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Sarah Connor is back… And she’s got a whole other mess to sort out. You’d think a gal saves the future, battles killer robots for a living, and lives to tell the tale, maybe she’d get a break? Not so, foolish filmgoer! In Dark Fate, Linda Hamilton returns to her iconic role to find more badness brewing in the upcoming years.
The same basic idea is the crux of Dark Fate: A new “liquid metal” Terminator (Gabriel Luna) descends on a hapless present-dayer (Natalia Reyes) in a bid to wipe out the human meatballs once and for all. Aided by a cyborg soldier (Mackenzie Davis), Sarah Connor, and a good ‘ol T-800 (played by Arnold Schwarzenegger), the band’s all-in to stop those darn robots once again.
For as shaky as every Terminator film post-T2 has been, this newest trailer inspires a little confidence. It looks the part, nice and bleak, and the cast is terrific all around. Newcomer Natalia Reyes was great in Birds of Passage, and Mackenzie Davis can just be in everything. Tim Miller, who did the first Deadpool film, is directing a script from David S Goyer (of Dark Knight and Krypton fame).
The man, the myth, the legend James Cameron also returns to his baby as a producer on Dark Fate, after absence from his franchise after nearly three decades, including 2015’s Terminator Genisys. With Cameron back there’s some hope that perhaps Dark Fate will retcon the wrongs of the past few entries of the series, and Cameron himself would seem to be optimistic about the future of his tireless robot killers.
“When I talked to (co-producer and Genisys director) 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 speaking to Deadline. Cameron mentions Ellison expressing disappointment over Genisys, saying “‘Let’s start with a blank slate and take it back to Terminator 2.’ And that idea was intriguing.”
Cameron goes on to dissect the issues of the three Terminator films that followed Judgement Day, stressing a desire to go “back to basics” with Dark Fate, and return to a gritty, R-rated style of science-fiction.
The full interview over at Deadline is well worth a look.
Otherwise we have until November 1st to wait and see whether Dark Fate pulls the franchise out of the bone pile, or is still just a walking corpse.
‘Terminator: Dark Fate’: James Cameron On Rewired Franchise, Possible New Trilogy [Deadline]