“TERMINATOR: DARK FATE” — 21⁄2 stars — Linda Hamilton, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Mackenzie Davis, Natalia Reyes, Gabriel Luna; R (violence throughout, language and brief nudity); in general release; running time: 128 minutes
SALT LAKE CITY — It’s been more than 25 years, and the “Terminator” franchise is still trying to recapture the magic of 1991’s “Terminator 2: Judgment Day.” “Terminator: Dark Fate” puts a lot of flash-boom-bang on the screen, but it’s more recycling than recharging.
“Dark Fate” dispenses with all the other post-T2 sequels and attempts to reboot the franchise with the story of a different young woman targeted by robotic assassins from the future.
Tim Miller’s film takes place in the present day but opens with a quick prologue that explains how after the events of T2 canceled the long-feared “Judgment Day” — the day the machines rose up to wipe out the human race — hero Sarah Connor and her son, John, tried to live a life under the radar, only to have a new Terminator show up and kill the boy.
Twenty-odd years later, a familiar late-night lightning show welcomes a brand-new time-traveler from the future. Grace (Mackenzie Davis) is still human, but has been augmented with super strength and speed so she can do battle with the robots that are apparently still a problem in the distant future. She arrives just ahead of the Rev-9 (Gabriel Luna), a newish Terminator model that fuses the familiar red-eyed robo-skeleton of the Arnold Schwarzenegger variety with the liquid metal of T2’s “T-1000” variety.
Rev-9 is targeting a young woman named Dani (Natalia Reyes), who plays an unnamed role in future events. Grace has come to protect Dani, but proves overmatched until she gets a little timely help from a heavily armed, silver-haired Sarah (Linda Hamilton). A couple of action sequences later, Sarah explains that she’s spent the last two decades hunting Terminators thanks to mysterious text message tips from an unknown source.
After they put their heads together, Grace and Sarah determine the location of the messages, and with the Rev-9 temporarily at bay, they set out with Dani to figure out the identity of their benefactor. And if you need more than one guess to figure out who that is, this is probably your first “Terminator” movie.
Like most films in the series, “Dark Fate” comes jampacked with wall-to-wall action scenes, blazing guns and elaborate special effects. It also comes with a targeted protagonist who plays a key role in the future, a robotic force bent on ruling that future and a convoluted time-travel story to patch it all together. It does mark a return to the R-rated violence and dialogue that had been toned down to PG-13 levels in the last two films, but we’re still talking about the law of diminishing returns here.
Fans and critics alike have been frustrated for years by the “Terminator” sequels, and “Dark Fate” just underscores why. Consider the first film: The whole idea was to pit the hero against this unstoppable, inhuman force, played by an in-his-physical-prime 1980s Arnold Schwarzenegger. “Judgment Day” flipped that idea by making Arnold the protector and pitting him against an advanced Terminator that seemed exponentially more unstoppable. It’s been more than 25 years now, and they haven’t been able to bring anything better to that table. “Dark Fate” is still Arnold vs. the liquid metal.
“Dark Fate” is nothing more than an attempt to sell the same product to the same audience with just enough window dressing to make it look new. It’s that textbook you have to buy at sticker price in college because the professor added a couple of new pages of commentary to the old edition. The action and effects might be enough for some, but we all know the out-of-print versions were considerably better.
Rating explained: “Terminator: Dark Fate” draws an R-rating for considerable action violence and mayhem, plus some unconvincing tough-guy profanity. There’s also a little more female nudity during the obligatory “arrive from the future buck naked and fight people” scene at the beginning of the film than in previous outings.