Terminator: Dark Fate - Reviews 70% Fresh On RT 🍅

Gone from 60% to 67! 1 behind Joker

Anthony Ha
@anthonyha TWITTER
·
Oct 22
Just got out of a screening of #terminatordarkfate. Didn’t know the person next to me, but as the credits rolled, we both turned to each other and declared, “That was AWESOME.”

Times UK:

Wow. They did it. And it only took them 28 years and 3 blockbuster sequels, with a combined production budget of roughly $700 million and requiring 13 credited screenwriters (and who knows how many unsung tinkerers) and 51 producers. But, yes, here it is. Finally, the first good Terminator movie since Terminator 2: Judgment Day.

Everything that was wrong in the previous execrable sequels has been put right here. Gone are the tedious obsessions with the narrative implications of time travel. Gone is the baffling focus on the franchise’s least interesting character, the future messiah John Connor, as played, poorly, by Nick Stahl, Christian Bale and Jason Clarke.

Just watched it. Very good aside from the climax, which wrecks the suspension of disbelief several times over. Even with the weak climax, still a solid movie.

Terminator Dark Fate is the absolute worst film of the franchise. I can't believe what a piece of trash this movie is. Hear me out.

T1: A beyond original sci-fi concept wrapped in possibly the best action film ever made at the time. Dark, violent, disturbing, and scary.

T2: Expanding this sci-fi universe illustrates its glaring holes. In T1 'Skynet' being able to send a robot soldier back in time was described a desperate last attempt just as the resistance won the war. The fact that they're able to do it again is absurd. Why not send back 1000 Terminators to kill John's great-great-great-great grandmother. Fortunately T2 was so grand and epic it didn't matter. A 2.5 hour explosion-fest, greatest special effects ever seen at the time, and it had humor and heart. But the franchise should have ended here because the world-building can't get past its time travel plot holes.

T3: Not good but underrated. Quality action scenes almost on par with T2. A new concept for a Terminator (hybrid between T1 and T2) and she's a hot chick. Claire Danes is a great actress and was a solid addition. It also had a fun dark twist at the end showing Skynet actually initiating Judgement Day.

T4: Also not good but underrated. The whole movie takes place post Judgement Day which is new to the franchise and offered a post-apocalyptic Dirty Dozen type story instead of repeating the same plot a 4th time. Some cool new ideas like a real human turned terminator, played wonderfully by Sam Worthington in his first major American role, and of course the always great Christian Bale is in it. Some great giant robot action scenes despite being influenced by Transformers a bit. First film ever to use realistic looking digital de-aging, which is notable in itself.

T5: Bad in just about every way with cartoonish looking physics in the visual effects. But at least they tried to do something original with the story, having it take place in an alternate 1985 and recreating scenes from the original.

T6: Not only bad, but it adds absolutely nothing new or original to this tired franchise. The special effects ranged from unimpressive to ridiculous looking. The liquid/skeleton terminator idea was mostly stolen from T3. The good human/terminator hybrid idea was stolen from T4. The "terminators can grow old" old-Arnold was stolen from T5. The plot was a complete retread of the first 3 films (a terminator hunts someone who will someday be important). The badass female action star thing isn't a novelty anymore, and it's obviously nothing new for this franchise. Simply having a scene at a detention center doesn't add any kind of political statement (we should open our borders in case the next Sarah Conner needs to get through???). Even the "crazy old lady back for a franchise reboot that only recognizes the first two in the series" is also a stolen idea from last year's Halloween. When Grace finally explains what she's doing she says her dystopian future is way different. Then she describes it and it's exactly the fucking same, and the flashbacks (flash-forwards?) confirm it. It's the same exact shit. They even have the same names for things like 'Judgement Day', 'HKs' and 'Terminators.' Literally the only difference is the AI isn't called Skynet anymore. It's mind-blowing how there isn't a single new idea. I think part 6 selling itself as "the real part 3 cause those other sequels are trash" needed to be on a new level. But not only is it not on a new level, it's not even good. It's trash. And not only is it trash, but it doesn't even bother presenting new ideas.

I'm not sure how I feel about it. I was into it at first, but as it went on several things turned me off.

1. Some of the effects are awful. This has dogged the series since T3, but only gotten worse. T4 actually looks the best out of the sequels. The rest of them are filled with very shoddy CGI and bad wire fu fight scenes where the physics just look so fake. You want to see how two machines would fight? THIS is how:





This looks REAL. Not all this tapping and (CGI) characters flying across a room like a rag doll.

And some of the plot really turned me off as the storyline advanced. It was a slap in the face to the John Connor character and the iconic villain Skynet.

So I heard that it went full Alien 3? That’d win back the fans.