Terminator: Dark Fate (2019)

It’s not often that I get really excited about a movie from the coming attractions.  It’s maybe once every few years, on average.  When I heard that there was going to be a new Terminator movie that had the involvement of both Linda Hamilton and James Cameron, I got excited.  I mean, I knew kind of what to expect.  It was going to be an action movie and maybe have some sort of paradox to think about.

I didn’t get exactly what I expected.

The trailers presented an action movie, and there was a good deal of action.  They hinted at the return of Arnold Schwarzenegger, but not as much as I would have expected.  It seems like the movie is trying to do something new, but is instead putting a new face on the same idea.

We now have a new savior of humanity in the form of Dani Ramos.  Skynet is gone, but there’s a new, similar threat that humanity needs saving from.  Grace is sent back from the future to protect Dani from the REV-9, a new two-in-one Terminator.  It has a solid-metal endoskeleton with a liquid-metal terminator covering it, making for an extra target when the script calls for it.  Sarah Connor finds them all because she’s getting texts from an anonymous benefactor.  (I’ll give you three guesses who that benefactor is.)  So, the race is on to save Dani and figure out exactly what her role is in the future.

The movie was entertaining.  It had the action I would expect from a Terminator movie.  There’s an advanced robot from the future trying to change that future with lots of guns and explosions, plus at least one protector that’s above average in terms of comb at skills.  Still, I found the movie lacking.  It’s almost like the movie was written to what we would expect of it.

Part of the problem is that there are only so many directions you can go with a new Terminator.  They had the basic robot.  They had the liquid robot.  It’s hard to think of how you could one up that.  There is also a sense of fatigue.  While this movie continues from Terminator 2, there are a few other movies and a TV series.  It’s hard to think of the movie without bringing at least some of that into it.

I wouldn’t say that I was disappointed.  It’s more that the movie didn’t quite live up to what I was expecting.  It’s not a bad movie.  It’s more that there was a mismatch.  It is an enjoyable movie.  I’m just curious as to where the franchise will go from here.

IMDb page

Curvature (2017)

It’s funny how good cover art and an interesting premise can lead nowhere while a basic cover and a seemingly basic plot can be the best movie you ever saw.  I found Curvature on DVD through Netflix, thinking it might be something worth watching.  Helen is sent back in time as part of a top-secret project, but she has amnesia because of it.  She also gets a call from herself telling her to flee her house.

It sounds like it might be exciting.  Right?  The entire movie is the definition of meh.  This is despite being chased by her deceased husband’s business partner and the fact that there’s some sort of secret weapon she left for herself.  It turns out that there’s some sort of time-travel project that Helen’s husband was working on before he committed suicide, except maybe it wasn’t suicide.

It’s also a little confusing.  One of the side effects of time travel is the amnesia.  This makes it somewhat difficult to use in any practical sense.  It’s not clear if the Helen we’re watching is the future or the past Helen.  She has the amnesia associated with time travel, but she’s getting help from her other self, which is supposed to be her past self.  So, how does she know what she needs to know to help our Helen?

Helen also seems to have amnesia from before the time travel.  This, I can at least accept.  There’s no reason that the amnesia should correlate exactly to the time frame of the travel being done.  This just makes it even less useful.  Not only can you not remember what happened during the week you went back, but you’re going to lose a few more days on top of that.  It’s kind of an interesting side effect, if you’re looking for one to make time travel useless.  It doesn’t kill the person, but it does make it harder to change anything.  Even if you send back a note, there’s no way to know if it’s accurate or meaningful.

The entire thing seems like a story you might come up with in a writing class.  It’s a decent story, but there’s not too much to hold your attention.  Part of what makes a good time-travel story is that it uses the time travel aspect as a backdrop.  Terminator, for instance, was about the fate of humanity.  It was about people versus machines.  Going back in time was an interesting way to head off the problem of a great leader:  Make sure the leader was never born.

If you’re looking for a simple time-travel movie that works, go with Timecrimes.  It’s a little more complex, but it gives you that complexity in a way that’s easy to follow.  If you’re looking for something way more complex, go with Primer.  It may get difficult to follow, but it will keep you thinking.  I’d avoid Curvature.  I don’t need an entire week.  I’d settle for getting my 90 minutes back.

IMDb page

Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991)

The first two Terminator movies were a bit of a headache because of the bootstrap paradoxes.  If The Terminator hadn’t been sent back to kill Sarah Connor, Kyle Reese never would have been sent back to protect her only to become John Connor’s father.  Thus, the correct way to get rid of John Connor before he was born was to not try to kill him before he was born.

When this movie opens, Sarah is in a mental ward and John is in foster care.  He’s grown up thinking that she’s a nut job, which is a justifiable point of view.  She’s telling everyone that a machine from the future came back to kill her before her son was born.  This hasn’t stopped the apocalypse, which she needs to help John prepare for.  This would look like maybe the absolute worst Cassandra complex ever.  Except that it’s true.

Skynet has sent back an even better Terminator, the T-1000, to terminate John as a child.  Also returning from the future is a reprogrammed T-800.  This time, the original Terminator is going to protect John rather than kill him.  The same dynamic exists with a superior hunter and an inferior protector, but the same imperative exists: John Connor must live to defeat the machines.

The movie is done well enough that you can enjoy it without asking too many questions.  I originally wondered why the T-1000 didn’t, say, overload a power plant and destroy the whole city.  That would have been too easy.  Plus, the T-1000 has to be sure.  This means actually finding John Connor.  Still, you’d think that a computer system designed for defense could make a machine that could do better, or maybe even send back several terminators to work in concert.

In this case, I understand why some ideas weren’t used.  Sure, Skynet could have killed Sarah Connor while she was pregnant or killed John Connor as a baby, but this is something audiences wouldn’t react well to.  Sending something back in time is probably difficult, so sending an army back probably isn’t a viable option.  There isn’t a really great, obvious idea that I can think of.

We do get two more bootstrap paradoxes.  First, it seems likely that the arrival of the T-1000 either allowed Sarah Connor to get out of the hospital, or at least got her out early.  This allowed her to further train John Connor, who doesn’t appear to be battle ready just yet.  (Had she stayed in the hospital, John may not have done as well against the machines.)  We also find out that the arrival of the T-800 in the original movie gave Cyberdyne the idea for the terminators’ hardware, thus allowing for the creation of Skynet.  So, where did Skynet come from?

The movie could have been a simple action movie about two machines fighting over the future of the planet.  Instead, we get a commentary on the destructive nature of humanity.  Throughout all of the Terminator movies, the downfall of human civilization is inevitable.  We tend to fight one another.  This is what leads to the creation of Skynet in the first place.

IMDb page

The Terminator (1984)

The Terminator was my introduction to bootstrap paradoxes.  It was the first time that an action was caused by another action that subsequently necessitated the first action.  If John Connor hadn’t been born, he wouldn’t have led the resistance that took down the machines.  That victory caused the machines to go back in time to kill Sarah Connor before John Connor was born, meaning that Kyle Reese is sent back in time to not only protect John Connor, but to ensure he exists in the first place.  Yes, the correct decision would have been to just kill Kyle Reese or to not go back at all.

I’d elaborate on the story, but there’s not much to add.  Humans handed over the world to machines, who took that power and tried to kill the humans.  When the humans won, time travel was the last-ditch effort.  The movie is about two humans trying to survive against a nearly unstoppable machine.  The result is that Sarah Connor knows what’s coming and is able to prepare herself and her unborn child.

Sarah becomes a great reluctant hero.  The future of humanity literally hinges on her being convinced that the end is coming.  She has to protect and train our future leader. (Kyle Reese has the ultimate Cassandra complex, which he passes on to Sarah Connor to exhibit in the second movie.)

It’s interesting that The Terminator became so well known.  By today’s standards, the effects are kind of basic.  (In fact, the reason the sequel took so long to be released was due to the necessary effects not having been invented yet.)  Even Arnold Schwarzenegger’s catch phrase, “I’ll be back” was just some random throwaway line.

I did notice a few clichés, such as detailed records not existing in the future.  It occurs to me that a computer network that has access to all manner of files should have been better able to keep records.  It must have been embarrassing that no backups were kept nor were any printouts made.

Also, there’s the adversary that can mimic anyone, meaning you can’t trust the person at the other end of the phone.  So, what does Sarah do?  She calls the Terminator and gives away her location.  You’d think a machine designed to track someone would just use conventional tracking methods.  Yes, it’s easier just to ask.  Still…

Of course, there’s the one cliché common to all of the Terminator movies, in that a hopelessly outmatched hero takes on and defeats an incredible villain.  No matter what Kyle throws at The Terminator, he keeps coming.  It takes heavy machinery to eventually stop the onslaught.  (This, of course, brings us to the second movie’s bootstrap paradox:  Skynet was based off of technology that it would eventually send back into the past.)

It is nice to know that the franchise is still going strong, with another movie on the way.  It’s hard to believe that the franchise spans so man decades. Consider that in another ten years, we’ll be in the future where Skynet was dominating.

IMDb page