Last Saturday, I talked about the way the audience is forced to watch the horrifying death of a young John Connor  in Terminator: Dark Fate (2019) — and then introduced to the new Kyle Reese, Grace, and “female John.” I’m calling Dani Ramos a female John because the writers make it painfully obvious that she is meant to replace John Connor in a way that is flat-out disrespectful to any fan of the original character.

Dani has a brother and both of them work at an automotive factory. It is there that they meet the new Terminator, the Rev-9:

Now, about the Rev-9…

The Rev-9 is basically a knockoff of the T-X. The only difference is that the liquid metal and solid metal can separate into two different Terminators. The Rev-9 can also make guns with its liquid metal — an upgrade from its predecessors — but we only see this happening once. The Rev-9 never does it again, even though it would’ve found such an ability very useful numerous times throughout the film.

It looks like the writers have finally run out of ideas for new Terminators. They’re basically recycling an old concept and adding a couple of new abilities without thinking them through.

The Rev 9 impersonates Dani’s dad, enters the factory, and tries to shoot her. But thankfully, Grace arrives just in time to save the day. The two fight until Dani’s brother drops a car engine on the Rev-9, giving Grace a chance to lead the brother and sister out of the factory.

I will compliment the fight choreography during this scene. Seeing two robots throw each other through countless layers of cement and sheetrock was starting to get old. But both Grace and the Rev-9 are more agile than the previous Terminators, so this fight scene has more intricate blocking, which is nice.

The staple car chase

What follows is a long, drawn-out chase scene. These car chases have become just as much a staple for the franchise as the Terminators. The brother is killed along the way, and the chase ends on a bridge with Grace about to fight the Rev 9 yet again.

But then Sarah Connor shows up prepared for war. She blows both the solid and liquid versions of the Rev 9 away, temporarily disabling the robot. But while she’s trying to make sure the Rev 9 is destroyed, Grace forces Dani to climb inside Sarah’s truck, then she steals the vehicle. This forces Sarah to abandon her warpath so she can pursue the ungrateful duo.

The double cross and the discount future

While Grace is driving away—double-crossing the second person who’s tried to help her — she reaches the limits of her augmented body and passes out. She wakes up a few seconds later and parks the vehicle before she and Dani crash. It seems that the writers address Grace’s physical limitations as an augmented human during this scene only because they needed an excuse to stop the truck, allowing Sarah a chance to catch up. The story would’ve moved faster if Grace had actually done the smart thing and waited for Sarah on the bridge.

Anyway, Dani and Grace go to a pharmacy, where they mix a medical cocktail for our augmented heroine. Then Sarah shows up and takes them to a motel. While Grace is recovering, the audience is introduced to the new future through her dreams. This apocalypse is the same as the old apocalypse, only dumber, so I’m calling it the discount future. The discount future basically copies some of the flying aircraft from the prior films, then adds drones and Rev-9s, a bargain bin apocalypse at best. 

When Grace wakes up, she and Sarah begin demanding answers from one another in a hostile manner that makes no sense. Sarah has some cause to be angry because Grace stole her truck, but Grace’s hostility is just bizarre.

The writers never explain why Grace distrusts Sarah. They just have the two bicker throughout the film:

The characters’ relationship can only be described as tedious. I want to stress that the actors are not to blame for this. It’s the writing, pure and simple. Someone could’ve resurrected John Barrymore or some other famous Shakespearean actor, then given him or her this script, and it still would’ve sounded like grade school Pig Latin.

After some pointless fighting, the writers confirm that Sarah stopped Skynet. But now the new villain is called Legion. Then the trio hits the road again, and Dani asks an obvious question: how did Sarah find her and Grace on that bridge? Sarah says that someone has been sending her texts over the years, telling her when a Terminator is going to be sent to a certain location. Sarah doesn’t know who this is, but each time she sees one of these texts, she goes to the location and terminates the Terminator.

I don’t know whether to admire or loathe the writers’ gall!

Killing John using a T-800 creates an infinite regress of Terminators moving up and down the timeline. Sending multiple Terminators obviously compounds that problem. However, when the writers of Genisys introduced their numerous Terminators, they had enough sense to keep quiet about this plot hole and hope the audience wouldn’t notice.

Dark Fate took a different path. The writers had Sarah Connor confirm that this infinite regress is the case. There has been a steady stream of Terminators traveling to various moments in time over the last twenty-two years. This can only be described as narrative gaslighting!

I mean, when did Skynet send these Terminators? Did Skynet send them all at once before it was destroyed? If it did, why? And the worst part is, the writers refuse to give the audience an out. An audience member who was willing to fill in the blanks for the writers could say that all of Sarah’s Terminators were really Rev-9s. But Sarah wouldn’t know that because she wouldn’t realize a new future was at play. To her, all the robots are Terminators.

But the writers have her actually say that she’s never seen a Rev-9 before! She has no knowledge of the discount Skynet, Legion. So, Sarah Connor has spent the last twenty-two years killing either T-800s or T-1000s, all of which have been sent by a Skynet that no longer exists; however, she’s never encountered a Rev-9. Really, she should be encountering both!

If Skynet had time to send numerous robots, then discount Skynet can do the same thing. Both teams should be sending robots up and down the timeline, even though one of those teams no longer exists. And Sarah would be sent to kill them all.

And where are all the “good guys” sent into the past?

If this isn’t crazy enough, there’s also the number of “Kyle Reese’s” or good T-800s to consider. If Sarah’s been killing all the Terminators, then where are all the good guys who were sent into the past to stop the bad guys? It’s not like they can go home, and the franchise has always made sure to kill the good guys from the future so they didn’t remain in the past to mess things up. But now, there’s no Terminator to kill the good guys, so where are they? Why hasn’t Sarah met at least one of them?

This is an unavoidable problem. Suppose the writers want to say that all the Terminators from 1997 remained in the past, even though Skynet was destroyed. They then add to the problem by having numerous Terminators entering the timeline. The only way to make that work is if an army of Terminators was sent all at once before Skynet was destroyed. That means that the good guys, who also no longer exist, would’ve done the same thing.

The one thing this franchise has established is that there are always two, no more, no less. There would be good guys to counter the bad guys, and that means there is an untold number of potential John Connors ready to stop the robot war, making our female John, Dani, redundant. Speaking of Dani, she’s also Infinite Regress, Number Three. I’ll explain how next Saturday.

Here’s the first part 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.