Terminator: Dark Fate (15.)
Directed by Tim Miller.
Starring Mackenzie Davis, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Linda Hamilton, Natalia Reyes and Gabriel Luna. Partly subtitled. 128 mins.
There used to be two ways to tell if a Terminator sequel was duff. First, it wouldn't have a number in the title (anything after T3.) Secondly, the post colon section of the title would be deeply ironic: nobody was saved by Salvation, nothing was created by Genisys. Terminator 6 doesn't have a number but this time its title is grimly appropriate. This Terminator's fate is darker than you could have believed possible given it sees the return of creator James Cameron, albeit in a backseat role among the writers and producers. Every Terminator film is effectively a reset, a wiping the slate clean, and in Dark Fate we are shown a version of reality where the cast of T2: Judgment Day get together nearly a quarter of the century later to make a cheapskate, corner-cutting, straight-to-streaming rehash.
Possibly its only virtue is that it doesn't leave you hanging, but lets you down early. The first big action sequence is a highway chase that is a pipsqueak travesty of the one that climaxed T2. Compared to Cameron's majestic and thrilling work, this is a heap of frantic editing trying to disguise how lacklustre the visuals are. Elsewhere the action, of which there is precious little, is all seen through the lens of my little seegeeyeye.
The film courts some mild controversy by starting out in Mexico and having a sequence in a detention centre on the border. The two Mexican performers are this film's equivalent of John Connor, the person who must be protected for the sake of the future, and its Terminator but neither Reyes nor Luna make any impact in the roles. As the good Terminator, (actually an augmented human soldier, but same difference) Mackenzie Davis is pretty good, even though she looks like an action hero version of Ellen Degeneres.
Arnie, though he doesn't appear till halfway through, is probably the best thing in it and has a few treasurable moments before getting subsumed within tame mediocrity of it all. Hamilton's return to her most famous role is a disappointment though. She is a one-note grouch, a cussed granny. She is probably right to be narked because the script just asks her to follow the exact same path as in T2; slowly growing to accept that Arnie is a good guy.
But then the whole film is about retreading Judgment Day. For Cameron to return to Terminator you'd assume, using your logic, that he would have some compelling reason to do so. Your logic though would be wrong, just as it was about Spielberg and Ford's fourth Indy film. It's lazy and pointless. If you're not gonna bother, then why bother?
Directed by Tim Miller.
Starring Mackenzie Davis, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Linda Hamilton, Natalia Reyes and Gabriel Luna. Partly subtitled. 128 mins.
There used to be two ways to tell if a Terminator sequel was duff. First, it wouldn't have a number in the title (anything after T3.) Secondly, the post colon section of the title would be deeply ironic: nobody was saved by Salvation, nothing was created by Genisys. Terminator 6 doesn't have a number but this time its title is grimly appropriate. This Terminator's fate is darker than you could have believed possible given it sees the return of creator James Cameron, albeit in a backseat role among the writers and producers. Every Terminator film is effectively a reset, a wiping the slate clean, and in Dark Fate we are shown a version of reality where the cast of T2: Judgment Day get together nearly a quarter of the century later to make a cheapskate, corner-cutting, straight-to-streaming rehash.
Possibly its only virtue is that it doesn't leave you hanging, but lets you down early. The first big action sequence is a highway chase that is a pipsqueak travesty of the one that climaxed T2. Compared to Cameron's majestic and thrilling work, this is a heap of frantic editing trying to disguise how lacklustre the visuals are. Elsewhere the action, of which there is precious little, is all seen through the lens of my little seegeeyeye.
The film courts some mild controversy by starting out in Mexico and having a sequence in a detention centre on the border. The two Mexican performers are this film's equivalent of John Connor, the person who must be protected for the sake of the future, and its Terminator but neither Reyes nor Luna make any impact in the roles. As the good Terminator, (actually an augmented human soldier, but same difference) Mackenzie Davis is pretty good, even though she looks like an action hero version of Ellen Degeneres.
Arnie, though he doesn't appear till halfway through, is probably the best thing in it and has a few treasurable moments before getting subsumed within tame mediocrity of it all. Hamilton's return to her most famous role is a disappointment though. She is a one-note grouch, a cussed granny. She is probably right to be narked because the script just asks her to follow the exact same path as in T2; slowly growing to accept that Arnie is a good guy.
But then the whole film is about retreading Judgment Day. For Cameron to return to Terminator you'd assume, using your logic, that he would have some compelling reason to do so. Your logic though would be wrong, just as it was about Spielberg and Ford's fourth Indy film. It's lazy and pointless. If you're not gonna bother, then why bother?
