There come a time in every franchise when it’s time to do something new as Michael Kennedy of Screenrant would allude to, but this next time around maybe they should try just NOT making another Terminator movie for once and try finding a different story to pull from. It sounds crazy doesn’t it? Well, that’s kind of because it is, but not the kind of crazy that Hollywood is known for, since they’re all about the vapid, let’s-do-one-more kind of crazy as they try to raise the bar and usually end up tripping over it while trying to move forward with something that should have been left behind on the idea palette in the first place. I’m not about to mince words with this one, Dark Fate was an attempted one-two punch with feminist ideals that didn’t have the desired effect of reviving a franchise that hasn’t been the same since the fated Judgment Day. Grace, for as great as she was supposed to be, came off as stuck-up and more of an emotional hindrance, while Dani was basically the “I’m young and innocent but now I’m pissed off and ready to fight” miracle that should have worked but ran of steam before she started. The fact that Linda Hamilton and Arnold Schwarzenegger came back was the only reason why a lot of people were willing to watch this train wreck of a movie. There were definitely some fun scenes and a few that were kind of impressive thanks to the CGI, but one has to wonder why in the world a terminator would waste any time with so much subterfuge when they were going to reveal themselves at the wrong moment anyway.
Unfortunately that’s something that’s been happening since the first movie when the first terminator took forever to put the red dot between Sarah Connor’s eyes when he could have emptied the weapon into her before Kyle Reese could even begin to act. I get it, the action itself is a tension builder, but at the same time it begs the question of why a machine would be so slow to go about the task it was given when the most efficient machines in the real world are pretty quick when they need to be. Every terminator that’s been introduced into the movies is its own thinking entity with the needed programming and know-how to carry out its task. And yet those that have no idea what it is or how to fight it have for several movies been able to outwit a machine that can overpower them in so many ways. Thankfully human thought is still damned hard to predict, otherwise there’d be no saving grace to these movies. But as far as making another one goes, can we just stop now?
Rise of the Machines was a joke, Salvation wasn’t horrible but it felt way too incomplete, and Genisys was a like a combination of the two before it, a bad joke that was missing the punchline. Dark Fate was just a rolling dumpster fire sprinkled with a heavy dose of feminism and finally grounded by Schwarzenegger’s return, at least for a short while. Scott Mendelson of Forbes has something else to say about this subject. There has not been a great Terminator movie since Judgment Day and there are a few reasons for that. For one, Judgment Day had Sarah Connor at her finest, when she was in great shape, had a definite attitude, and was still young enough to be a kickass heroine. It had Schwarzenegger as a reformed but outdated terminator, and it had Edward Furlong as the edgy kid that didn’t like authority but would one day become humanity’s savior. It also had Robert Patrick, who became a huge basis for the terminators that came afterward, as the liquid metal villain that could take just about any shape and killed indiscriminately when people got in his way. In other words it had the perfect characters and their arcs weren’t entirely complete but they were focused enough to create a story that was easy to follow and believe. From part three on, the Terminator franchise kind of lost its way and a big part of its identity.
There are a lot of stories in the Terminator universe that could still be told, but if anyone’s going to take the time and has the guts to tell them then it’s time to leave the Connor’s out of it for good, leave Arnold out of it, and try someone other than James Cameron to tell the story. Also, wait a good number of years, it’s difficult to imagine anyone in Hollywood having that patience, but if the coronavirus continues to be a part of our lives there won’t be much choice. It might just be time to lay the Terminator franchise down to rest for good, but as anyone that knows anything about Hollywood can guess, that’s not about to happen. Larry Taylor of Outer Places has more to say on this topic.
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