Film Review - Terminator: Dark Fate (2019)

Terminator: Dark Fate is the newest entry in the Terminator franchise and sees the return of both James Cameron as a story writer and producer and Linda Hamilton as Sarah Connor who must help a new heroine Dani (Natalia Reyes) and her protector Grace (Mackenzie Davis) fight a new Terminator called the Rev-9 (Gabriel Luna) before it can complete its mission and Arnold is also back for the ride.

Terminator: Dark Fate is not a bad movie not at all and we’ve certainly had those with 2015’s Terminator: Genisys which tried to do a Days of Future Past on the series but failed miserably and 2009’s Salvation directed by McG which was set in the Future War but didn’t make much of an impact whereas here director Tim Miller who made the first Deadpool movie does a good enough job directing the film to the point where you don’t sit there too bored with it all.

Though he is greatly helped by Ms Hamilton and Ms Davis who do an awful lot of the heavy lifting here, Ms Davis reminded me a little of Michael Biehn from the first Terminator movie and does a very good job in the protector role while Ms Hamilton plays Sarah Connor as if she never left and everytime she was on screen I was enthralled by her presence and her performance.

But sadly much like the other sequels that came after 1991’s Terminator 2 this new film despite Cameron coming back to guide the story struggles to justify its own existence as once again it has to skirt around the events of T2 in order to really exist as a story and the film opens with the tape of Sarah in the hospital from T2 and that scene is so good that it makes the rest of the film that comes after it on a story level feel mediocre as again you sit there thinking:

“So are the Terminators just like the Decepticons from Transformers now there’s just groups of them that come to Earth every once in a while, as this is making no sense.”

And as for the new Rev-9 played by Mr Luna I’m awfully sorry but he is miscast in this role and its really down to him having a nice face, he comes across as a sweet man that I found it hard to believe him as this unstoppable killing machine whereas in the first 2 Arnold and Robert Patrick had angular faces that could turn off their emotions at the drop of a hat and Arnold himself was so muscular that you instantly believe he was unstoppable and after a while seeing very rubbery CG battle scenes got a bit long in the tooth.

And so that was Terminator: Dark Fate and look its not a bad movie but with this, Star Wars, Jurassic, Predator, Rambo, Alien and for me personally Mad Max to see these revivals fail to measure up just isn’t good enough and just stick to Terminator 1 and 2 from now on you don’t need to see any of the others after those their just not worthy, 2 out of 5.