Spoiler Movie Review: Terminator: Dark Fate
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There has been a lot of Terminator sequels that have been made and a lot of them have not been very popular.
Now we have another one called Terminator: Dark Fate, but is this one as good as the two originals?
There has been a lot of interest in Terminator: Dark Fate mainly because the series' creator James Cameron is involved with the movie directed by Deadpool's Tim Miller.
After watching the movie though, I was sadly disappointed by this new effort.
Out of all the Terminator movies released after Terminator 2, the only one I liked was Terminator: Salvation. This is because the movie felt different as it was set in the future and featured an adult John Connor.
Terminator: Dark Fate does nothing new other than change the characters and names of certain things.
Instead of John Connor, Dani Ramos is the new Resistance leader while the human enhanced Grace plays the Kyle Reese role of being the protector from the future.
This is a spoiler review so avoid reading this if you have not seen the movie yet. Anyway, let's looks ahead and see why I was not a fan of watching Terminator: Dark Fate.
The first thing that this movie did that annoyed me is that John Connor pretty much dies in the first few minutes! The opening scene is set in 1998 where Sarah Connor and John Connor are on holiday at a beach.
Skynet still wants revenge and it sends over another T-800 model that looks like Arnie to kill John Connor. Well the assassination attempt is successful and John Connor is all but forgotten.
I hate this because John Connor was pretty much the main important character in the original movies.
I also hated how Sarah Connor got killed off in Terminator 3. My favorite is the Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles TV show because both John and Sarah are still alive.
Due to the death of John Connor, Skynet no longer exists but this isn't the end of the war. For some reason, a new AI called Legion takes Skynet's place and pretty much does the same thing.
I also didn't like how the story was unoriginal.
Legion is just exactly like Skynet but with a different name. As for Dani Ramos, she is pretty much the same as John Connor so they're repeating everything but with different names!
Another thing that might annoy some fans is that Arnie does not appear in the movie until 67 minutes into the movie. His role in the movie may be limited, but he's still pretty cool whenever he's on screen.
The only weird part about his role in the movie is that he's the exact T-800 model that killed John Connor over two decades ago.
Sarah does not get along with him at the start, but both of them agree that Dani Ramos must survive from the new killer called the Rev-9.
I didn't find the Rev-9 to be all that original either.
He's has the exact same abilities as the T-1000 so seeing his action scenes didn't really appeal to me. Not to mention the CGI looks outdated because his black appearance makes him look like Venom sometimes.
That's not to say Terminator: Dark Fate is not without any merits.
Linda Hamilton is still badass as the older Sarah Connor and I'm glad she's still alive at the end of the movie. Hopefully she can return if another movie is made in the future.
The protector in this movie is Grace played by Mackenzie Davis and I thought she was pretty cool too. She kicks the Rev-9's ass a lot of times and plays the Kyle Reese role really well.
The only sad part is that she dies at the end of the movie so we won't be seeing her in future films.
I actually preferred some of her flashback scenes in the future though as that timeline looked more intriguing to me.
Overall, I thought Terminator: Dark Fate was a disappointing movie because it did not offer anything new to the franchise. It's just a reboot that follows the same patterns as Terminator 2, Terminator 3 and Terminator Genisys.
I think I would have liked Dark Fate more if it was set in the future because that would have at least gave us something new for us to watch.
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Paramount Pictures