Thursday, November 7, 2019

Sitting In The Aisle: Terminator Dark Fate



Terminator Dark Fate 0/10

Full of spoilers. This movie has no heart. There. That's all I should write. Terminator Dark Fate is one of those movies I see and after it is over ask myself “Why was this made?” That is worse than a movie just straight up being garbage. If a movie is garbage I will at least feel something even if it is anger or annoyance. Hell, it could be garbage but funny. But this movie is just a series of explosions, bad acting, and things being told/barely shown that would have been an even better movie. Let me get this shit off my chest real quick because it is a complaint I have had with every Terminator movie after T2. And forget everything else about any film after T2. None of them count or matter according to this. They pulled a fucking Halloween.


Skynet wakes up and shit gets weird. In this movie they show it for a few moments and then move on. I wanted to see a fucking movie where Skynet wakes up and shit gets all Purge-like in the world. But these movies always show the before fight that is happening because it has already happened and someone has to be sent into the past to fix things and by fix things I mean fix absolutely nothing. That is this movie. Even by the end when the lady/not robot explains her mission it doesn't say that they prevented anything! Okay. I can't write this like my normal reviews. I will take the main characters and break them down and attempt to describe who they are and what they did.


Dani works at a car plant with her brother. One day a guy that looks like her dad whips out a gun and is gonna shoot her. Robot lady shows up and blows him away. Dani freaks out screaming for her papi who is obviously not. Like, even if he was he was about to shoot your fucking face off. So she escapes with lady robot and her brother. Robot man chases them down and her brother gets killed. She is saved by Sarah Connor and they steal her car and are found by her later. Robot lady will not say why Dani is so important but Sarah is like “They just want that womb!” Robot lady won't disagree and even after being saved by Sarah hates Sarah and is constantly threatening her. Back to Dani. She can not act. I don't know what else she has been in or why she was chosen for this but every time she cried or screamed it was as if I could hear the echo of someone saying “Action!” It turns out that Dani is not gonna give birth to a hero of the future, but she is a hero. She inspires people in the future...that is still fucked up. Yeah. No matter what they do the future is fucked. Oh, and in the future Skynet is not a thing. Legion is. There is nothing about this girl that shows any type of personality. She may be a good actress but the writing of this is fucking terrible.


Grace is the robot lady. She came back from the year 2042 and was turned into an android after being stabbed fighting robots. She is now strong and fast but needs medication if she goes too hard in the paint. She is supposed to protect Dani but if Sarah had not shown up they would both be dead. Her big plan is to just get Dani and hide her. Forever. I'm not sure what her plan is other than that. Her character traits are vague answers, no answers, or anger towards Sarah. When introduced to the original Terminator (I'll get to him soon) she automatically trusts him. Sarah is like “He killed my son!” and Grace is like “Yeah, but he is gonna help save Dani so fuck your kid.” Grace reveals that Dani sent her from the future to protect her which makes no sense. Like, there is straight up no hope. Either way billions of people die. Nothing is changed except someone will live to inspire hope. Cool? This poor actress had nothing to work with. I am gonna have to watch her in something else to wash this out of my brain. (checks imdb) Oh, lord. She was in the worst episode of Black Mirror. She was not good at her mission and Dani from the future picked the wrong woman to help her. She should have just said “You have seen the shit I can do. I was sent from the future by you to protect you! If you keep trying to escape I will knock you the fuck out.”


Poor Sarah Conner. So the movie starts with her hanging with her son John Connor after T2. They are having fun at a beach restaurant and suddenly the fucking T-800 shows up and blows a hole in his chest and smacks Sarah. Then he just walks away like “Ta-ta!” She gets texts from someone and shows up and kills Terminators that appear. She is mad. That's pretty much it. I mean, she totally should be. But this movie didn't need her to return. Maybe ten years ago. Maybe twenty years ago. You are aware that she last appeared in 1991, right? I was like in the fucking 6th grade when she was associated with these movies. Even when she meets the same goddamn T-800 that killed her son she calms down pretty fast. Yeah, she shoots him but still. He killed her fucking son. Know what movie would have been cool? Sarah Connor hunting Terminators and killing them with the reveal being that a Terminator was sending the messages. But nah. Its better to just mention it. They made her reduce herself to just a savior creator.


Rev-9 is a robot that can do anything except catch this girl who has zero fighting skills and is being protected by a not so good soldier and an angry woman. He can morph into anyone by coming in contact with them. He can make extra versions of himself. He can make knives come out of his entire body. He can search technology by digging his hands into it. He can not be burned, shot, or beaten to death. He gets Grace's power battery out of her body jabbed into his eye by Dani. It was stupid. And why does this thing have an endoskeleton anyway? The crazy thing is that this thing was not scary. The T-800 was a big dude with zero personality. He was an actual killing machine. In T2 the T-1000 was scary as fuck and he was a skinny cop dude! I won't mention the other ones since they do not apply anymore. This robot or whatever just seemed bad at its job.


The T-800 is now named Carl. The fact that he exists makes no sense considering Grace was sent back to help Dani and has not even heard of Skynet. Like, Skynet never even existed so why is the Terminator around? Anythoot, he had no mission after killing John Connor and ends up meeting a woman that had an abusive husband and got with her and raised her son. She has no idea he is a robot. He decides to leave that behind and sacrifices himself at the end of the movie. I think it was supposed to be an emotional scene but it stank. When he sacrificed himself in T2 I almost made little baby bitch boy sounds. It was so touching. This time? Whatever. He'll be back.


The trailer spoils so much shit it didn't need to. I know they couldn't have done it but they should not have mentioned that Arnold was in this or if they needed to they should have just shown footage from the first scene. Why do I say that? Because Grace has some coordinates tattooed on her body. Who put them there? She won't say. It turns out that it is T-800's address. Why didn't she just head there as soon as she found Dani or as soon as possible? Why did she only decide to do this after Sarah talked about her mystery message sender? How did she know that smashing a cell phone would help her figure it out?

People are of course bringing up the strong women thing. This has gotten way worse over the years and it turns into people saying that men who hate movies like this are toxic and guys getting mad and not being to express their ideas properly. I have mentioned in a previous blog post (click here to check that out) that I had zero problem with a woman kicking ass in movies or TV. I never go “She is so small she could never do that!” But for whatever reason that idea is being shouted from the hills as a thought all men have and how we hate a powerful woman in movies. They don't even have to be hot for a guy to love their character. It mostly comes down to how a character is written. The ladies in this movie were written terribly.


Could I be called sexist by someone because I don't like this movie? Sure. Director Tim Miller said of this movie “If you're at all enlightened, she'll play like gangbusters. If you're a closet misogynist, she'll scare the fuck out of you, because she's tough and strong but very feminine. We did not trade certain gender traits for others; she's just very strong, and that frightens some dudes. You can see online the responses to some of the early shit that's out there, trolls on the internet. I don't give a fuck.” Grace was tough, strong, and hard to kill. She was that. But she was also not good at her job. Sarah Conner by the end is a babysitter for a woman that is gonna fail no matter what. Why not just tell young Grace what is gonna happen and try to stop it earlier? Try to stop Legion that way Skynet was attempted to be stopped? This movie painted itself into a corner and then set the room on fire. If you're a guy and hate this you hate women. If you're a woman and hate this you a traitor. If you're hated Dani you're a bigot. By the way, I thought her Spanish sounded off for a character from Mexico and it turns out that she's Colombian. If you grow up in LA you learn that not all Spanish sounds the same. 

I am trying to think of something good to say about this movie. I can't even say the music was good. I can't recall any songs that were played. The effects looked and felt like effects. It did not help knowing that nothing matters. No matter what the do the future is gonna suck all the dicks. People keep saying “This is the best Terminator since Judgment Day!” That is no hard to do! This movie wipes its ass with the first two movies. I actually wish I hadn't seen this.

Linda Hamilton as Sarah Connor
Arnold Schwarzenegger as T-800 "Model 101"
Mackenzie Davis as Grace
Natalia Reyes as Daniella "Dani" Ramos
Gabriel Luna as Rev-9

Click here for previous Sitting In The Aisle.

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