Terminator: Dark Fate (2019)

T6 aka "Dark Fate" is indeed dark. Despite not being shot in 3D, the luminosity coefficient in some scenes makes you wonder if you should remove some invisible stereoscopic glasses. But that's not the biggest problem. Sorry, spoilers will follow...

All the "Terminator" series, except "Salvation", has pretty much the same story. We have a terminator sent back in time to terminate somebody, and somebody else struggling to stop the killing machine. And despite the repetition factor, the story works. How? Well, we have variation. The first one is man vs machine, the second is machine vs machine where the good machine = the bad machine from the first, the third is Kristanna Loken vs machine, etc, and so on. But variation moves forward than what vs. who/what. We do have a story. And even in this last part we have some story, until we realize it's a bit too much... the same. Linda Hamilton returns from T2, the target is a new Linda as in T1, on the good side we have a sort of a female terminator like in T3, which is actually an enhanced human, almost like in T4, and Schwarzenegger is an aging terminator who started developing something close to feeling (almost) like in T5, and we wrap up with an ending which wants to be a sort of reboot of the metal melting onw in T2 using this time some EMP and electrical discharges, totally stupid and inspiring a feeling of cheap copy - after more than 20 years of VFX evolution. So, we don't have much innovation in the story.

Even so, it wouldn't have been that bad if the production level would've been decent. But we have piles of cliche lines in the script, we have a lot of bad acting/overacting, we have poor camera work, we have an excess of VFX to supplement the lack of narrative material, we have the first situation when the screenwriters were actually lazy to try finding a connection point that would make some sense in relation with the previous production, and they've cut the story and resumed it immediately after T2. Which purpose is canceled from start - John Connor dies, so Skynet would win, but well.. Skynet is not Skynet in the future anymore, it's Legion, and we don't know why Skynet is Legion since John Connor died, but there's no problem, we'll just turn the public's attention to deadly fights in depressurized planes. The idea of an enhanced human protector brings though some original elements, and also Rev. 9 - the evil terminator model, comes with a doppelganger mode, completely inexplicable and not explained, but which looks cool. And of course, there's the old T-800 announcing that this time he'll "not be back" ( pfff... what a way out... :( ).

Rating: 3 out of 5 (= 2+1 - I'm nostalgic and subjective, but the review was objective ;)...)