Terminator: Dark Fate review

About a third of the way during the movie, Terminator: Dark Fate, (T:DF) I got an idea to contact Twentieth Century Fox regarding the Alien franchise. You see in T:DF, the film ignores Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines (2003) and Terminator: Genisys (2015) without any explanation. Oh yeah, you can forget about Terminator: Salvation (2009) too. So can we ignore the events in Alien 3 (1992) which terminates the cute Newt and feminist hero Ripley from Aliens (1986)? Please James Cameron and Twentieth Century Fox? You know you can do it guys.

Speaking of James Cameron, the director of the first two Terminator films, he's partly responsible for the story of T:DF. And there's a bunch of writers on this movie which might lead me to think they were writing a comedy but alas, that's not the case. And if I went over all of them, you would get bored and skip this review. Anyway, this movie takes place after the first two movies in the present. An old Sarah Connor {Linda Hamilton) is running around North America terminating Terminators who are warping from the future. Meanwhile, an advanced Terminator (Gabriel Luna) has interest in killing a young Mexican woman, Daniella (Natalia Reyes) while another person with enhanced abilities from the future named Grace (Mackenzie Davis) has an interest in protecting her. Oh yeah, Arnold Schwarzenegger is in the movie as Carl, who's a Skynet robot from the future with the mission to get humans to eat more vegetables. Okay, I'm kidding about the robot part here to get us to eat more vegetables but Arnold does want us to do that.

The cast is all good. Great to see Linda Hamilton, as the older Sarah. Her voice is deep, raspy and reminds one of beaten leather. Sarah has been through a lot and Hamilton portrays it well. If you were alive when the first two movies came out, it's like seeing an old friend. Natalia Reyes plays the confused and then true believer of Terminators, Daniella, well. And Mackenzie Davis is up to the task as the duty driven Grace. Of course, Schwarzenegger was made to play a robot. It's like rolling off a log for him.

Director Tim Miller (Deadpool) is a fine director. He handles the action here well with little confusion. In this film he has one big problem when he was handed this screenplay from all those writers. They couldn't come up with something really original. It's the same plot from the first one. Terminators come from the future to the past to destroy the future. If you've seen the first two movies, you've seen it all before, At least Terminator: Salvation had a great premise but was mangled by that film's director McG and the writers. Maybe if they combined the two next time, it might be interesting. Why don't they have Sarah travel to the future?

As I write this review, Terminator: Dark Fate is already out of my multiplex. Shame. It's not that bad a movie. It's just not original. Rent this one and hope something interesting happens down the timeline. The grade is B.