Terminator: Dark Fate (2019) * *

Directed by:  Tim Miller

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

I wrote at the end of my Terminator: Genisys (2015) review that there isn't anything more that can be done with this material.    I'm Terminatored out, and Terminator: Dark Fate is a retelling of the same story, only Skynet has been replaced with another technology called Legion which will take over the world and eradicate the human race in the near future.

Here is a question which never occurred to me until now:   With the planet in ruins and any remaining humans using any available resources just to stay alive, how exactly do they send one of their own back in time to protect the future leader of the resistance?    Same goes for Legion, who likely went ahead and destroyed their own headquarters with the same nuclear blasts.    Ok, let's suspend our disbelief and just accept that both sides know how to utilize time travel.    The action in Terminator: Dark Fate begins in 1998, shortly after the judgment day date came and went thanks to the actions of Sarah Connor (Hamilton), John Connor, and Arnold Schwarzenegger's hero terminator assigned to protect John in Terminator 2.

Another terminator (also played by Schwarzenegger), who didn't get the memo that judgment day was avoided, kills John and leaves Sarah living off the grid while hunting terminators for the rest of her life.    Cut to 2020 Mexico, a new model Rev-9 Terminator (Luna) and a mostly human (save for a few cyborg parts) woman named Grace (Davis) battle over a young woman named Dani (Reyes), who one day will become the leader of the resistance against Legion.    Grace was sent back to protect Dani from being terminated by the Rev-9, who like previous terminators is impervious to pain and can repair itself back to normal after being shot, stabbed, blown apart, and crushed.    Sounds like Michael Myers. 

Sarah Connor shows up at the scene just in time to help Grace and Dani with help from anonymous texts directing her to where the terminators are.   How does this source know this stuff?   Again, let's just suspend our disbelief so we don't drive ourselves crazy.   The identity of the source is not a shock, although the movie perks up slightly when Schwarzenegger reappears as the terminator who offed John, but after living among humans has grown a conscience and human emotions.    He is remorseful for killing John and joins the mission to protect Dani from doom.

Switch out the name Dani for Sarah Connor and Legion for Skynet and you have the same story as every other Terminator movie.    Terminator: Dark Fate is supposed to be the direct sequel to Terminator 2: Judgment Day, so like last year's Halloween, we are asked to forget all about the other Terminator movies we saw.   The problem is:  This Terminator movie is not much different than the sequels it wants us to erase from our memories.    We have the chases, things blowing up, bodies flying around, and the Terminator absorbing more shotgun shells than ever before.    It's all old hat by this point.    The original Terminator worked on the level of a horror film in which you can't escape the bad guy who keeps on coming.   Terminator 2: Judgment Day took this idea to a superior level of excitement and masterful technology.    Every other Terminator film has tried to reclaim the magic of the first two, and it simply can't be done.   Time to move on.