You have been warned that I might venture outside of gaming eventually. And what better way to start that by dropping this bombshell?
After finally watching Terminator Dark Fate, I felt obligated to set the record straight: It's not that bad at all. I've been putting off watching it for months, maybe even more than 6 months because of the unfavourable reviews from the non-feminist side. And I started watching it fully expecting to hate the guts of it.
But I slowly realised that this movie is not bad, just misunderstood. I've heard arguments like it disrespects John Connor, or undoes Terminator 2 in its entirety, but really it does not. Au contraire, it goes past it. Everything that happened in that movie is still canon, and they averted skynet by blowing up Cyberdine. This is the next chapter after that. If you want to argue that it undoes anything then it is the other less fan favorite movies. But time travel is a bitch, it's a paradox in of itself, so it can be used to explain that those aren't undone either, if you so wish. /I'm not judging your taste for it/
The only additional thing that I can say about the story without spoilers is that it is quite derivative. Much like Force Awakens is derivative of New Hope. Everything is different but exactly the same anyway, even some of the action scenes felt derivative. Like they used scenes from T2 ala carte. It almost felt as if it was a fan film, as usually fan films are this derivative.
What I also found curious is that most of the CGI looked quite weak. But especially the future scene where the Ts are coming out of the water. That would have been bad even for a video game, let alone a movie. But they nailed CGI Arnold, Edward Furlong, and Linda Hamilton in that T2 era scene. The contrast is especially pronounced since the two scenes come right after each other.
Where I can really criticize the movie is the casting of the main character, I mean the girl who they are supposed to protect. The flashforward scene where she was acting all badass was the most cringe worthy thing I've seen recently. A Mexican midget is not badass, even if you put her hair in boxer braids. /I'm sorry I don't know what is the official name of that haircut, I'm calling it this because many female fighters use it/
As for Mackanzie Davis, I didn't mind her at all, in fact I found her kind of hot, even though I'm sure I wasn't supposed to. To the dismay of fake feminists everywhere I like to see fit women on the screen. Why do you think I liked T2 that much? Of course it was a great movie too, but Linda Hamilton was absolutely ripped in it. I'm sure the VHS tape was worn 10 times thinner at the workout scene. But I digress.
Otherwise I think they treated Arnold's character pretty respectfully, even got a character arc, too bad it happened off screen, now I'd have liked to see that in a TV show, as a Terminator tries to blend in and live as a human.
Sarah Connor, well they made her a bit whiny. That was not ideal, but far from the catastrophe I was expecting. She was relegated to a sidekick role, with no real purpose in the movie. They just used her to tick feminist boxes and as a marketing tactic.
All in all I enjoyed watching the movie much more than I though I would, I think it is better than any one of the Genisys, Salvation, and Rise of the Machines trinity. I didn't know the fandom menace can get something quite this wrong, I might even have to watch Solo, maybe they got that wrong too? Nah I'm joking.
Let's see some scores:
Visuals: 5/10
Cinematography: 4/10
Story: 4/10
Action: 7/10
Overall impression: 6/10
If this was the worst thing that comes out of this new mysandrist, racist hollywood that would be amazing.