Terminator: Dark Fate (2019) Dir. Tim Miller

‘Produced by James Cameron’ screams the marketing but the legendary director’s visionary visuals and interesting ideas are nowhere to be seen in this 6th out outing for Arnie and his sci-fi chums.

Another plodding franchise filler, Dark Fate has killing machine Rev-9 (Gabriel Luna) going back in time to terminate Dani Ramos (Natalia Reyes). But she is protected by fellow time-traveller and enhanced super-soldier Grace (Mackenzie Davis). Along the dreary journey she picks up a mature Linda Hamilton who returns as original hero Sarah Connor. She has doubts but then joins forces with a family-orientated (!?) T-800 and Schwarzenegger appears with his head the size of a ham.

An interesting opening leads to bland action-beats and it’s generally cheap looking (it’s budgeted at a phenomenal $185m but looks half that) with video-game cinematography and new robot overlord “LEGION” is an attempt to steer focus from previous sequels but is just a cheap-ass SKYNET.

I could say it’s another T2 rip-off but we’ve already had two of those so this is essentially a Genisys rehash. I know some of the ideas are staples of the franchise but the film is so boringly familiar, it's a wonder why they've bothered at all.

From a liquid metal Terminator 'creeping' through a windscreen, a big yellow vehicle smashing into cars and a protagonist stepping out from a vehicle pulling up to a side-on halt, Dark Fate fails at any sense of originality. Hasn’t Miller seen Fury Road? Or MI: Fallout? Or The Raid? Or Blade Runner 2049? These should be the influences but it’s more run-of-the-mill action splattered with yawn-inducing CGI and haphazard editing.

With a final smackdown at an industrial factory and a shot of Arnie sliding down a dam, the film is another misstep thinking a Terminator in a superhero pose is “cooler” than Arnie speaking to a police station receptionist. And in many ways, I could have simply copied and pasted my Genisys review as all the same flaws apply here.

Hamilton is the one saving grace yet is hugely underused and its over an hour before she meets with Arnie. And to be brutal, it was at that point I thought this is where the film should have BEGUN. Ditch the previous hour as it’s so forgettable.

I therefore left the Terminator Dark Fate screening with a huge sigh. It’s not comically bad but it’s nowhere near the shot in the arm this franchise needed. And in the end, it’s simply unforgiveable that all the mistakes from the last few sequels have not been rectified in the slightest, but in fact they have been duplicated like this film’s badly designed villain.

★★

Michael Sales