Review of Terminator: Dark Fate (2019) by Bitmouse — 17 Jan 2020

Spoiler Alert: Terminator: Dark Fate is the result of a director experiencing sophomoric inflation under the guidance of an originator who wishes to see director's under his influence/guidance fail as a means to establish his own supremacy.

Dark Fate starts off with a scene that is not only telling of the humanistic decay of Hollywood, but that of our culture as a whole. John Connor, in his youth, is unceremoniously shot by a T-800 with a shotgun twice, once in the chest at midrange, and once in the head at close range, while talking to a girl in Honduras, with his mother, as she watches on.

If that scene sounds horrific it's because it is. We have come so far from our own humanity that we are willing to sacrifice it one screen, meaninglessly, just to setup a plot.

No thought to what came before.

Was it possible to construct a meaningful Terminator "3" while honoring the plots of the previous two films? I would like to think so.

The slaughter of John Connor not only betrays the character and the audience but introduces the fundamental error possible in any story about time-travel. It unravels the plausibility of the timey-whimey reality into a ball of meaningless noodles, which if thought about burst in, "wait what's?".

The further plot is no better and is an attempt to make, "meaning," out of the initial betrayal to the audience.

I wonder if slaughtering John was a way for James Cameron to vicariously and quasi-cathartically end his relationship with Linda Hamilton, whilst simultaneously flipping her off behind his back, roses in front of him. Please, join this next film, it's going to be great, oh and we are going to kill our metaphorical son right in front of you in the first scene, to your impotence.

I can only imagine after Deadpool Tim Miller thought he could do no wrong, at the time the most successful R-rated film ever released. Failed sophomoric attempts are so common in the entertainment industry that Billy Corgan is quoted as saying the industry types, at least in music, don't expect talents to last for more than four years. Apparently the execs are going to give Tim Miller a second chance. Part of me doesn't want that to happen. Though, he is human. The rest of the film is an un-original new terminator which is literally just a combining of the previous two terminators, an ill formed attempt at being, "woke," and some not so great banter.

This was not passing the torch.

In fact I have decided that personally, for me, many of the beloved franchises never really got the new sequels. Just because it is official cannon, according to some corporation, doesn't mean it will take up the same mythopoetic space within the culture as the predecessors. You can't insist your version of the tale is the one the culture and it's melange of unconscious fantasy is going to take on. No one will really remember this film, for the most part. No one is going to analyze and use as metaphor the Star Wars sequels, for the most part. Cash grabs have that effect. They may make some sort of uncomfortable splash initially, largely pushed by the lifeless machine behind them, but they have no real impact, the deeper currents of the body of water they land in somewhat unaffected.

This recent pate of crappy sequels however says a lot more about our culture. Why are we incapable of generating anything of substance? I suggest we have forgotten the need for suffering. I am just riffing off of Camille Paglia.