Terminator: Dark Fate review: The franchise’s best sequel since Judgment Day

Dir: Tim Miller. Starring: Linda Hamilton, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Mackenzie Davis, Natalia Reyes, and Gabriel Luna. 15 cert, 128 mins.

The Terminator may be near-indestructible, but his movies certainly aren’t. Ever since 2003’s Rise of the Machines signalled the start of franchise’s slow descent into calamity and despair, fans have been praying for salvation. Terminator: Dark Fate, yet another attempt at resuscitation, is perfectly fine. At times, it’s even quite good. But its existence will feel like a small miracle to some – proof that the future of the Terminator movies isn’t entirely apocalyptic. It’s the saga’s best sequel since Terminator 2: Judgment Day, however you might interpret that.

The film, directed by Deadpool’s Tim Miller, takes what will inevitably be known as “The Force Awakens approach” to sequels. It’s a subtle reboot, attempting to soothe any bad vibes by running straight into the arms of the familiar. In fact, Dark Fate takes it one step further by flat out denying the existence of its inferior sequels. It’s a follow-up to Judgment Day and Judgment Day only – anything else has now been relegated to an “alternate timeline”. You’ll have heard the plot before: a Terminator (Gabriel Luna’s Rev-9) has arrived from a future where machines have taken control, sent to annihilate a target (Natalia Reyes’s Dani) whose existence threatens their dominion. Meanwhile, a member of the human rebellion (Mackenzie Davis’s Grace, an augmented super-soldier) has also been sent back to try and stop the termination from taking place. Not only is Arnold Schwarzenegger back, but so is Linda Hamilton’s Sarah Connor.

There are references and callbacks galore – some welcome, some self-indulgent. Not one, but two major action sequences are set in an industrial warehouse (you know it’s a Terminator film if someone’s getting crushed in a big vice). The franchise has often struggled to land on a tone that balances the grittiness of its technophobic dystopia with the cutesy “Hasta la vista, baby” catchphrases. But Dark Fate manages to get around this, at least in part, thanks to a healthy dose of self-awareness. Though there’s a whiff of contractual obligation to Arnold Schwarzenegger’s role, the film’s screenwriting team – David S Goyer, Justin Rhodes, and Billy Ray – are playful and ironic when it comes to the character’s legacy. It’s genuinely funny, for once.

Does it have anything genuinely new to offer? Sort of, but not really. The stunt choreography is intermittently inventive and Davis fights like there’s a fire burning inside of her. But the film too often slides into a CGI blur – with zero sense of who’s where and what’s going on – and is thematically scattershot. We see much of the film through Dani’s eyes, as a young woman living in Mexico, working in a factory whose employees are slowly being replaced by robots. It’s a welcome (and much-needed) change of perspective, certainly, but the film’s attempts to work in a commentary on immigration feel half-baked. A sequence set at the US border control isn’t nearly as scathing as it needs to be, beyond one guard’s insistence that the people being kept in cages are to be called “detainees” and not “prisoners”.

In the end, it’s the film’s three female leads that come to the rescue. Given how depressingly rare it is to see women even talking to each other in an action movie, I suppose Terminator: Dark Fate should be commended for this – even if there’s a jarring lack of women behind the scenes. And Hamilton, Reyes, and Davis do bounce off each other beautifully, representing three very different pillars of female strength. Hamilton’s Sarah is still all grit and nerve. (When asked about grief, she snaps back: “You just have to learn to live with it”.) Reyes brings sincerity to Dani, becoming the everywoman we can believe in. Davis is the conflicted soldier: tough on the outside, brittle on the inside. Thanks to them, if Terminator: Dark Fate does end up being the franchise’s last breath, it will have at least have died with some dignity.

Terminator: Dark Fate is out in UK cinemas now