Terminator: Dark Fate

There is one more pleasant surprise this year after all. I wasn't really expecting it from the new Terminator, and it's all the more pleasant. Tim Miller delivers a lot of action (admittedly, a bit too digital at times), but, most importantly, the right Terminator atmosphere. At the same time, he's not afraid to try new things that are more suited to the twenty-first century. Terminator: Dark Fate does feel a lot like the first and second movies, it's more or less one long chase, but Miller doesn't try to cheaply reference the older films and instead fills the screen with a lot of simply great, quality action. And with interesting female leads, too. The main stars of the new Terminator are three ladies who looked god-knows-what in the photos. Fortunately, in the end, they are charismatic and interesting characters that the three leads portray more than well. And Arnold? Arnold is the king! Although a little different than you'd expect. In short, Miller and James Cameron made what fans have wanted to see since the second film, while not being afraid to throw in a few modern trends. If you're fundamentally bothered by women getting more and more space in the male-dominated genre, Dark Fate will convince you that when done well, it's not only okay, it's very good. (25/10/2019)

The Terminator has become a kind of second Columbo – every time he comes back, you're a little less glad (in the case of the Terminator if you're a viewer, in the case of Columbo if you're a killer). This movie... it's off to a promising start. In fact, its opening scene was the best ever, because it surprised me and made me feel something, which I can't say about the rest of it. The whole weirdly unfolding story failed to make me feel like there was really something going on, that I should be worried about someone. I guess it's also because it's a repeat of what we've seen before, only this time the "new Sarah" isn't interesting at all, the "real Sarah" is mostly a decoy to the fans, and Arnold's terminator gets a terrible beating because by the time the finale comes, in which he finally finds himself, he's acting more like he's in an SNL sketch than the movie James Cameron supposedly had something to do with. The heroine sent from the future, played by Mackenzie Davis, is likeable and reminded me of Brie Larson as Captain Marvel, except that although she points out several times that she is human, I didn't feel any humanity from her and she acted more like a machine. Then again, I hardly know what to write about her antagonist – except perhaps that the repeated shots of his reassembling head/body got old so quickly, as did almost all of the action scenes, which were great but boring. It's the same, maybe a little better than Terminator Genisys... but on the other hand, Genisys at least tried to do the unexpected sometimes (even if it was stupid afterwards). (01/11/2019)

James Cameron's directorial genius and precision shines through beautifully when watching Tim Miller's Terminator Dark Fate. It doesn't matter if we're talking about the building up of story dynamics, the iconic moments and catchphrases, the dark vision of the future, or perhaps the action scenes. The steel mill scenes from Terminator 2 are two orders of magnitude more impressive than the dam scene in Dark Fate, which feels tiresome, sterile and above all too digital after a few minutes. It's not that the last Terminator lacks its good moments, which revolve mostly around the genuineness of Mackenzie Davis and Linda Hamilton, but it's still the same generic template of two robots chasing each other, they're just more imaginative, or more breakable, and every now and then Arnold shows up to prove he can still kick some ass and deliver some of his classic one-liners. It's hard to see where anyone got the idea that Dark Fate is the best since T2 and the only relevant sequel. Terminator 3 had more impressive fights and Salvation was pumped up with stunning visuals and a superb post-apocalyptic feel – pity about the finale. We can therefore safely classify the last film as a second-rate contribution, certainly not above the others. (02/11/2019)

At the beginning of this truly new and standalone contribution, it ends up being too similar to the classic first one, with new characters who are insufficiently appealing or simply poorly drawn. I was fearful for Sarah from the first minutes, and for me Dani was practically irrelevant until the end. Nor was this helped by the strangely undefined mood, which didn't keep me in suspense with any proper ending. In fact, it has no choice but to save the two most famous faces of the brand as a whole, where I just smile knowingly at their ultimate confrontation, but without them who knows if I would have stayed in the cinema to the end. The twist from the opening scene seems fatally wrong to me. To come up with such a retcon in a film that doesn't have a story set up by James Cameron himself, should result in a rating at least a third lower, because that kind of trampling is simply unforgivable, not to mention that the plot formula, which is ultimately followed, doesn't deviate from the original template in anything, it just voluntarily subtracts one original timeline paradox. I'm sorry that the long-awaited Terminator: Dark Fate remains unequivocally the weakest Terminator chapter for me, but I would really rather return to the bleak future of Terminator: Salvation or the action-comedy of Terminator: Genisys, even though that one alone deserves the subtitle "Legends" for how it messes with the history just to make it clear that the original saga is no longer being told here. But I would gladly watch the originally planned trilogies for both of these worlds even today, while I would never want to see more of Dani or Grace. The third star is saved by the infinitely diverse finale, which bravely replaces almost all environments and means of transportation. Which is a good outcome for a regular sci-fi film, but not for the brand of one of the most famous ones. (11/11/2019)

The T-800 lives with his family in a cabin in the woods, is an expert at ladies' curtains, raises and pets a dog on the porch, and just out of the blue decides (programmed, unprogrammed, it doesn't matter) to do good. In short, Terminator as a soap opera. Add to that the nowadays fashionable girl-power element (a six-foot-tall teenage girl is a leader of the resistance) and the last half-hour of overstuffed digital crap. And there’s not a single action scene with the charge of anything by Cameron. Sadly, the best – and in fact the only good – thing about the whole film is the ageing Linda Hamilton, who, with how poor her career has been for the last 20 years, clearly enjoyed it and had fun. Otherwise, a terrible mess that completely fucks up all the careful mythology outlined by Cameron. And as I look at the four stars here, people have either gone completely insane or they don’t need much to be happy. And by the way, in the cinema, my friend and I were in an empty auditorium all by ourselves, in the evening, in Liberec, a city of 100,000 and four days after the premiere. That, too, says something about the decline of once famous franchises. (16/01/2020)