Terminator: Dark Fate (2019)
How do you rate a film like this? A film that in no way could ever be as good or groundbreaking as the first two films in the series - The Terminator and Terminator 2: Judgment Day. Realistically you can't because in no way does it compare to either. In fact it's not as good as the underrated Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines, however it does come out favorably compared to the two later movies - 2009's Salvation and 2015's Genisys. Thankfully what Dark Fate does do right is ignore anything that happened after T2 and is happily a sequel to that 1991 classic.
For me it commits the crime that all CGI heavy blockbusters do nowadays, be it Marvel, Fast and Furious or whatever by throwing literally everything at the screen assaulting the viewer in what are now almost cartoon like action set pieces and this film commits that crime with it's big finale. A finale that doesn't come close in my opinion to a freeway set piece much earlier in the movie and it in itself is a mess when compared to the driving set pieces in Judgment Day and Rise of the Machines.
The films other issue for me is that bar an early appearance that lasts just a few seconds the main reason i have for watching these films, their star Arnold Schwarzenegger, doesn't show up for an hour, but when he does the film becomes so much more compulsive viewing. Schwarzenegger may be getting on a bit these days but he's still a superstar and very much a screen presence, in fact so much more than anyone else in this film including Linda Hamilton although she's also very good and their scenes together are always captivating.
Of the other main actors, Mackenzie Davis and Natalia Reyes were fine but Diego Lunas as the big bad Rev-9 Terminator had me longing for Robert Patrick from T2 who played a similar role with far more steely determination and a stronger fear factor. I'm not even going to go into the John Connor debate. Let's just say that due to the current climate the pandering to diversity wins out over actual plot development.
I didn't dislike this film at all, in fact i rather enjoyed it and much preferred it to the other cartoon like blockbuster movies i've watched recently (Birds of Prey and Wonder Woman 1984) but it doesn't hold a candle to the first two films and makes me wonder if i'll ever return to it when i could watch two stone cold classics instead.
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