Terminator: Dark Fate
Directed by:
Tim MillerCinematography:
Ken SengComposer:
Tom HolkenborgCast:
Linda Hamilton, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Mackenzie Davis, Natalia Reyes, Gabriel Luna, Diego Boneta, Edward Furlong, Tom Hopper, Brett Azar, Steven Cree (more)VOD (2)
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Tim Miller directs this sixth instalment in the sci-fi action franchise. Set 27 years after events in Terminator 2: Judgment Day, the film follows Sarah Connor (Linda Hamilton) as she attempts to put a stop to new liquid metal Terminator Rev-9 (Gabriel Luna) from terminating cyborg Grace (Mackenzie Davis) and Dani Ramos (Natalia Reyes), a young woman who is mysteriously being tracked down by Rev-9. Rev-9 proves difficult to beat, however, and so Sarah and The Terminator (Arnold Schwarzenegger) must set aside their differences and team up with Grace to save Dani, whose fate and that of the world is in their hands. (20th Century Fox Home Entertainment)
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The Terminator has become a kind of second Columbo – every time he comes back, you're a little less glad (in the case of the Terminator if you're a viewer, in the case of Columbo if you're a killer). This movie... it's off to a promising start. In fact, its opening scene was the best ever, because it surprised me and made me feel something, which I can't say about the rest of it. The whole weirdly unfolding story failed to make me feel like there was really something going on, that I should be worried about someone. I guess it's also because it's a repeat of what we've seen before, only this time the "new Sarah" isn't interesting at all, the "real Sarah" is mostly a decoy to the fans, and Arnold's terminator gets a terrible beating because by the time the finale comes, in which he finally finds himself, he's acting more like he's in an SNL sketch than the movie James Cameron supposedly had something to do with. The heroine sent from the future, played by Mackenzie Davis, is likeable and reminded me of Brie Larson as Captain Marvel, except that although she points out several times that she is human, I didn't feel any humanity from her and she acted more like a machine. Then again, I hardly know what to write about her antagonist – except perhaps that the repeated shots of his reassembling head/body got old so quickly, as did almost all of the action scenes, which were great but boring. It's the same, maybe a little better than Terminator Genisys... but on the other hand, Genisys at least tried to do the unexpected sometimes (even if it was stupid afterwards).
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The T-800 lives with his family in a cabin in the woods, is an expert at ladies' curtains, raises and pets a dog on the porch, and just out of the blue decides (programmed, unprogrammed, it doesn't matter) to do good. In short, Terminator as a soap opera. Add to that the nowadays fashionable girl-power element (a six-foot-tall teenage girl is a leader of the resistance) and the last half-hour of overstuffed digital crap. And there’s not a single action scene with the charge of anything by Cameron. Sadly, the best – and in fact the only good – thing about the whole film is the ageing Linda Hamilton, who, with how poor her career has been for the last 20 years, clearly enjoyed it and had fun. Otherwise, a terrible mess that completely fucks up all the careful mythology outlined by Cameron. And as I look at the four stars here, people have either gone completely insane or they don’t need much to be happy. And by the way, in the cinema, my friend and I were in an empty auditorium all by ourselves, in the evening, in Liberec, a city of 100,000 and four days after the premiere. That, too, says something about the decline of once famous franchises.
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The merger of old and new characters is done nicely and Arnold’s catchphrases will make you laugh. That makes the over-digitized, unnecessarily over-the-top wannabe action (most of all on the plane) all the more annoying, as it completely spoils this otherwise decently entertaining flick. Less would have been more if they couldn’t spend another $ 100 million on better digital effects. And the new young female terminator Mackenzie Davis is tough, but uninteresting and asexual.
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From the mid-1980s to the mid-1990s, the two greatest blockbuster titans, Arnold and Sly, competed with and responded to each other, but as we will discuss, Arnold always came out ahead because he thought about the audience and took everything with good humour. As their respective careers wind down, it seems that both men have remembered that period and brought their most iconic characters back to life. Both the fifth Rambo and the sixth Terminator are set on the border between the United States and Mexico and reflect the topical theme of migration to the U.S. Whereas Stallone’s entire movie slides into a feeble-minded conservative delusion, where he puts himself in the foreground, Arnold leaves space in the new Terminator for other characters to tell their stories. Though Dark Fate walks in the shadow of the first two films in the series, the awareness that it can never surpass them makes it possible to use its heritage to its advantage. Despite the fact that it relies heavily on fanservice, it does so light-heartedly and with charm, but it mainly has something to offer in addition to that. The shared scenes with Linda Hamilton and Arnold Schwarzenegger will please every fan, but there are much better and more essential scenes developing the character of Sarah Connor and even a whole storyline involving Grace, a soldier from the future. One could fault the film for merely following the list of liberal themes and motifs of today’s America. But like Cameron’s own films, Dark Fate depicts strong women not as a fetish or cliché conforming to the times, but simply based on the dramatic potential of female characters who, in the face of the given circumstances, fulfil their potential as active initiators of events and are cool characters. Likewise, the creators did not go the route of “updating” the franchise for the modern day (like the foolishly recombined preceding instalment), but rather used the dramatic potential of “minority” (in the sense of previously standing outside the mainstream) stories to strengthen their own narrative. So, even if one does not resist the euphoric statement that after many years, we finally have a properly entertaining Terminator here, it is all the more pleasing that it can also provide a properly feminine, freshly Mexican and simply functional perspective thanks to the superbly written and rendered characters. If you had previously hoped that at least Arnold would return in the next instalment, this time you wanted Linda Hamilton and especially Mackenzie Davis to return. ___ SPOILER -> ___ Incidentally, Dark Fate serves as a great practical example of the importance and power of representation for forming positive role models. This is due not only to the effect that it has on the audience, but also to one of the central motifs of the narrative, which is the dynamics between the characters, especially the central pair (where the film steers us toward anticipating a certain form of relationship in order to finally show that the core of that relationship is in fact admiration and respect). ___ <- SPOILER
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James Cameron's directorial genius and precision shines through beautifully when watching Tim Miller's Terminator Dark Fate. It doesn't matter if we're talking about the building up of story dynamics, the iconic moments and catchphrases, the dark vision of the future, or perhaps the action scenes. The steel mill scenes from Terminator 2 are two orders of magnitude more impressive than the dam scene in Dark Fate, which feels tiresome, sterile and above all too digital after a few minutes. It's not that the last Terminator lacks its good moments, which revolve mostly around the genuineness of Mackenzie Davis and Linda Hamilton, but it's still the same generic template of two robots chasing each other, they're just more imaginative, or more breakable, and every now and then Arnold shows up to prove he can still kick some ass and deliver some of his classic one-liners. It's hard to see where anyone got the idea that Dark Fate is the best since T2 and the only relevant sequel. Terminator 3 had more impressive fights and Salvation was pumped up with stunning visuals and a superb post-apocalyptic feel – pity about the finale. We can therefore safely classify the last film as a second-rate contribution, certainly not above the others.
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