TERMINATOR: DARK FATE (2019)
Label: Paramount Pictures Home Entertainment
Region Code: A
Rating: R
Duration: 128 Minutes
Audio: English Dolby Atmos with Optional English Subtitles
Video: 2160p UltraHD (2.39:1), 1080p HD Widescreen (2.39:1)
Director: Tim Miller
Cast: Arnold Schwarzenegger, Linda Hamilton, MacKenzie Davis, Brett Azar, Natalia Reyes
Lots of spoilers ahead, you'be been warned.
Terminator: Dark Fate (2019) is yet again a bit of a re-do for the long-running sci-fi action franchise, a movie that sets out to erase all the sequels that came after T2: Judgment Day, this being a direct sequel to T2, and to that end I think it's fairly successful. The film angered a lot of folks by doing what the the shape-shifting T-1000 couldn't in T2, it kills teenager John Connor (Edward Furlong) in the opening few minutes of the film! This happens right at the start of the new film, it then moves ahead 22-years, in Mexico where a new a Terminator, called a Rev-9 (Gabriel Luna, Gravy), has been sent from a different, but no less apocalyptic, future than the one Sarah Connor seemingly stopped in T2. It arrives in Mexico via the usual time-travelling lightning ball to murder humanities new last best hope against the future killing-tech, Dani Ramos (Natalia Reyes). Also sent back from the future is a enhanced human super-soldier, Grace (Mackenzie Davis, Blade Runner 2049) sent to protect Dani much the same way that Kyle Reese was sent back to protect
Sarah Connor in the original film.
As the Rev-9 closes in on Dani and her enhanced protector Grace who should arrives on the scene, Sarah Connor, a bit older but still a Terminator-killing bad-ass, pulling their bacon out of the frying pan with some high-impact firepower. Sarah info-dumps that she was able to find them because someone has been anonymously texting her for years, giving her the GPS coordinates of places where Terminators are about to arrive, so that she can intercept and kill them. The anonymous sender always signing off with a "for John" tag. With the help of Grace they're able to track down this anonymous texter to a rural area in Texas, and it turns out to be the very same T-800 model terminator that killed John Connor at the start of the film. It's explained that after fulfilling his Skynet directive to kill John Connor that the T-800 continued to learn, to study humans, developing a conscience along the way, and integrating itself into society as, wait for it... a curtain and drapery installer. There's obviously some bad blood between Sarah and the the T-800, who is now going by the name Carl, given that it killed her son, but they band together to stop the Rev-9 and lots of shit blows-up real good.
The film is fun, it's fast, it's action-packed, and to be honest I had a blast with it, but I can see why people have been slagging it. The whole 'let's erase the past and start over' again thing is annoying, but it's also sort of appropriate for a film franchise about future A.I. sending kill-bots back into the past to erase the last best hope of averting the apocalypse, you know?
I also really dug the new design of the Rev-9 terminator, a liquid metal design over a metal endoskeleton, with the liquid metal capable of separating from the endoskeleton with he pair acting in tandem, fully capable of mimicking humans and able to forge it's limbs into weapons.
The film pays a lot of fan-service, and I was okay with that, I also enjoyed the humor, most of it coming by way of Schwarzenegger's T-8000, now going by the handle Carl, inspiring Sarah to say "I'm never gonna fuckin' call you Carl", that shit is silly but I loved it.
Audio/Video: Terminator: Dark Fate (2019) arrives on 2-disc 4K UltraHD & Blu-ray from Paramount presented in both 2160p Ultra HD and 1080p HD framed in 2.39:1 widescreen. Shot in 4K digital with an applied grain filter the image accurately recreates what I saw in the cinema. I doesn't have what I wold call an electrifying use of color, with the saturation looking to be reigned, it's got a bit of a subdued color palette. Also, the black levels aren't what I typically expect from an HDR color-grading, but it looks accurate to what I saw digitally projected in the theater with some added HDR color-depth. That aside, the fine detail and texturing look rock solid, with excellent depth and clarity throughout.
Audio on the 4K UHD and accompanying Blu-ray comes by way of an dynamic Dolby Atmos remix that is bombastic, we get plenty of room-rumbling low-end during the action sequences, plus we get more atmospheric subtlety in the surrounds and height channels.
Extras are exclusive to the Blu-ray and digital presentation, with a few extras actually being digital exclusives, which I would like to call bullshit on. Admittedly, this disc was sent for review, but when I purchase a 4K UltraHD I want everything - all the extras - on disc, that is why I am buying a movie on a premium physical format, and at the time of this review the digital copy and digital-only extras were not yet available for viewing. With that said, what we d get on the disc is a cool 20-min 'A Legend Reforged' featurette with the director, producer and principle cast speaking about the film, and clearly they all had a ton of fun making this, director Tim Miller most of all. We also get six deleted and extended scenes that run about 9-min. The 33-min 'World Builders' looks at the digital de-aging process used in the film to recreate younger versions of Linda Hamilton, Arnold Schwarzenegger, and Edward Furlong, plus we get a a 9-min looks that film's final battle sequence. Lastly, there's a 3-min look at the VFX of the film's future war sequence.
Special Features on 4K UltraHD, Blu-ray & Digital:
- Six Deleted and Extended Scenes (9 min)
- A Legend Reforged (20 min)
- World Builders (33 min)
- Dam Busters: The Final Showdown (9 min)
- VFX Breakdown: The Dragonfly (3 min)
Special Features on Available on Digital:
- Creating a New Threat
- Future Tech
- Previz Sequences: Factory Fight, Air Battle, Humvee Falling
- Humvee Dam
- Commentary by director Tim Miller and editor Julian Clarke
- Deleted scenes introduction and commentary by Tim Miller
Terminator: Dark Fate is just a bunch of fun all things considered, it's not perfect but at this point the entire timeline and time-travelling aspects of the series is sort of fucked, so coming into this sixth entry in the series and expecting a film that will fix-it-all is absolutely absurd. I just wanted a fun action-packed Terminator film, and that's what I got, plus we have the return of Sarah Connor to the franchise, which is all sorts of bad-ass.
