Terminator: Dark Fate finally gives us a passable sequel to the classic Judgement Day.

Score: 3 / 5

There hasn’t been a good Terminator movie in 28 years. In the time since the Cameron classic Terminator 2: Judgement Day, we have had two sequels and now two retcons / reboots of sorts. Out of the four movies to come out, Dark Fate is probably the best of the bunch. That doesn’t mean it’s a great movie, but it sure feels like a step in a right direction of the franchise is ever going to continue.

First let’s get this out of the way, this movie is no Judgement Day, but what is tries to do is take echoes of Judgement Day to give viewers something to latch onto. It works. The best bits of this movie are Linda Hamilton and Arnold Schwarzenegger coming back together for this sequel that ignores the last three misfires. Which by the way, with how loopy the time travel is of this franchise you could argue that every movie after two did happen but it a parallel reality. Having Linda Hamilton back though really does make this feel like a true sequel. It’s a shame that it doesn’t feel like true closure for Sarah Connor as that feels like the way this movie should have gone.

I digress, should is not what is, and what Dark Fate is, well it’s another in cookie cutter Terminator movie. It gives you what you’d expect from the last five Terminator movies (well maybe not Salvation that one was an odd failed experiment), a Terminator and a protector from the future come to do battle over an under-prepared human that will one day be of grave importance to the fate of humanity and machines. This is handled by the new cast of characters. Natalia Reyes is the Dani who is essentially the new Sarah/John of this movie. Mackenzie Davis is Grace, the new spin on the protector from the future. While Gabriel Luna, plays the new Terminator Rev-9 model. Each of the actors are fun to watch but this is where the biggest issue comes in for the movie.

On the action end Grace and the Rev-9 are fun to watch, but it does end up feeling too much CGI trailer action for action’s sake rather than going anywhere interesting. Yet this isn’t the problem. The problem is there is no depth to the new cast. Grace is given the best chance out of the three new characters and while it helped make her character more interesting, it made me wish that we would have been given more of her. It felt like ideas of why she went back to protect Grace where left on the cutting room floor.

Tucked into this been there done that Terminator movie is the continued threads of Sarah Connor. This is where this the movie felt at its strongest. What becomes of the Connor legacy in this sequel is interesting, and how it all plays into T-800 Arnold is what gives this movie anything meaty to chew into. It’s a shame that this movie didn’t focus solely on Sarah for the entire duration of the movie as it feels like this movie was trying to both keep the past alive while starting a new generation to lead on the franchise. By the end it’s clear that the creative team couldn’t quite cut the cord and instead we are left with a movie that leaves us no closure of the past, and a hollow future.

Terminator Dark Fate isn’t bad, but it’s not great. It’s right in the middle. It has some fun actors, while still giving us a hit of the what made the franchise great. It’s biggest fault isn’t that it is a cookie cutter Terminator movie, it’s that it had ideas that could have been something special if they were brave enough to follow through with them.