In this review, I will be talking about the latest instalment in the Terminator franchise. Every Terminator Movie seemed to be getting worse after Terminator 2. The news of a sixth movie naturally got many concerned, although fans got excited as not only was Arnold Schwarzenegger returning to his role as the T-800, Linda Hamilton would return as Sarah Connor and James Cameron would be returning as a producer on the film. This all sounded amazing and there seemed that there was little hope that this would save the Terminator franchise from all its other films. However, as the movie drew nearer people were less and less keen to see it as the marketing for the film didn't help to sell the film to the audience e.g: the bad trailers. Before I start this review there will be spoilers so if you want to see this movie come back after seeing the movie to read my opinion on it.
Terminator Dark Fate ignores the other Terminator movies and opens a few years after T2 with Sarah and John Connor relaxing on a beach. A Terminator appears out of nowhere and does what most of the Terminators have tried to do since 1984's The Terminator and kills John Connor. We then move on to the present day where a Terminator named the Rev 9 (Gabriel Luna) and a Cyborg named Grace (Mackenzie Grace) arrive in Mexico City. If you've seen any Terminator you can guess that one is sent to terminate and the other is sent to protect. Grace is sent to protect a girl named Daniele Ramos (Natalia Rayes).
From this short paragraph about the film's story, there is nothing original as it follows the exact same premise as the other movies. But another element of the film that feels lacking is the characters. The main character Dani has the same storyline as Sarah Connor in the first film, but her offspring won't be the leader of the resistance fighting the new future, no in an obvious twist, she is the leader of the resistance. This twist was obvious to see coming and was the only thing they could do with the character without copying the entire arc of Sarah Connor from the first Terminator.
Another character I feel was lacking was Grace. On paper, Grace sounds like a unique character as she is a cyborg sent back from the future to protect Dani to repay her debt to her as Dani saved her as a child. However, she comes across as a not very likeable person as she shouts a lot and acts like a bit of an asshole especially round Sarah Connor. Talking about Sarah Connor she feels like she was only including in this movie for fan service and nothing else, the reason I say this is because she just feels like she is in the background and doesn't serve much in the overall story.
Now we've talked about some of the weaker parts of the film, its time to talk about some of the film's strengths. The chase scenes in the film were well filmed, the CGI looked good, Arnie does a really good performance as the T- 800 as well as Linda Hamilton as Sarah Connor, the film's concept was quite interesting but the execution wasn't great.
Overall I would give Terminator Dark Fate a 5/10- great concept, bad execution.
