different from Skynet machines to the point they look like aliens even thought I don't care much for the designs by themselves, if that makes sense. I also like that the film shows us both futures, it works great to see the classic and the new one.
And so, with Skynet gone, John Connor is gone as well. The most controversial and hated thing about the film by vast majority of fans. With Sarah Connor being the main character, and her character arcs the subjects of the stories, with Skynet out of the equation, John Connor needed to be removed as well to make place for the new hero who would take on the new threat. The decision to kill him off was made for few reasons. One reason was to surprise the audience. Another one was to make room for the new characters and lastly, to simply put the character out of its misery after being so mishandled in the Auction Sequels. In the film iconography, the name of John Connor name will always evoke the image of the young Eddie Furlong. It's an icon and you just don't show him grow from a kid.
With the internet leaks weeks if not months prior to the film's release, the idea of John being murdered in the beginning of the film was eased on me because I had so much time to get used to that idea. Of course, I would not want the character I grew up with and cared for in T2 to have such tragic, horrific end, and it did feel like punch in the stomach seeing it, but I do believe doing anything else to that character would be just worse to him and would deteriorate the icon. It was better to not have him, and have him be an exclusive T2 character, plus his murder added an extra emotional weight to Sarah and somewhat defined the tone of the R rated film, even though that tone was very mixed. It also added an extra layer of depth and grief, not only was John dead, but so was any remnant of Reese, and with victory over Skynet, also all those future heroes and sacrifices of the war were erased.
Let's not kid ourselves, most fans I know myself included, waited the most for the reunion, to see Sarah, T-800 and teenage John together again even if briefly. Not sure if Skydance and the filmmakers knew that, probably not. It lasts about a minute and while the CGI de-aging by ILM is praised by everyone and really well done, it's unbelievably brief to the point it loses its emotional punch because you're barely able to comprehend what happened when it's all over and you have a cut to another scene 22 years later. It literally gives two seconds to digest it and show the movie title and moves on with the story
The beginning and the transition of stories, even if brief, is well done and does make you feel like at least in the beginning it is a continuation of T2, unlike any other attempt which never connected before. Not only is it thanks to the de-aged characters, but for the first time in movie theaters since T2 we see the original flying Hunter Killers, the T2 Plasma Weapons and sounds, but also a small music cue from T2. And the correct termovision also makes a comeback for the first time since T2, with correct font, readouts and contrasting whiteouts.
The use of the music cue from T2 when the T-800 appears was a great touch too. The opening credits with the interrogation scene from T2 is a brilliant and moody way to open the film.
In comes Grace from the future, an augmented soldier who has a personal relationship with Commander Dani Ramos whom she came to save. I've read and watched every interview from every country about this film prior to its release, and imagined her character very differently. I imagined her as a tormented character who's constantly in physical pain because of her augmentation, but that's completely not the way the character was. The post-op soldier in pain is an angle not taken by the movie at all. Grace and her augmentation was a way to bring in the superhero/mutant features in, to have someone with superpowers basically. I'm not knocking it, have nothing against it, but Dark Fate IS a product of its time and tries to give the viewers again Marvelish/DC thrills, although R rated. Let me also say that in the wrong hands Grace could have been some MMA Fighter but luckily they didn't go this route.
But man, is that Grace character a completely, heartless b***h. She is the worst human being of the series. She is a selfish, self absorbed, ungrateful b***h. It's one thing to prioritize the Commander, it's another to treat other human beings like complete s**t. She is absolutely despicable towards Sarah. Here comes a woman who had her child murdered, saved the world before and now puts her life on the line to help her with nothing in return, yet she keeps treating her horribly, ignores completely the fact that she's grieving her child and that she's helping and risking her life for them completely unconditionally! She gives her stories a cold shoulder and continues to threat to "kick the s**t out her". Just wow. She only cares about her future lover (yes, confirmed), the only human in the world she has any humane feelings toward. Even tactically it would be very wise for her to listen to Sarah's story, find out whats going on and what happened in what appeared to be a much larger picture than she or Dani knew. Knowledge of Skynet's timeline and everything Sarah knows could have been very valuable. But she just doesn't care. She even rags on Sarah for trying to , God forbid, shoot a terminator that murdered her child, but the said Terminator is ignored by her. She never even apologizes, just gives more orders when she needs Sarah to do something, which Sarah always graciously obeys. Absolutely despicable character. Incompetent too. If not for Sarah, she and Dani would have been dead multiple times. She had neither planning skills, nor was she a great soldier
Grace's and everyone's (except for Dani's) indifference to Sarah and her amazing story also works on a symbolic level. John and Sarah's past story symbolizes movie classics and legends in today's world. Just like Grace doesn't give a tiny bit of crap about John, his death, and Sarah saving the world, or anything that happened before, focusing instead on the 'new' story that's hers and her reality, just the same the current generation don't give a crap about any movie classics, or what movies used to beat all the box office records decades ago, or what movies changed the cinema in one way or another. In most cases they just care about the current trends, whatever's happening now. There's no respect, nor desire to look back at older films or the cinema history to find out about yesterday's champions and great directors' accomplishments.
Grace's arrival scene already contains a very typical, generic modern movie jokes and lines with the Latino couple, which is unfortunately existent throughout the film. I also didn't care much for her dialogue which was very college dorm-like.
Dani Ramos' character gets a heat from fans, but I think it really comes from the fact that she replaced John. Miller mentioned in more than one interview that they wanted first of all the biggest contrast to John, and also the least likely person to lead a worldwide army, so therefore a short, nondescript, blue collar latina girl living in Mexico named Dani is the new savior of humanity. You can't do anything more different from John. Actually not a savior since Miller explains that humanity is not really winning in this future. Her role always was never a secret to me and I was a little surprised the movie was trying some kind of a reveal with her character...it was pretty obvious she was the future leader, and it was clearly her as a Commander they were transporting in Grace's flashback
So a lot of viewers complain that Dani does not get much characterization, but I would say she gets just enough especially in a larger ensemble of characters that the film holds. Natalia Reyes did very well in portraying a character that's very diplomatic and knows how to handle people. She may not be some over the top Michelle Rodriguez/Mila Javovic type of a female, but shows enough strength inside to be a leader. Her biggest strength isn't being a badass but knowing how to handle people. Miller says on the audio commentary that while John Connor was like General Patton, Dani is more like Obama, bringing people together. Dani is also completely different than Sarah was in her innocent days, accepting everything differently and better, and showing leadership and organizing skills in regular life right away. I believe Dani had plenty of characterization, and didn't need anymore than this. She was well fleshed out and that's a feat in a film where you have 4 protagonists with arcs. Her future scene on the other hand, when she looks like a rap star....facepalm.
So here comes Rev-9 whose design is much better than that of Rev-7s, which are the tentacled ones from Grace's flashback. Yes, they are similar, but Rev-9 (short for, according to David Goyer, Revision 9th) has a very different body, he is much more skeletal looking and doesn't have the alien monster legs. I also like the "missing cranium" look, it's certainly something new. According to Miller, it was Cameron who suggested it along with an open chest cavity.
Rev-9 is like a logical version of T-X from Mostow's film. I could never understand why TX's liquid metal doesn't split up from her or do anything other than changing appearances. Its a "living" entity! I just don't understand why Rev-9 has skull-like face if his ectofluid creates faces, especially since Rev's skull teeth are black. Then again, those aren't the times of trying to rationalize everything. According to Miller in an interview with vfxvoice, "we had some early designs where they had removed the skull. I said No, that's iconic of the brand". And of course, with the black ectofluid and its texture, the character does evoke Venom comparisons and maybe that's what they were going for knowing today's trends?
Gabriel Luna does a fine job with the character, he has a great voice and gives the character what I call a smug evilness. I wanted Rev-9 to get it. It's always great to hate the villain because it means you're really invested in the characters and despise the fact that someone wants to hurt them. I wanted to stand up and help the characters push Rev-9 into that grinder in the turbine. Somehow he seemed very smug to me
The return of the iconic Linda Hamilton as Sarah Connor, for many the first time since 1991 (although really since 1996's T2 Battle Across Time). Nearly 30 years had really passed, and it really is interesting to see Sarah at that point and with those experiences in her life, even if we don't see much outside of her warrior mode. My most anticipated scene from the movie was her meeting with the T-800 Carl, but the dialogue between them, which was actually written by Jim Cameron, was cut down significantly according to the audio commentary. Still, her brief breakdown at the motel and meeting Carl for the first time since the tragedy were enough to glimpse into her tormented side, and some of the strongest moments in the film.
I also really like the moment when she stares at the melted remnants of Carl after he sacrificed himself to destroy Rev-9. She quietly bids farewell to not only Carl, but at the same time what he represents - the last remnant of the Skynet/John Connor future, the last connection to her son and the future that visited her and that she defeated. It's a final farewell to that, and the way the film ended I hope there won't be any diminishing returns and this will be the final word in the story, at least one overseen by Jim Cameron. It's a good way to wrap it up once and for all.
The Carl character I thought was a great idea and arc. To have a duplicate of T2's T-800 (down to same sunglasses) to show up, kill John and then to see him as an elderly man with a family and guilt that's been eating him up is, I think, a very interesting idea. The inclusion of his character touches on a lot of deep and emotional issues. Were you able to forgive Carl? A murderer of a child? He didn't really have a choice, and regrets his actions, but did it make it easier to forgive? Did you think how he "feels"? He obviously was being eaten by guilt in his own way, and decided his amendment for what he has done is more important than his life, which he could easily lead. Lots of interesting stuff like this. I saw the movie twice in theaters, and the first time I just couldn't forgive him, like Sarah. It took me to the very last moment to accept his regret. I was just so taken over by compassion for Sarah and her pain that at first it was hard to accept him into the group, even thought I knew he very much regretted what he did.
As for as why he didn't disappear when Skynet was prevented: Physics tell us that there's cause and effect. If you remove the cause, the effect will not happen. But if you remove the cause AFTER the effect happened, the effect will still be there, simply because it's already an existing physical object or event. There is no rule or any physical or chemical reaction that would cause it to evaporate, that's just ludicrous. Going back, the effect won't happen the second time around because the cause is removed, but here and now the effect is already placed. With Skynet sending a bunch of T-800s back to various times right before its destruction and sort of before the timeline was erased, I think it's an idea that works and I have no problems with it. Some people have trouble understanding it. Well think of the time traveling as entering a tunnel. So lets say all those T-800s and one T-1000 went into their time tunnels which led to different years, and after they do their point of departure is destroyed/erased. But they're already in the tunnels. T2 played by those same rules - even though the future and Skynet was erased by the end of T2, what has been sent has already been sent and remained. They wouldn't just magically disappear of course. The Terminator mythology is not an 80's comedy like "Back To The Future" to do such things, that would be illogical and a complete cartoonish fantasy, even according to physicists.
My problem with Carl was that he continued the tradition of Cameronless sequels which I always had a big beef with, and that 'tradition' was in portraying the T-800 as Hulk with over the top strength. If you remember correctly, in T2, the T-800 could not just pound in Cyberdyne's steel doors open, and had to use grenades to go through them. He also took some effort to remove the steel plate covering the weapon stash. Even in the first film a T-800 could not go through doors in the factory and had to pound an opening through to slip a hand in to open them. Here, like in every Cameronless film, he punches locked steel doors with ease and survives plane crash barely scratched (any damage he had was from the fight with Rev-9's), while in T2, the T-800 limped from a broken knee after falling off the tanker truck. What is also a tradition in Cameronless films is that the T-800 is always stronger than the villain and always manages to pin the antagonist with one hand when the antagonist is trying to escape his destruction (T-X, T-3000, Rev-9). In T2, after hand to hand combat with a newer model, the T-800 ends up with a missing limb, severely damaged and literally crawling on the floor, fractured in and out. So that's my big bone to pick with all the Cameronless films also. A T-800 is an off-the-assembly line, run of the mill infantry unit, he is suppose to be inferior to those super prototypes/models, as he was in T2.
The action is fine, although I'm not usually moved by action unless its a movie by Jim Cameron, Steven Spielberg, Robert Zemeckis, John McTiernan or other action veterans. Anyone I spoke to thought the first chase was pretty good, and I agree. The other action set pieces? Well, none came matching this one, and I thought all the underwater and dam sequences were over the top. The climax was the most Marvel-like and over the top in few places, like Carl waking up just at the right moment with this heroic score to pump it, that's such a silly, cheesy moment.
The music has some moments, but I have to say most of it was very generic. I like the way Tom Holkenberg scored the airplane sequences and love his quiet moments with Grace. I also think his theme for Rev-9 is spot on, this weird kind of electronic musical pulse. It's also interesting to note it's hard to find a place where there isn't any music, even in quiet places like conversations or reflections. It's hard to have the modern jaded audiences focused and so the movie really works on that level of constant "movement" so to speak, even filling the slower moments, which there aren't many, with almost ever present music. Nothing wrong with that I guess, just noting it.
The contrast between Genisys and Dark Fate is nearly as big as between the first two films. This movie feels almost like a Netflix original, and is, I'm sure by design, sort of devoid of any grand scale. The action first takes place briefly in Mexico City, briefly featured as a background, then everything happens on its outskirts, then deserts, forest and a Dam in the middle of nowhere. So as far as the sets and the overall scale of the film, it's basically the trio of our characters in empty, natural environments. It has that TV film vibe and it's toned down, not attempting to copy T2 and be this major epic. It just feels more isolated, more intimate. Again, like a Netflix original, or an episode of a mini series
The whole film has a very somber, downbeat feel, like Annihilation almost. Aside from the events in it which are obviously grim, every single one of the main characters had either lost their entire families, lives or suffered tremendously. And interestingly enough, once you think about it, not one positive thing happens in the film aside from finally defeating Rev-9 at the end, taking two characters down with him, so it's a hardcore gloom ride.
Discarding the ever present Connor vs Skynet, and removing them both was an extreme left turn and , again, a very brave one which brought freshness and shock into the film. That's probably what I applaud the most in it, bringing in new threat and underlining T2's successful erasure of Skynet. At the same time, throughout the film I couldn't help but to feel as if watching an epilogue. Since Grace and Dani's future is something new to us viewers and fans, we haven't built a connection to it yet, we haven't even found out much about it, and since Skynet has been destroyed, it constantly feels as if the battle has been already won and it's an aftermath. Won or rather lost, since John has been killed as well, depending on the point of view. While it may be a weird comparison, it's like watching Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles III (1993) - the arch villain Shredder and his foot clan has been finally defeated in the previous film and he's gone. You feel like the main course had already been served. Due to the fact that the Terminator mythology started as, and always depicted the iconic duel between John Connor and his Resistance and Skynet and his metallic chrome forces, from films to novels to comic books to video games, once that decades-old feud is over you just feel closure to the entire epic. Now I'm not saying the threat should have been Skynet still, oh no, definitely don't want the events of T2 to be futile and fruitless. But I am saying the battle we viewers, fans, had known for decades is truly gone here. Skynet is dead (as it should be)
The look to the film is extremely bland. I barely see any art in it. Day scenes look like Netflix mini series episode.
So how I would the rate the film? Do I like it? I'll say it like this: my first choice would be the original, alternate Coda Ending in the park for T2, but as far as what Dark Fate brings: I really like the ideas in the film - Skynet gone, Legion being a brand new entity with alien-monster like machines. I like the film being so different from its predecessors and so modern. I like the ideas in it and the story. The actual film? It's not bad at all in my opinion and I like it, but it is a rather generic modern science fiction action/comic book picture. But the question I asked myself recently, would I care for it at all if it wasn't a part of the Terminator mythology and a legit sequel to T2? Hmmm. Not so sure
