‘Terminator: Dark Fate’ Makes it Hard to Root for Nostalgia

Terminator: Dark Fate opened in theaters on Friday November 1st.  In it, audiences witness a mix of reunion and reboot as Linda Hamilton and Arnold Schwarzenegger reprise their roles as Sarah Connor and T-800. The addition of Mackenzie Davis as Grace (a mix between Michael Biehn’s original Kyle Reese and T2’s Terminator-as-protector) and Natalia Reyes as Dani Ramos round out the cast and set Dark Fate up to, if the stars and box office revenues align, be the first installment of a new Terminator trilogy. Dark Fate is sixth installment of the franchise, but is a direct sequel to Terminator 2: Judgment Day. Yeah, time travel allows you to bring back an original writer, James Cameron, and ignore the events of the last three movies (2003’s Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines, 2009’s Terminator Salvation, and 2015’s Terminator Genisys). I’m not sure even a diehard fan like me can argue that the first two movies of the franchise were the strongest, but the MIB Nuetralizer treatment seemed…a bit much.

But that can be overlooked because [shrug emoji] time travel be like sometimes. What I had a harder time ignoring was the plot which was essentially…the same. There’s a future-savior of humanity who has to survive long enough to fulfill their destiny—using pep talks and high powered artillery convinces the few remaining beaten down and broken humans that have survived the machine’s assault to rise up and fight [waves at Dani Ramos]. There’s a scrappy overpowered and outgunned someone f…