All Hands Look Out Below, There's a Change in the Status Quo
Before its premiere month was over, I wanted to add some relevant details from Terminator: Dark Fate as a supplement to my previous entry about the continuities in that franchise, along with offering some thoughts on the film in general...
Going by my own previous methodology, this is really a variation on what I called T-Cameron (because John Connor looks like Edward Furlong), but this offshoot gets its own paragraph because the movie is getting its own post. The previous existence of a timeline called T-Miller means that I can't name this one after the film's director and must instead go with the inadvertent pun based on the writer of its final screenplay:
T-Ray
This is the world of Terminator: Dark Fate. Judgement Day is at some point between 2020 and 2042. After the events of T2, a different T-800 is able to track down John Connor in 1998 and carry out its programming to terminate him, but is then left without a purpose and eventually develops a life as "Carl" in Texas along with a sense of morality. In lieu of Skynet's future, a different AI called Legion still causes Judgement Day and invents time travel, sending a Rev-9 back in time to 2020 in an attempt to kill future resistance leader Daniella Ramos with the resistance sending a cybernetically enhanced human named Grace to stop him.
As for the movie itself, I had high hopes for this after the commercial failure of Terminator: Genisys (for which I personally choose to blame Matt Smith), though that had less to do with the return of James Cameron than with the return of Linda Hamilton as Sarah Connor. Despite the publicity for Dark Fate making a big point about how it was a departure from the other sequels in its own continuity, however, I thought it was interesting how it nevertheless seemed to bring together concepts from each of them. (The film kind of reminded me of Highlander: Endgame in that regard...not that this approach connected with a vast audience there, either.) Beyond the obvious callbacks to the first two films, it had the inevitability of Judgement Day (plus a Terminator composed of liquid metal over an exoskeleton) from Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines, the human/machine hybrid of Terminator: Salvation, the aging father figure T-800 of Genisys, and the multiple timelines of Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles. They even found a way to include a cameo by Doctor Silberman via the VHS footage that starts the film!
Having said all that, I agree with the comparison made (and since echoed by others) by someone who accompanied me when I saw it on one of my more recent lower-key übergroup outings (about which I'll have more to say in another entry) that John Connor's own dark fate is reminiscent of the ignominious end of Newt and Hicks (essentially offscreen) at the beginning of Alien 3, and the movie never really recovers from that when trying to draw emotional resonance from it--though I do appreciate the update to the original films' general distrust of law enforcement authorities, dating back to T1's unsafe LAPD station.
Unfortunately, being keen enough to catch this on opening night did nothing to prevent it from also going down the apparent path of commercial failure already. Much like The Predator, sequels to The Terminator never quite get in touch with the initial (and enduring) appeal of the franchise--and much like that implacable foe, another attempt at continuing and/or reviving this franchise will no doubt happen shortly.
Going by my own previous methodology, this is really a variation on what I called T-Cameron (because John Connor looks like Edward Furlong), but this offshoot gets its own paragraph because the movie is getting its own post. The previous existence of a timeline called T-Miller means that I can't name this one after the film's director and must instead go with the inadvertent pun based on the writer of its final screenplay:
T-Ray
This is the world of Terminator: Dark Fate. Judgement Day is at some point between 2020 and 2042. After the events of T2, a different T-800 is able to track down John Connor in 1998 and carry out its programming to terminate him, but is then left without a purpose and eventually develops a life as "Carl" in Texas along with a sense of morality. In lieu of Skynet's future, a different AI called Legion still causes Judgement Day and invents time travel, sending a Rev-9 back in time to 2020 in an attempt to kill future resistance leader Daniella Ramos with the resistance sending a cybernetically enhanced human named Grace to stop him.
As for the movie itself, I had high hopes for this after the commercial failure of Terminator: Genisys (for which I personally choose to blame Matt Smith), though that had less to do with the return of James Cameron than with the return of Linda Hamilton as Sarah Connor. Despite the publicity for Dark Fate making a big point about how it was a departure from the other sequels in its own continuity, however, I thought it was interesting how it nevertheless seemed to bring together concepts from each of them. (The film kind of reminded me of Highlander: Endgame in that regard...not that this approach connected with a vast audience there, either.) Beyond the obvious callbacks to the first two films, it had the inevitability of Judgement Day (plus a Terminator composed of liquid metal over an exoskeleton) from Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines, the human/machine hybrid of Terminator: Salvation, the aging father figure T-800 of Genisys, and the multiple timelines of Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles. They even found a way to include a cameo by Doctor Silberman via the VHS footage that starts the film!
Having said all that, I agree with the comparison made (and since echoed by others) by someone who accompanied me when I saw it on one of my more recent lower-key übergroup outings (about which I'll have more to say in another entry) that John Connor's own dark fate is reminiscent of the ignominious end of Newt and Hicks (essentially offscreen) at the beginning of Alien 3, and the movie never really recovers from that when trying to draw emotional resonance from it--though I do appreciate the update to the original films' general distrust of law enforcement authorities, dating back to T1's unsafe LAPD station.
Unfortunately, being keen enough to catch this on opening night did nothing to prevent it from also going down the apparent path of commercial failure already. Much like The Predator, sequels to The Terminator never quite get in touch with the initial (and enduring) appeal of the franchise--and much like that implacable foe, another attempt at continuing and/or reviving this franchise will no doubt happen shortly.