Starring Arnold Schwarzenegger, Linda Hamilton, Mackenzie Davis, Natalia Reyes, Gabriel Luna, Diego Boneta

(7-Very Good Film)

Exciting. Engaging. Unnecessary.

The Terminator franchise has officially been milked to death, so on the one hand, Terminator: Dark Fate is a film that no one asked for and not enough people went to see based on its box-office performance, but on the other hand, Terminator: Dark Fate is a solid film with engaging characters and a handful of exciting action scenes. Had Rise of the Machines, Salvation, and Genesys never happened and Dark Fate was the third in the series, I believe it would have been a hit. As it stands, it pretends those inferior sequels never happened anyways. The premise for this entry is even more iconoclastic than Genesys, but it’s an interesting one. John Connor is dead and a new threat to the AI’s world domination emerges in the form of Dani Ramos (Reyes), a Mexican woman working in an automobile factory. Sent to terminate her is Rev-9 (Luna), a prototype with the ability to split into two. Sent to protect her is Grace (Davis), a human woman from the future with mechanical augmentations. Both Linda Hamilton and Schwarzenegger show up later in the picture and they’re both great and the highlights of Dark Fate, but the newcomers make a strong enough impression while we await the old vets. There’s nothing very surprising about Dark Fate. It’s not like seeing CGI used so seamlessly for the first time or finding out Schwarzenegger is a good guy now in T2. Terminator and T2 were special. Terminator: Dark Fate is just a good film, but after the last few entries, I’ll take it.

-Walter Tyrone Howard-

(798)