Dark Fate at the Box Office...

...and it’s a shame.

Terminator: Dark Fate
Movie Review by Michael Isenberg.

Twenty-nine million dollars. That’s all Terminator: Dark Fate managed to pull in from the domestic box office during its opening last weekend. To put that in perspective, the movie is estimated to have cost $185 million to make. The poor reception is a shame, because it’s a pretty good movie. It wasn’t mind blowing or anything, it’s not going to rock your world. But it’s good solid entertainment with action, humor, and some heart.

Given that schools don’t teach the classics anymore, a quick review is in order. The original Terminator (1984) tells the story of Skynet, an Artificial Intelligence which sometime in the future—Judgment Day—achieves consciousness, launches the nukes, and then builds machines to exterminate what’s left of the human race. The humans, led by one John Connor, fight back, and after an epic war, with heavy losses, beat the machines. In a final Hail Mary pass, Skynet sends a Terminator robot (Arnold Schwarzenegger), back to the 1980s to kill Connor’s mother, Sarah (Linda Hamilton) before John is ever born. It fails. In the 1991 sequel, Terminator 2: Judgment Day, Skynet tries again, this time taking a crack at John himself. Not only do the heroes destroy the Terminator once again, they prevent Skynet from ever being created. The grim future is erased. Judgment Day never happens.

Or so they think. In Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines (2003), we learn “You only postponed it. Judgment Day is inevitable.”

We also learn that sometime between Terminator 2 and Terminator 3, Sarah Connor died of leukemia.

Which brings us to Terminator: Dark Fate. It begins two years after the events of T2. Sarah and John are hanging out on a beach in Guatemala when a model T-800 Terminator appears without warning and kills the boy. It all happens so fast that Sarah doesn’t have a chance to protect him, as she had done all his life. As they go their separate ways in the wake of the murder, both Sarah and the T-800 are suddenly aimless, alone in the world, and stripped of their missions.

Fast forward two decades. Yet another Terminator arrives from the future (Gabriel Luna). It’s an advanced model, the Rev-9, with the capability to separate its liquid metal and solid components to act independently, which is kind of cool in a fight. Its mission is to kill factory worker Dani Ramos (Natalia Reyes), who presumably will have something to do with defeating the machines someday. But the Rev-9 is not the only visitor from the future: Grace (Mackenzie Davis), a cybernetically enhanced super soldier, has been sent back to protect Dani.

Needless to say, as Dani and Grace alternately fight and flight from the Rev-9, they eventually cross paths with Sarah Connor and the T-800 and we find out what they’ve been up to for the past twenty years. Sarah still totally kicks ass, and you got to admire the way Linda Hamilton—who is 63—pulls it off. Dark Fate is worth seeing just for that. According to her trainer, a year of intense workouts and strict low-carb dieting went into her preparation for the role.

As for the T-800, in order to avoid spoilers, I won’t reveal much about the arc of his character. Suffice to say, it is rather touching.

The T-800 is also the main source of humor in the movie, and the basic joke is that the robot says un-robotlike things. It works, as it did in T2. Remember “Hasta la vista, baby?” One of my few criticisms of the movie is that, since the T-800 joins the others rather late in the story, there is a decidedly grim lack of humor prior to that.

Dark Fate has been heavily criticized—some are calling it a franchise killer—but frankly I thought many of the criticisms are undeserved. I am at a loss to find anything that’s so terrible about this movie to account for the flop at the box office. It certainly doesn’t suffer from the sort of cringeworthy moments that made past franchise killers like Batman and Robin so painful to watch.

What a real franchise killer looks like

Some critics complain that the murder of John Connor at the beginning erases the events of Terminator 3. I don’t see the problem. Altering the timeline will do that (Albeit what’s harder to explain is how his death prevented his mother from dying of cancer).

Nor did it bother me that the T-800 has aged considerably—Arnold is 72 years old now. Since this model is built from living skin over a machine interior, it actually makes sense.

Some of my right-of-center friends have criticized what they see as the movie’s politics and are gleeful about its flop at the box office. “Get woke, grow broke,” read one Facebook post I saw. I sincerely doubt these critics have actually seen the movie. It’s not really a political film. Yes, it has some female action heroines. It’s even been called “vagina-centric.” But this series has always had female heroines—Linda Hamilton has been badass since the beginning. Well, at least since T2 anyway. It’s not like Hollywood is rewriting anyone’s childhood for the sake of political correctness. Nor does Dark Fate have that mean-spirited girls against the boys vibe that made Captain Marvel so awful.

There is one scene in an immigrant detention center, which of course references current events, but again, it’s not really political. Pitch Meeting pretty much captured the spirit of it:

Writer Guy: I want the next big set piece to take place inside of a detention facility along the US-Mexico border, you know, get some social commentary going on. Producer Guy: Oh, okay. So what’s the commentary? Writer Guy: It, uh, you know, wouldn’t it look cool if a Terminator ran through one of those things? Producer Guy: That does sound cool.

Well, it is a cool movie. Ignore the critics and the box office and go see it.

Michael Isenberg drinks bourbon and writes novels. His latest book, The Thread of Reason, is a murder mystery that takes place in Baghdad in the year 1092, and tells the story of the conflict between science and shari’ah in medieval Islam. It is available on Amazon.com Please follow Mike on Facebook and Twitter. Photo credit(s): CinemaBlend.com, Polygon.com, giphy.com