Where we left it last Saturday, the trio had found Carl, the T-800 who’d murdered the young John Connor. While the group is taking this in, Carl explains that after killing John, it had gone out in search of a family of its own.

This revelation in Terminator: Dark Fate (2019) ignores the question of how a robot could come to desire a family. As I noted last Saturday, once it had completed its mission, the robot should’ve just shut down. But even if it didn’t, there’s another problem as well. Assuming the robot was still active and had somehow developed an independent will, why would it choose to find a family?

The short answer is that this development is impossible. For one thing, the independent will that seems to have somehow developed inside the robot would still in some measure be dependent on its programming. The Terminators’ main task is to blend in. Having a family, people in close proximity to it for hours on end, would endanger that mission. But how does this robot in particular even develop the ability to ask whether or not to have a family?

Mechanical evolution?

Think about it like this. After the Terminator kills John, what’s the next step? The idea seems to be that this robot develops humanity by some form of mechanical evolution. The writers’ thinking might’ve been that once the order to terminate was completed, then only the mimicry protocol would remain, and therefore the robot would gradually become more human.

Here’s the problem. While the process of turning mimicry into genuine humanity does have some creative viability, the Terminator wasn’t ordered to kill just one man. Its orders are to kill anything that gets in the way of its intended target. In other words, a variety of other codes enable the robot to act independently. But all of those actions are oriented to one goal: killing humans.

The Terminator believes all humans are targets. After all, Skynet believes that humans should be eliminated, and the Terminator is fundamentally a part of Skynet. If the robot was going to do anything as the result of an independent will, it should’ve killed the rest of the humans on the beach, starting with the weeping Sarah Connor.

So, here’s the crux of the problem. How does a Terminator, assuming it could develop an independent will, make a value judgment? How does it decide that something like a family is worth pursuing? If one tries to argue that it chose the family as a means of further blending in, the problem is that the longer the family is close to the robot, the greater the risk of discovery. So choosing a family should’ve been counter to its programming.

At no point in the franchise does the audience see any Terminator try to make friends or develop close relationships. Therefore, in order to choose a family, the Terminator would have to reject Skynet’s fundamental assumption: humanity must be eliminated. But in order for the Terminator to do this, it must have some awareness of a “should” or an “ought.” One outcome must be preferable to another. But if the Terminator’s only programmer is Skynet, then all its “oughts” would be identical to Skynet’s. So, where would it obtain the ability to say that it “ought” to have a family or that perhaps Skynet is wrong?

Just because Skynet is gone and just because the robot has developed an independent will doesn’t mean that the robot would automatically conclude that becoming as human as possible should be its mission. We are told that — over time — the robot developed a conscience. But I would argue that in order for the evolution of a conscience to begin, some kind of conscience would have to be there from the beginning. The mimicry-to-genuine humanity process can only work as a creative tool if the robot understands that humanity is an ideal to chase, not just something to mimic.

Ambiguous science talk

After Carl has told the trio about his family, he tells them that he was able to find the other Terminators through time and space. Whenever one of the robots is sent into the past, he is able to detect some sort of shift. This is the same ambiguous science talk Genisys tried. It didn’t work then, and it doesn’t work now. Sarah deflects any questions the audience might ask about how that would work by saying that Carl’s explanation is the how but not the why. Carl says he sent Sarah the texts because he wished to give Sarah a sense of purpose. So now the audience must add altruism and empathy to our robot’s growing toolbox of emotions.

A new mission with Carl

Once Carl’s conversation with the trio is over, the group decides to focus on killing the Rev-9. While forming their plan, Sarah and Carl work well together because the Terminator knows Terminators, even knock-offs like the Rev-9, and Sarah has been in the business of killing these robots for a while. They decide to meet up with a military official to pick up an EMP so they can fry their opponent.

Before leaving, Carl says goodbye to his “family” and looks at himself in the mirror, debating about whether or not to put on his sunglasses.

In the end, he doesn’t. I believe that the only reason the writers included this scene is because it was yet another rejection of the first two Terminator films. I don’t recall another film series being so angry about its own success.

The group meets up with the military official, who gives them the EMP. Then the Rev-9 finds them, and there’s another shootout. In the end, the group escapes on a plane, and during the flight Grace reveals the obvious. She tells Dani, whom I have been calling a female John because of her role, that she is not the new Sarah Connor but the future hero.

This was supposed to be a dramatic reveal, but it was obvious from the beginning, and Grace’s flashback, in which she recounts the story of how she met Dani, really killed the mood. I’ll discuss why next Saturday.

Here are the first four 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.

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.

and

Terminator Dark Fate: We meet the sender of the mystery texts. At this point in the story, our characters clash with Border Patrol and discover a Terminator with a conscience. With SkyNet dead, it’s not clear where the T-800’s newfound conscience came from.