LAS VEGAS – Are you ready for yet another “Terminator” movie? Just four years after “Terminator: Genysis” and 10 years after “Terminator Salvation” Paramount Pictures and Skydance have brought the whole gang back together for “Terminator: Dark Fate.” Directed by Tim Miller (“Deadpool“) and produced by franchise creator James Cameron, the new installment was one of the centerpieces of Paramount’s presentation at CinemaCon on Thursday. And, frankly, it was a bit of deja vu for those of us who also attended the studio’s presentation in 2015 where they hyped “Genysis.”
Before any footage was shown, Miller got a bit choked in front of the theater owners and press in attendance noting that saying this movie was a “labor of love is a f–king understatement.” And then the footage began.
Spoilers ahead. If you are interested in not learning any plot details of “Terminator: Dark Fate” you’ve been warned from here on out.
The title card “Mexico City” over a busy highway bridge at night. We cut to a young Latinx, twentysomething straight couple making out on the hood of a truck nearby. All of a sudden the familiar visual effect of a time bubble appears on the side of the bridge, on the road itself. The couple notices the strange, electric effect in the distance. A naked woman (Mackenzie Davis as Grace although we never hear her name) appears in the bubble as cars swerve to avoid it. The bubble eats up the bridge itself causing the woman to fall to the ground many feet below it. The couple race to make sure she’s OK.
The vantage point changes to Grace’s perspective as we see the couple picking her up and carrying her to safety through her eyes. Of course, her eyes display their assistance as though she’s a robot so you’re meant to assume she’s some sort of Terminator (although she is bleeding).
As the couple bring Grace to their car, numerous cops show up investigating the strange incident. They pull the couple apart and try to approach Grace. She “wakes up” and immediately takes them all down with seemingly superhuman strength and combat skills. The couple are stunned. Grace leaves on a motorcycle having taken the clothes of the young man who is annoyed he’s now in his boxers.
The footage then cuts to a different scene. It’s daytime and another familiar effect, of liquid metal forming into a Terminator, begins. Instead of transforming into Robert Patrick, however, it becomes a T-1000 that resembles a younger, Hispanic man (Gabriel Luna). He’s fighting Grace and a teenage girl (Natalia Reyes) on another road/bridge in a desolate region of what we’ll assume is Mexico. All of a sudden, a truck swerves into the fray and Sarah Connor (Linda Hamilton) jumps out with a machine gun and starts slamming the T-1000 with it. As the robot recovers, an older Terminator model (completely a robot, no human facade) starts to attack. Sarah takes a massive shotgun or missle launcher (take your pick) from over her shoulder and blows it up. Grace and Reyes are stunned.
What follows is a montage of footage that shows Grace in a combat uniform fighting in the future, an air transport vehicle in said post-apocalyptic world, two jumbo jetliners slamming into each other in the sky and more scenes involving the T-1000.
Arnold Schwarzenegger, who was on hand and is in the film in some capacity, was not seen in any of the footage.
Judging the “Terminator: Dark Fate” sneak likely depends on your love of the franchise. If having Hamilton and Cameron (story credit, producer) back in the mix gets you excited, “Dark Fate” may be for you. If you already felt like the franchise was playing out the same story beats again and again, you may simply not care. Paramount doesn’t want you to consider the latter, but it’s going to be on their marketing department to find a way to make “Dark Fate” look fresher than it thinks it is. That’s never a good sign is it?
“Terminator: Dark Fate” opens nationwide on Nov. 1.
