(Cast: Arnold Schwarzenegger, Linda Hamilton, Mackenzie Davis, Director: Tim Miller, Studio: Paramount Pictures)
Terminator: Dark Fate is the sixth movie in the popular Terminator series. It ignores the third, fourth, and fifth movies and brings back older characters, including Sarah Connor (Linda Hamilton) and the original Terminator himself, Arnold Schwarzenegger. Sci-fi/fantasy violence is intense: Expect lots of weapons, characters being shot and dying, blood, crashes, explosions, futuristic war sequences, and robots flying apart. Characters are also stabbed, sliced, run through with chunks of metal, and thrown from moving vehicles.
In TERMINATOR: DARK FATE, Sarah Connor (Linda Hamilton) escapes with her son, John, in the year 1998, but a Terminator catches up with them anyway. Twenty-two years later, in Mexico, two new time travellers arrive. Grace (Mackenzie Davis) appears to be a superhuman fighter, and a brand-new Terminator (Gabriel Luna) seems to have the same liquid metal quality as the T-1000. They both start tracking down young Dani (Natalia Reyes), a normal girl who lives with her father and brother. The Terminator attacks Dani, and Grace swoops in to defend her. Before long, Sarah Connor herself joins the fray. Together and on the run from the deadly machine, the three women follow secret coordinates to Texas, where they hope to enlist the aid of an old foe …
This sixth Terminator movie erases the events of the previous three (dud) sequels but winds up feeling half-erased itself. It’s like a dull, pale, irrelevant carbon copy of a once glorious hit. Not only does Terminator: Dark Fate reunite Hamilton and , Arnold Schwarzenegger, but James Camaron produced and contributed to the story (along with about half a dozen other writers).
Terminator: Dark Fate changes the course of the previous Terminator films, giving us a hint of many more to come. This film could easily be the game-changer in the series and also in its genre. Watch it for its female-empowered narrative and the thrilling firepower. I’m going with 3.5 out of 5 for Terminator: Dark Fate.