While the year has been moved around several times in the various films, Judgment Day—the day that the artificial intelligence Skynet becomes self-aware and starts a nuclear strike killing three billion people around the world in the “Terminator” franchise—is today, August 29. In “Terminator 2: Judgment Day,” the year is 1997 and given that the new upcoming film, “Terminator: Dark Fate,” picks up after the events of ‘T2,’ ignoring all the other three films and only accepts the first two ‘Terminator’ films as canon, then August 29, 1997, it is.
In the lead up to Judgment Day, the various players in the new ‘Terminator’ franchise, director Tim Miller (“Deadpool”) and producer James Cameron have been doing their part to hype up the occasion leading up to a new trailer. Miller has been asking fans what their favorite moments from the ‘Terminator’ films are—only the first two of course—and Cameron has been doing the rounds doing interviews.
It’s somewhat ironic. Cameron has basically backed every ‘Terminator’ film he hasn’t been part of even McG’s very maligned “Terminator: Salvation,” and then basically quietly backed away and then disavowed them all when they turned out to be critical and commercial duds.
That hasn’t stopped the filmmaker from tying himself to the new ‘Terminator’ film again, doing just as much press, if not more than the movie’s actual director and trying to prove to skeptical fans that this sixth try, after three flops in a row, will be the one to restore honor to the “Terminator” franchise.
In a new Deadline interview, Cameron insists “I wasn’t involved in three intervening films, but when I talked to David Ellison about it his vision for this was basically to go back to basics and do a continuation from ‘Terminator 2,’ which is one of his favorite films,” Cameron said. “He said, ‘Let’s start with a blank slate and take it back to Terminator 2.’ And that idea was intriguing.”
Cameron even said the new series has been conceived as a new trilogy so if this one’s a hit… yeah, like that hasn’t been said before for the last two films at least.
Not a lot is known about the plot of ‘Dark Fate,’ but it does take place 27 years after the events of ‘T2’ and a new, modified liquid metal Terminator (Gabriel Luna) is sent from the future by Skynet in order to terminate Dani Ramos (Natalia Reyes), a hybrid cyborg human (Mackenzie Davis), and her friends. Sarah Connor (Linda Hamilton) comes to their aid, as well as the original Terminator (Arnold Schwarzenegger), for a fight for the future.
Is the sixth time the charm, or the third time since ‘T2’? We’ll find out fairly soon. “Terminator: Dark Fate” opens November 1. Watch the new trailer below.