88 THENEWYORKER, NOVEMBER 11, 2019
Tim Miller’s film marks James Cameron’s return to the “Terminator” series.
THE CURRENT CINEMA
END TIMES
“Terminator: Dark Fate” and “Marriage Story.”
BY ANTHONY LANE
ILLUSTRATION BY LEONARDO SANTAMARIA
O
f the many charms of the “Termi-
nator” franchise, the most delight-
ful is the emergence of a new etiquette.
Once Homo sapiens and Homo roboticus
begin to interact, and once time ceases
to be something that you waste or spend
and becomes a portal through which
you pass, the language of social custom
shifts accordingly. Thus, in the latest in-
stallment, “Terminator: Dark Fate,” one
character says to another, “When are
you from?” Better still, because it’s ut-
tered by Arnold Schwarzenegger, is the
exquisite line “May I ask what you are?”
The director is Tim Miller, though
the name that shines out from the cred-
its is that of James Cameron, who is listed
as a producer and as one of five contrib-
utors to the story. The first two “Termi-
nator” films, in 1984 and 1991, were di-
rected by Cameron alone, and, after his
departure, the ensuing movies—“Termi-
nator: Rise of the Machines” (2003), “Ter-
minator Salvation” (2009), and “Termi-
nator Genisys” (2015)—are widely held
to have suffered a process of gradual decay,
like unrefrigerated fish. Much is expected,
then, from the return of the king.
The action starts with a grainy clip of
a scene from “Terminator 2: Judgment
Day,” in which the heroine, Sarah Con-
nor (Linda Hamilton), ranted about a
looming apocalypse. Thanks to her in-
tervention, it was averted, but we now
learn of a reloom—a second-generation
disaster, in which cyborgs spawned by an
A.I. program called Legion will get se-
riously futuristic on the world’s ass. The
good news is that Sarah’s back, and hell-
bent, once again, on stopping the horror
before it happens. What she’s been doing
in the interim is unclear, though my guess
is that she’s been rehearsing her heavy-
weapons drill and, to judge by her voice,
smoking forty Camels a day.
The plot consists of heated-up left-
overs from the first three “Terminator”
films. An unrelenting android, Rev-9
(Gabriel Luna), is dispatched from the
years to come and lands in the present
day, his duty being to destroy a young
Mexican woman, Dani (Natalia Reyes),
for reasons as yet unrevealed. Against
him are arrayed the following: Sarah,
who brings along a rocket launcher as
you or I would pack an energy drink;
Grace (Mackenzie Davis), who is like
any other human, only more so, having
been “augmented,” as she says, with su-
perior powers; and a grizzled old geezer
named Carl (Schwarzenegger), who lives
near Laredo, Texas, with his family and
runs a business making drapes. When
you hear how decisive Carl can be with
his customers—“The guy wanted solid-
color blocks for his little girl’s bedroom,
and I said, ‘Don’t do it’”—you wonder
vaguely what he did before.
Schwarzenegger is oddly touching
and funny here, but don’t take my word
for it. Take his. “I’m reliable, I’m a very
good listener, and I’m extremely funny,”
he says, with a face of steel. Having been
a killer in the first film and a protector
in the second, he is now steered into a
wholly novel groove. I don’t buy those
changes for a moment, though I ap-
plaud the effort, whereas poor Rev-9 is,
if anything, a downgrade from T-1000,
the villain in “Judgment Day.” Both can
assume any guise and, when smashed
or shredded, mold themselves back into
shape; the difference is that, whereas
the earlier model was like quicksilver,
the new one appears to be made of mo-
lasses. If you attacked him with self-ris-
ing flour, two eggs, and a handful of rai-
sins, you could turn him into a fruitcake.
Despite the déjà vu, there is plenty to
savor in Miller’s film, and the final third,
in particular, is quite the light show. Any
fool can, say, jump from a Lockheed C-5.
To be inside a Humvee, however, as it
drops out of a flaming C-5 whose rear
end has been sheared off, and to have
your chute deposit you on the lip of a hy-
droelectric dam, gives you so much more
to talk about at parties. As Sarah, Dani,
and Grace join forces to trounce their
sticky foe, you realize that this is what
used to be known as a woman’s picture,
propelled by female sacrifice and pluck,
and that Mackenzie Davis—tough but
not invincible, and wise to her own frail-
ties—is at the core of the propulsion.
Meanwhile, for anyone still clinging dog-
gedly to the primacy of the male warrior,
the most pressing question is “Will it be
curtains for Carl?” Wait and see.
G
oing to the movies on a date, es-
pecially a first date, is a risky busi-
ness, and many a tender romance must
have foundered, in the late nineteen-
seventies, during showings of “I Spit on
