The Terminator was released on October 26, 1984, by the hands of prolific director James Cameron. Today – 35 years later the story returns with another chapter to the big screen with Tim Miller as director, yes, the same Tim Miller that directed the 2016 hit, Deadpool.
Working head to head with writer David S. Goyer, Miller has given a spectacular twist to the plot, precisely departing from what did not work in rather neglected deliveries such as Rise of the Machines, Salvation and Genisys. Now, if you didn’t quite catch the aforementioned twist, or did not quite follow the time travel issue, or you did not quite understand the new terminators thing, you are in the right place, because without further ado, we will analyze and explain what really happened on Terminator: Dark Fate.
1 ^ Does Terminator: Dark Fate have post-credit scenes?
No, it has no post-credit scenes. So once you see the name of Tim Miller on screen, and if you have no intention of listening to the soundtrack – which could certainly be much better – run away from that movie theater.
2 ^ What is the connection between Terminator: Dark Fate and the other films in the series?
We have to make something clear, Terminator: Dark Fate is the direct sequel to Terminator 2: The Last Judgment , which would make the third movie in the series.
But what about Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines ? And Terminator: Salvation? And Terminator: Genisys ? Well, saying it in the sweetest words that can be found, Tim Miller sent these films – and the 2008 Lena Headey TV series – to the trash. That is, he took them out of the canon and simply pretended they never existed, which turned out to be a wise, totally wise and intelligent decision.
3 ^ So what happened to Sarah Connor and John Connor after Terminator 2: Judgement Day?
Unlike what we saw in the aforementioned and discarded sequels, after Sarah (Linda Hamilton) and John (Edward Furlong) ended the T-1000 (Robert Patrick), with the help of the T-800 (Arnold Schwarzenegger), they thought the work was done, and they could simply retire to rest. What they did not expect was that Skynet had not been so stupid to send a single Terminator, in case the previous ones failed, and while they were on vacation in Mexico, they crash into another T-800 and this one did manage to kill John.
4 ^ Why is the Terminator old? Isn’t he a robot?
Well, curiously, Terminator: Dark Fate has to thank Terminator: Genisys for this answer. The Terminator, is a cybernetic organism covered with living organic tissue that, like any other living tissue, eventually ages and that is why 22 years after John’s death, he looks like a senior citizen, although it retains its strength – and other features – intact.
5 ^ Why is The Terminator technology so obsolete?
An even nostalgic aspect, it can be said, are the vision graphics of the Terminator embodied by Arnold Schwarzenegger, but the big question here it is … if the Terminator comes from the future, why do these graphics look so obsolete? The answer is simple, in the future of the T-800, technological development stops abruptly in 1997, that is, at a stage where 8-bit images were still considered standard.
In other words, technology stagnated when computers were still using Windows ’95 and its not-so-striking graphical interface. Now, to justify the graphics of the Terminator were so 1980s, in Terminator 2, they justified it with the issue that Skynet worked with a kind of server software much more similar to MS-DOS, than to Windows. Which makes sense. Who would want Windows as the OS for their servers?
6 ^ So, from what future are Grace and the Rev-9 coming?
Just as Kyle Reese and the T-800 arrived from the future in the original Terminator movie, in this version Grace (Mackenzie Davis) and the Rev-9 (Gabriel Luna) come from the future to deal with the present, the first one to protect and the second one to destroy Daniela Ramos (Natalia Reyes), but this is not the same future that Reese and the T-800 came from.
When Sarah Connor, her son John, the T-800 and Miles Bennett Dyson destroyed the Terminators prototypes, including the T-800 itself, they destroyed the future in which Skynet had caused a nuclear war and then attacked humans. That future, in which the world ended in 1997, simply never existed.
Now, in a way that was not explained in the film – because most likely they are saving it for a sequel – a kind of military venture develops an artificial intelligence called Legion. Initially, when the armies realized that Legion was becoming a threat, they tried to turn it off using electromagnetic pulses, but Legion counterattacked using the atomic arsenal, generating a nuclear holocaust. Now, in that future, Legion analyzed the possibility of counterattack of human beings and before it happened, a worldwide hunt against humans began.
7 ^ Why does the Rev-9 want to kill Dani?
Unlike what happened with Sarah Connor in 1984, and similar to what happened with John Connor in 1995 – Terminator 2 takes place 4 years after its release date in 1991 – the new Terminator Rev-9 wants to kill Dani, not because she is the mother of a military leader capable of defeating the artificial intelligence that gives orders. No, the artificial intelligence known as Legion sent the Terminator because Dani is going to be that leader capable of organizing the few surviving humans, giving them hope, turning them into a militia, and turning them into an army capable of posing a serious threat to the machines.
8 ^ What year are Grace and the Rev-9 exterminator coming from? In what year do the machines take power?
They come from 22 years in the future, exactly in 2042. According to what Grace informs Dani, Sarah and Carl, and the flashbacks we see from their point of view, the year in which the machines take power must be 2021 or 2022, since Grace is seen in flashbacks with a similar age to the Grace that exists in 2020, just like Dani.
9 ^ What exactly is Grace?
Grace is a soldier trained directly by the commander of resistance against machines in 2042, Daniela Ramos. Grace stands out in aircraft piloting, until at some point in 2042, she is seriously injured trying to save her commander. Grace decides to volunteer for a cybernetic improvement that incorporates in her body a number of elements that improve her strength, endurance and speed. As well as sharpening her senses.
10 ^ Why does Grace need constantly inject herself?
However, Grace’s human body is unable to support the energy expenditure of all its attachments and a solution must be injected into her body that allows it to balance its metabolism much better. In other words, Grace receives her energy just like the rest of human beings, eating, but the speed of food processing is not enough for her energy expenditure, so she needs extra help to increase her speed, for that she needs the injections.
11 ^ What exactly is the Terminator Rev-9?
It is a Terminator sent by Legion to end Dani, and is made of two components: a solid frame that incorporates its processing unit, and a cover with some kind of intelligent metal – nanotechnology, perhaps – that is capable of taking any form that touches. Unlike the rather deficient TX of Terminator 3, the Rev-9 is able to completely separate its two components to the point of literally creating two independent creatures, but much weaker than their entire form.
An additional difference, the terminators from other films are cold and very unfriendly. The Rev-9 (Gabriel Luna) is quite nice and conveys charisma and charm. He is capable of making jokes, making and understanding irony, and consequently he is able to understand human behavior, at levels that the other exterminators without contact with humans never had.
12 ^ Is Carl the same terminator from Terminator 2?
No. The terminator from Terminator 2 was destroyed in a foundry in 1995. Carl was the terminator who murdered John Connor and who, after ceasing to receive instructions from Skynet, decided to find a new purpose, which was to start a family with Alicia and her son Mateo.
The years spent by the terminator with Alicia and Mateo allowed him to understand the human race from another perspective.
13 ^ Why did Carl send coordinates to Sarah Connor?
Because after understanding what Sarah had lost, when he killed John, he understood that the woman should be repaired and the only way was giving her a purpose: to eliminate as many terminators as possible, and for that he sent the coordinates of all terminators that Skynet sent to different points of history, as a contingency in case the previous ones failed.
14 ^ Why does Grace have the coordinates of Carl’s house tattooed on her body?
The answer to this has to do with the cyclical nature of the time travel in the film, much like Dark, the TV series on Netflix. That is, the Dani from the future, the one that sent Grace to save her, acquired her status as commander leader precisely because of her experience fighting the terminator who came from the future, when she was young.
Without the terminator, there is no warrior Dani, and without warrior Dani, there is no terminator, it is an infinite loop. It was Dani who tattooed the coordinates on Grace’s body, because she had already been in that house and knew the help she was going to find there. This is one of the so-called temporary paradoxes, which curiously, a movie like Avengers: Endgame could solve much more wisely.
5 ^ Why did Grace have to die to defeat the Rev-9?
Initially the plan to end the Rev-9 exterminator was to use Dani as bait, and attract him to a point where Sarah, Grace and Carl had the advantage and use a device capable of creating an electromagnetic pulse to fry the terminator processing matrix . However, in the confrontation the devices were damaged.
When in the dam’s engine room, both Carl and Grace were out of combat, the most efficient way to solve the problem was to use Grace’s power core, to generate the electromagnetic pulse, however the consequence was Grace, depending on this core to coordinate all its biological activity, was going to die.
Dani reluctantly accepts, and with Carl’s help, she finally manages to annihilate the terminator.
16 ^ What does the final scene of Terminator Dark Fate mean?
In the last minutes of the film, we see Dani staring at Grace, who in 2020 is still a child, and promises Sarah that she will not allow her to die again. Sarah tells her that to prevent that from happening, she must be ready, what does this mean?
What Dani means is that she is willing to fight so fate will not be fulfilled as Grace described it, that she will do everything possible to destroy Legion, before the apocalypse of the machines happens. However, Sarah replies that she must be ready, this means that Sarah is going to take Dani to prepare her now, teaching her everything she knows about defending herself, believing in a cause, and going beyond fate.
17 ^ What does the film’s title – Dark Fate – mean? What is the message of the movie?
The movie is, surprisingly, an invitation to reflect on a problem that we have normally never associated with Terminator, the connection between the United States and Mexico. This way of connecting a real situation, current and relevant, with a saga of science fiction has been perhaps the best idea that could have occurred to someone in the recent history of cinema.
Tim Miller presents us with a fantastic plot, but that puts us in the shoes of thousands of Latin Americans who, for abysmally different reasons, decide to immigrate illegally to the United States. Likewise, incorporating a Colombian, a Latina, like Natalia Reyes, to play a Mexican, as the target of a terminator gives us light of the weight that minority recognition has recently had in american cinema.
And underlying all of the above, it is an invitation not to let us convince ourselves that because we are from somewhere, or from some family, or from some socio-economic segment, we are destined to be or do something. We ourselves are the owners of our destiny, with each decision we make on each of the days we breathe on this planet.
If the movie is good or bad, we will discuss that later, on the review of the film. Questions? Annotations? Doubts? Insults? The comments section is open just below this post. See you in another post of Ending Explained, here on El Sabanero X.
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