Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Terminator: Dark Fate’ on Amazon Prime and Hulu, a Nostalgic Derivation of Many Past ‘Terminator’ Tropes

Terminator: Dark Fate is now streaming for Hulu and Amazon subscribers, who now can catch up on the six movie/one TV series/one theme park attraction franchise. Of course, it asks that you disregard three of the movies, the one TV series and the theme park attraction as out of continuity, and consider those alt-timeline scenarios. So Dark Fate is officially the one, true sequel to T2: Judgment Day, bringing back OG cast members Linda Hamilton and Arnold Schwarzenegger, James Cameron as story adviser and the score that always punctuates the drama with BROMMMMMMMMMMMMMMM.

TERMINATOR: DARK FATE: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

The Gist: MILITARISTIC DRUMS: DUH-DUH-DUM-DUMDUM. Waves lap at the shore. They uncover SKULLS. DUH-DUH-DUM-DUMDUM. “There once was a future… a future without hope,” a solemn voiceover voices over. But: “I stopped it,” it adds. DUH-DUH-DUM-DUMDUM. That bit was in the future, and I know my verb tense doesn’t make sense, but that’s intentional. Now we’re in the present: Dani Ramos (Natalia Reyes) is going about her business in Mexico City when a REV-9 model terminator (Gabriel Luna) warps into the timeline and murders her father and brother. What’s stopping it from murdering her too? Grace (Mackenzie Davis), a warrior from the future who’s an “enhanced” human being, so she can dish out and take some heavy punches. She also was the voiceover voice. Remember how John Connor was the resister-in-chief-to-be in the old movies? Well, Dani’s that person now. And she must survive or the human race has no hope in the future, even though the voiceover said it was stopped. The hope was stopped? Or the future? Therein lies the suspense. DUH-DUH-DUM-DUMDUM.

But Grace can’t stop the REV-9 herself. It’s too strong, and it does neat new terminator tricks — it’s extra morph-y, and can turn into TWO terminators, the shapeshifter-man-terminator and the robot-skeleton-terminator, although as we learn later in the plot, neither appears to be WiFi-compatible. Just as the new killbot is about to cream Grace and Dani’s corn, one person arrives with a bazooka on her hip so she can make a grand entrance by walking away cool and unflinching from like six explosions: Sarah Conner (Hamilton), heroine of Terminator movies past, now a crazy gun person, but at least she has a decent reason. Her dialogue is all-caps without fail: YOU PUT 100 COPS BETWEEN YOU AND A TERMINATOR, YOU GET 100 DEAD COPS. I HUNT TERMINATORS AND DRINK UNTIL I BLACK OUT. I CARRIED OUT ORDERS FROM A FUTURE THAT NEVER HAPPENED. I HAVE AN ENTIRE EPISODE OF AMERICA’S MOST WANTED DEDICATED TO ME. Stuff like that.

Sarah and Grace are all prickly and type-A until they realize they’re both being summoned to the same coordinates in Texas, so they agree to chill their shit and keep Dani from getting smited. The three of them pile into a station wagon and try to figure out a way to get over the border. But the REV-9 is on their tail like a tail on an animal with a tail. How it knows what direction they’re going is anyone’s guess. REV-9 stages a takeover of the border patrol, and it would’ve been a great gag if the movie had smash-cut to the Guatemala border and had him yell “D’oh!”, so that’s a whiff. Inevitably, Grace, Dani and Sarah fall in with the classic model T-800 (Schwarzenegger), who’s now called Carl and has a shed full of gigantic guns. “We’re in Texas,” he says. Shit just got real. DUH-DUH-DUM-DUMDUM.

What Movies Will It Remind You Of?: Considering it’s essentially a rehash of the first two Terminators, I’m going to say it reminds me a lot of the first two Terminators.

Performance Worth Watching: Hamilton, great to see her again, Arnold, yeah, sure, why not. Mackenzie Davis is the only one who gets to do anything earnest or interesting, and has something resembling an arc.

Memorable Dialogue: To avoid spoilers, I’ll decontextualize and not reveal who said this, but it’s a prime example of Who Writes This Shit: “I won’t let her die for me again!”

Sex and Skin: None. TBNGADACTF: Too busy not giving a damn about continuity to f—.

Our Take: Well, at least the word “Genisys” isn’t in the title, and nobody’s subbing Arnold or Linda Hamilton with generidudes like Jai Courtney and Sam Worthington. Dark Fate is a perfectly OK, functionally formulaic Terminator movie, and is reasonably entertaining in spite/because of its mountains of idiotic dialogue. Much was made of how director Tim Miller (Deadpool) and executive producer Cameron had to coax Hamilton — THEE greatest movie badass of 1991 — from semi-retirement to revisit the franchise, and then they give her this type of dopey junk to recite: I COULD SAVE THREE BILLION PEOPLE, BUT I COULDN’T SAVE MY SON. A MACHINE TOOK HIM FROM ME. AND I AM TERMINATED. At least her clenched jaw can be interpreted as being true to her character.

But, you may ask, is it action-packed? Boy howdy. The film’s first major sequence has Grace and REV-9 demolishing vast swaths of an automobile assembly planet as they duke it out, then transitioning to a crazy highway car chase. It’s slightly diminishing returns from there as Miller employs his journeyman style in an attempt to raise the stakes for the next half-dozen smash-’em-up sequences, but dilutes the thrills with silly contrivances and mediocre CGI. One scene is a plane heist that becomes a plane crash that becomes a thousand-yard Humvee plummet that becomes an underwater fight that becomes a big epic conclusive rigamarole in the guts of a hydroelectric dam, which is something you don’t see very often, although frankly, there probably was some combination thereof in a different order in a previous Terminator. So this is a same-shit-different-day kind of movie that’ll either tickle your nostalgia zones or make you feel exhausted. Both were true for me.

Our Call: STREAM IT. I dunno, go ahead, watch Terminator: Dark Fate. It’s derivative, sure, but you probably won’t hate yourself for sitting through it.

John Serba is a freelance writer and film critic based in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Read more of his work at johnserbaatlarge.com or follow him on Twitter: @johnserba.

Watch Terminator: Dark Fate on Amazon Prime

Watch Terminator: Dark Fate on Hulu