Last Saturday, we saw that Sarah, Grace and Dani, realized that the person sending Sarah the mysterious texts was living precisely where Grace was supposed to go if she ran into trouble. Because the address is in Texas our dysfunctional trio must cross the border. Dani knows a guy she convinces to help them. Well, actually Grace cuts a fly in half, and that convinces him.

But anyway. While traveling to the border, they hop on top of a train with a bunch of undocumented immigrants. During this ride, Sarah comes to believe that Dani is really another her. Sarah seems happy to relinquish her fatalistic mantle, but Grace is annoyed by this development.

A less likeable Grace

I mention this scene because, the character of Grace was actually likeable before she met Sarah.  But as she and Sarah continue to interact, Grace becomes more and more petulant. When she’s finished insulting Sarah on the train, she stands up and pouts like a child. I think the audience is supposed to believe that Grace is offended by the fact that Sarah assumes that Dani is her, instead of John himself. But the scene only makes Grace look childish. One might expect Grace to be somewhat relieved that Sarah has reached the wrong conclusion because that means she doesn’t have to tell Dani the truth. Her indignation at this point simply makes no sense and weakens her character’s likeability.

Scenes at the border

After the train ride, the trio begins to cross the desert. During this trek, Grace spots a drone in the sky. She realizes the Rev-9 is watching them. Her only response is to say that they have to hurry. If she showed any common sense, she would’ve tried to come up with another plan, rather than continuing with the original scheme, which the Rev-9 is now aware of.

But the plot has to happen, so they press on, and sure enough, the trio is caught by the border patrol. As for the Rev-9, when it sees the trio captured, for some reason, it rams the drone into one of the squad cars. I don’t know why it didn’t try to kill Dani with it. I guess the writers really wanted to blow something up.

The trio is taken to a holding facility, where the Rev-9 finds them. However, both Sarah and Grace escape and manage to get Dani out of the facility before the Rev-9 can complete its mission. During this sequence, the border patrol is portrayed as nothing short of cartoonish. At one point, the guards dogpile the Rev-9, and it just stabs the lot of them while they try to take him down like they’re on a football field. It’s ridiculous, but somebody must’ve thought it looked cool. That or they really didn’t like the border patrol.

The trio escapes the facility in a helicopter and finds the mysterious stranger who has been sending Sarah the texts. To do that, they land the helicopter in the middle of the forest and travel to a small home. When they open the door, the T-800 who killed the young John Connor steps out, and Sarah is enraged. She tries to kill the Terminator, but the other two won’t let her.

No images of John and no answers to questions

Sarah then storms off. Dani follows her, and Sarah tells her that she has no photograph of John. She refused to take pictures of him because she thought this would make it harder for the machines to find him. But now she can’t even remember John’s face. This is the only good scene in the entire movie. Linda Hamilton carries this film.

Meanwhile, Grace and the T-800 have a conversation that goes nowhere. The Terminator asks questions, and Grace refuses to answer them, which is infuriating because one of the nagging issues in this film is how in the world her leaders knew to send her to this cabin in the past, especially when the original Skynet timeline has been wiped out. There’s no reason for anybody in the past, present, or future to know about this T-800’s existence.

But if anyone in the audience was naïve enough to expect answers in this 2019 film, they were sadly disappointed. The truth is, the writers have no answers. Grace’s hesitation to provide the Terminator with any information is really just cover for the writers, who appear to have no idea how to explain this contrivance that is driving the plot.

After their pointless talk, Sarah and Dani return, and the Terminator, who calls itself Carl, tells them that he now has a family. That’s right. The soulless robot, for whatever reason, sought out a wife and child to protect and raise as his own. Why? I have no idea. The bizarre situation is unbelievable for multiple reasons.

Something that approximates a conscience…

First, I’ll give the movie some credit. The writers explain that. while protecting its wife and son, the Terminator developed something that approximates a conscience, and they take care to say that the robot’s version of a conscience isn’t identical to a human’s. This is fair because the Terminator is designed to mimic human behavior. I said in one of the Westworld reviews that the only real way to have a robot become sentient in a believable manner was to have its version of mimicry slowly become a sort of reality. This isn’t necessarily accurate because there’s no way to explain how the mimicry could become a reality, but it is fair because the process itself remains abstract and therefore can be safely shrouded in mystery. However, the writers’ explanation of the T-800’s conscience does nothing to explain how the robot chose to find a family in the first place.

Two problems arise:

Number One: When the Terminator’s orders were carried out, it had nothing else to do. By that logic, it should’ve shut down because the mission was over. Skynet can’t have a bunch of robots walking around with no orders. But the writers chose to say that since Skynet no longer existed, the Terminator had been set free, which somehow allowed it to choose what it wanted to do, but that would imply an independent will.

Where did this independent will come from? And let’s not forget that the moment Skynet ceased to exist, the orders coming from Skynet should’ve been deleted from the Terminator’s memory. For that matter, the Terminator itself should’ve vanished.

We’ll discuss the second problem next Saturday.

Here are the first three parts of my extended review:

Terminator Dark Fate: Not as bad as Genisys but close. Here in Part 1, we also look at rumors of a new Terminator project in the works. Could some of the mistakes that plagued earlier films be avoided? The actors are quite good and if their performances seemed canned at times, I blame the dialogue. They can’t draw blood from a stone.

Terminator Dark Fate: Welcome to the new future. Which turns out to be the same as the old one. Here’s Part 2 of my review. The writers seem to have run out of ideas for new Terminators. They’re recycling the concept and adding new abilities — without thinking them through.

and

Terminator Dark Fate: Just too many “Johns” now. How multiverses and time travel can doom a story. There are plenty of dumb errors in movies, but Dark Fate made the most obvious mistake I’ve ever seen.