TERMINATOR: DARK FATE - The Last Cyborg

Well, it took nearly 30 years, but they finally went and made a third good Terminator movie.

Ever since Terminator 2: Judgement Day, the films in this franchise have not only had to contend with living in the shadow of one of the greatest action spectacles ever to grace the cinema, but have also been trying to set up New Terminator Trilogies. For some reason. It. . . it hasn't worked out too well? The marketing of Terminator: Dark Fate has been playing up the "We made a The Force Awakens!" card really hard, but the movie also decides to tell you in the first five minutes "Whoopsie doodles, we actually made The Last Jedi. Buckle up." If there's one major feather in this film's cap, as well as being a major hurdle it puts in its path, it's that Dark Fate evidently decided that the idea of saving things for sequels is for cowards, and rather than try to make separate movies out of the Big Ideas that it's playing with, it goes "Fuck it - we'll do them all."

If that sounds messy. . .well, it kinda is. Where the James Cameron original was a sci-fi chase thriller through the lens of an early '80s slasher and his sequel was a sci-fi chase thriller through the lens of a late '80s/early '90s action blowout, Tim Miller and a whole mess of story and screenplay people (including Cameron himself and Batman Begins' & Man of Steel's David S. Goyer) craft a sci-fi chase thriller through the lens of the most popular blockbuster genre right now.

Yep, Terminator: Dark Fate goes full superhero with Lady Captain America going back in time to fight the ultimate Ultron bot. Oh, and Linda Hamilton and Arnold Schwarzenegger are here too, proving that it was that pairing - not the presence of John Connor played by whoever they could get at the time - that was what made the franchise tick.

If you've heard anything positive about this film already, it's likely that Hamilton absolutely owns the screen similarly to Jamie Lee Curtis' return to the Halloween franchise last year. And she absolutely does, carrying a combination of acerbic humor, weary tragedy, and bravura action badassitude that makes for something akin to Sarah Connor's Final Form. There's a moment where Sarah is speaking to Natalia Reyes' heroine Dani Ramos where she strikes exactly the same distantly forlorn expression that haunted the character's eyes at the police station in the first film. However, Hamilton is far from alone - the entire cast throws everything they've got at the screen, with Reyes getting a familiar arc but absolutely crushing it, Mackenzie Davis towering over just about everyone as the cybernetically-enhanced Grace protecting her, and Gabriel Luna channeling Robert Patrick's uncanny valley terror of a machine doing an almost-there approximation of human behavior with eerie aplomb. And while I won't go into the details for fear of spoilers, Arnold's return to his most iconic well takes what could have been a tired paycheck and instead turns in his best work in years, even invoking a signature franchise callback for the purpose of aching melancholy instead of "awesome" catharsis.

The problems start to arise in so much ambition being shouldered by a journeyman director over a reportedly messy production, and for all that Dark Fate returns to the focus and drive of the original two Terminator films, Tim Miller is simply no James Cameron. there are some seriously thrilling set pieces and action beats, but the storytelling through action is never as clear is it feels it needs to be, the thematic balance never as tight as it could be, the tone just wandering enough that it lands hits rather than knockouts. However, the film steps up with capital letter Things To Say and swings big and hard, and I have to respect that ambition. And the tight pacing, impressive physicality of the action (especially in the first and second acts) and the absolutely smashing score by Tom Holkenborg (Mad Max: Fury Road's own "Junkie XL"), with a delightful riff on the original film's main theme, go a long way toward making up for the film's shortcomings.

I thought for decades that the world didn't need another Terminator movie, that trying to expand this beyond the first film was marginal, and further than 2 was downright foolhardy. So maybe the best compliment I can pay to Terminator: Dark Fate is that, while the road back isn't always smooth, it brings things full circle strongly enough that I'll happily admit I was wrong.