When Terminator: Dark Fate was released last year, it was met with unbridled hatred from conservatives, which I mostly chocked up to it being a movie featuring three women in the lead roles. Having just seen it though, their hatred of this franchise is more apparent than even that: It casts Latino actors Natalia Reyes as the savior of humanity and Gabriel Luna as its destroyer.
That being said, with a decidedly death-dealing tone toward immigration and their paid foot soldiers, Dark Fate was one of the better science-fiction films of 2019.
With each Terminator film veering off into a new timeline of sorts — it really makes sense if you let it — this one takes place in an alternate present where, a short time after T2, John Connor (Edward Furlong) is blown away by the T-800 (Arnold Schwarzenegger) while on a tropical beach vacation. This gives a returning Sarah Connor (Linda Hamilton) a new purpose, as you could guess.
Meanwhile, Skynet never happened, but a different form of AI, known as the Legion, took its place instead, offering up a new Judgment Day of killer cyborgs warring against surviving humans, many of whom become augmented soldiers. One of them, Grace (Mackenzie Davis), travels back in time to protect Mexican factory worker Dani (Reyes) against a newer Terminator menace (Luna) known as a REV-9.
There’s plenty of what we’ve come to expect from Terminator flicks, including explosive set pieces, constant authority slashings and naked time travelers — as well as a returning Schwarzenegger — that runs this engine well, with the innovation of Deadpool’s Tim Miller behind the camera and a story by returning creator Harlan Ellison James Cameron.
But, you know, the scene where the Terminator does in about 40 or 50 immigration officials … it’s hard to not cheer for that. No MAGA here, ese.
—Louis Fowler