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(Release Info London schedule; October 23rd, 2019, Cineworld Leicester Square, 5–6 Leicester Square, London, WC2H 7NA, 16:45 19:45 pm)
https://film.list.co.uk/listing/951348-terminator-dark-fate/
"Terminator: Dark Fate"
"Terminator: Dark Fate" picks up where "Terminator 2: Judgment Day" left off. More than two decades have passed since Sarah Connor prevented "Judgment Day", changed the future, and re-wrote the fate of the human race. Dani Ramos (Natalia Reyes) is living a simple life in Mexico City with her brother Diego (Diego Boneta) and father (Enrique Arce) when a highly advanced and deadly new 'Terminator', a 'Rev-9' (Gabriel Luna), travels back through time to hunt and kill her. Dani's survival depends on her joining forces with two warriors, Grace (Mackenzie Davis), an enhanced super-soldier from the future, and a battle-hardened Sarah Connor (Linda Hamilton). As the 'Rev-9' ruthlessly destroys everything and everyone in it's path on the hunt for Dani, the three are led to a 'T-800' (Arnold Schwarzenegger) from Sarah’s past that may be their last best hope.
How do we feel about another 'Terminator' movie. Is this needed? We're going to finish the story of Sarah Connor. That’s a reason to show up. 'The Terminator' ended with Sarah losing everyone she loves. In ''T-2", she has dedicated her life to protecting her young son John, but the result will not be what she envisioned. The last 28 years have changed Sarah dramatically. When this film begins, she's lost, broken and rootless. She learns that after all her sacrifices, the future hasn’t changed in the way she had hoped. Yes, she destroyed 'Cyberdyne', but now there's another 'AI, Legion'. That pretty much destroys her. The only thing she has left is her loathing of technology, the future and machines. She goes on another journey to try to reach that last little kernel of humanity inside herself. Sarah’s appeal lies in her willingness to risk not only her life but any semblance of normalcy to take the reins of destiny. It’s something we aspire to but very few of us get the chance or, if we're given the chance, are able to rise to the occasion.
When Sarah appears onscreen, you just feel, okay, here we go. A revolutionary figure in an era when action heroes are almost by definition male, Sarah’s transformation from naïve waitress to guerrilla fighter in order to save her son from the original 'Terminator' made her a movie icon. Sarah Connor is in a league of her own. How many of those characters are over 40?. It’s a very short list. How many of them are over 60? Big fat zero. The guys are still packing guns into their 80s. But in our society we discount the older woman. In classic mythology, she's the keeper of wisdom, sometimes the sorceress or the seer, but always a powerful figure. The film puts that together with a kick-ass action hero and that’s something you haven’t seen before. We’ve been waiting all these years for her to show up, and when she shows up, she delivers. Sarah is important to the history of cinema and action, and not just because she’s a woman. She’s also a cool evolution of a human being. It's really excited seeing her age into her 60s and learning who this woman is now.
The 'T-800 Terminator' is not the same cyborg seen in either of the earlier movies. It's the same model, with the same hardware and programming, but with a history of it's own. It has managed to stay in the past and build a life posing as a human being. He's the most interesting 'T-800' you’ve seen yet. And of course, he has a couple of pretty good laugh lines. Everybody is going to want to see his story and his journey. It’s got it's own special arc that comprises some of the most important moments in the movie. There's a machine-like behavior you get from bodybuilding. It’s all about reps, keeping your emotions out and focusing on your goal. But in this movie we see him becoming more human. He's aware that he’s a machine, but after being around human beings for so long, he has become more human. The 'Terminator' is the only character to be named by 'The American Film Institute' as one of the top 50 heroes (No. 48) and one of the top 50 villains (No. 22) in cinema history. The idea always is to be the villain but make everyone walk out and say, ‘that’s really cool! Can you imagine if you've that kind of a power?’ People find him inspirational in some ways as well as entertaining.
Dani is an everygirl working in a factory in Mexico City. Dani’s young but she has a gravitas far beyond her years. It seemed really interesting for the most important person in the world to be this working-class Mexican woman. She doesn’t think she’s anything special, but apparently someone does. You could compare Dani’s journey to Sarah’s in the first film. The future wants her dead, but we don’t know why. She has a normal simple life in Mexico City with her family, and then suddenly a 'Terminator' appears. She reacts the way any of us would. Then Grace and Sarah show up to defend her and it’s a whole new world. It’s a while before she starts to understand everything that’s happening. With the trio of characters on the run, the film becomes a pulse-pounding thrill ride. Dani’s brother Diego is very funny and charismatic. Grace is a soldier from the future who comes back to protect Dani. She's a 'Terminator' hunter from the future. She has a military background as an elite soldier. She's human, but has been enhanced.
Although she has some mechanical parts to her body, she's not as heavy as the 'T-800' or the 'Rev-9', so she's faster. She's built for fighting, so she's more like a high-octane race car. Little things in the body language add value to the character, keeping it authentic and a bit more visceral. In the future, before she traveled back in time to protect Dani, Grace was gravely injured and then engineered to be something more. What she has become is more subtle than a cyborg. Her bones are injected with a material that over time replaces the marrow with a super-strong silicate that's nearly unbreakable. Her muscle fiber is woven with mesh that's much stronger and more reactive. She takes a lot of chemicals to jack up her reaction time. Her brain has augmented processing power. She's very difficult, though not impossible, to harm and she’s very fast. But there's a price. And it’s been super-exciting to see the triumvirate of Sarah and Grace and Dani. They're like a pride of lionesses.
'The New Terminator' the future has sent is a newer model 'Terminator', known as the 'Rev-9', a state-of-the-art killer robot that's far more sophisticated than the earlier versions. He’s pretty damn spectacular. He’s different in so many ways. It’s not only his abilities, but also in what you’d call his personality. He’s not a cold, mechanical robotic cyborg. He’s very personable and very charming, but he’s also extremely lethal. The 'Rev-9' combines aspects of the original 'T-800' with features of the 'T-1000' introduced in 'T-2', but goes far beyond both. It has a metal endoskeleton with the liquid metal skin that can create different bladed weapons. It can also split into two separate entities that fight independently and have different abilities. Although he’s stronger together, there are strategic moments when he splits and attacks on two fronts. The biggest improvement in the 'Rev-9' is it's ability to simulate human emotion. The 'Rev-9' is focused entirely on killing it's target, and will do whatever it needs to in order to get to Dani. An artificial intelligence capable of world domination would have humans figured out. Sometimes charm and guile are easier and more effective than stealing a truck and smashing it through a building. But it’s still an unstoppable machine with one purpose.
In 1984, James Cameron unleashing a global phenomenon with 'The Terminator', a modestly budgeted, original sci-fi action film about a cyborg from an apocalyptic future that travels to the present to ensure the extermination of the human race. Dark, gritty and highly entertaining, the film moved at a blistering pace and featured an action heroine, which was highly unusual at the time. The story followed a young waitress, Sarah Connor, who was being hunted by a 'T-800' model 'Terminator' sent from the future on a deadly mission to kill her and her unborn son, the future leader of the human resistance. The relentless 'T-800' was sent by 'Skynet', a future -'A.I.' system created by 'Cyberdyne' that was set to destroy the human race. Kyle Reese (Michael Biehn) was also sent back in time, but his mission was to protect Sarah at all costs and help save humanity. The film’s success prompted a 1991 sequel, "Terminator 2: Judgment Day". 'T-2' introduced a more advanced, and more lethal, 'Terminator', the 'T-1000' (Robert Patrick), and added Sarah’s son, John (Edward Furlong) as the future leader of the resistance. "Terminator: Dark Fate" as a direct sequel to "Terminator 2", one that recaptures the riveting tone of the original 'Terminator' and it's follow-up. It has the same intensity, the same take-no-prisoners feeling and sense of abject terror. The first film was supposed to scare the crap out of you about a possible dark future and the survival of a girl that we come to care about. This film, like the others, deals with the threat of a human collision with artificial super-intelligence, which is a whole lot less science-fiction today than it was in 1984 or 1991.
"Terminator: Dark Fate" has grand vistas, especially in Almeria, where Sergio Leone shot some classic spaghetti Westerns. It's essential for the audience to have empathy for Dani, her brother, her father and their dog. To do that we needed to become involved in their life in Mexico City and love it as much as they do. We commissioned three artists to create graffiti that references alebrijes, these brightly painted folk-art animal sculptures. A classic 'Terminator'-style car chase sequence takes place on a freeway just outside Murcia in southern Spain. The 'Rev-9' commandeers an enormous earthmover to pursue Sarah, Dani, her brother Diego and Grace, picking up cars and tossing them aside like toys as he closes in. It’s a very intense chase and the goal is to make the audience feel there's a 'Terminator' bearing down on them. You feel that ferocity, that relentlessness of him constantly coming. The chase includes a spectacular car crash that's so extreme it has to be done with a remote-controlled vehicle. We've a underwater scene in which a 'Humvee' falls from the top of a dam, tumbles underwater and gets swept down a river with the 'Rev-9' in relentless pursuit. 'The Humvee' is on a giant scissor lift that could take it all the way under. The water rushes in and fills it up, and the actors have to act like they’re about to drown, which is made easier because you feel like you might in fact, drown.
"Dark Fate" continues the structure of the trinity consisting of 'Hunters', protectors and prey. The film constructs slower periods up front where you really get to know the characters, and then once the action starts, it does not stop. Each of this characters have moments that make the audience cry and cheer. There are amazing action set pieces that will get the blood pumping and a plot that will have the audience constantly wondering what happens next. Hopefully, it all adds up to a great time in the theater, which the audience will ultimately decide. "Dark Fate" honors what we all love about the original films. 'Terminator' fans will feel the same way and that the film can introduce a new generation to the world of 'Skynet'. They all believe there will be an 'A.I.' equal to or greater than a human mind. They also say it’s not going to turn into 'Skynet', but how do we know that? The debate reminds us of the enthusiasm nuclear scientists had in the 1930s and ’40s about the idea of powering the world by splitting the atom. There was zero concern over the idea that it would be weaponized. But the first manifestation of nuclear power on our planet was the destruction of two cities and hundreds of thousands of people. So the idea that it can’t happen now is not the case. The future’s not only stranger than you imagine, it’s stranger than you can imagine. 'AI’s' agenda will not kill us. We don’t know what it will become, but it will be able to evolve more in a day than we've in millions of years. At the moment, we choose to believe they’ll be better than us. It’s 'R'-rated, it’s gritty, it’s fast, it’s intense, it’s linear. The whole story is a white-knuckle ride through a kind of techno-hell that arrives in our present day.
