Terminator Dark Fate timeline, reviewed

Spoilers

0: Dark Predictions

In summer 2016, I wrote I can fix the Terminator franchise.

Can I gloat about a crazy thing that I got right?

Called it!!!?! My original idea (dying heroically in a natural disaster) differs from how this played out, and that is relevant to how many people hated this plot point.
But past-me had a good explanation for why killing him off was necessary:

Just one more thing from 2016:

I was pretty amped when a politically-relevant rogue PREDATOR DRONE showed up in the movie, but I should admit that XKCD had it 10 years ago.

1: The Bad Beginning

The beginning rewinds the timeline to just after Terminator 2, and shocks the audience by killing off John.
Yes, it was to remove John, move up the timeline, and introduce new heroes.
Was it necessary for us to see a Terminator kill him as a kid? It was hard to see him go down without anyone fighting back, a victory for Skynet. Did Sarah blame herself for letting her guard down? Did she go far off the grid? Her next 20 years is rather vague here.

The movie could use this to retcon T3-T5, and find a new path forward, but so many plot points were intertwined with this decision:

• Though John died, we learn that Skynet was defeated in T2. This point evens the score to Humans: 1, Robots: 1, but it’s an unearned victory.
  T3-T5 told us that at the end of T2, Skynet was still around and inevitable.
• Killing John and Skynet meant that we needed a new villain. “Legion” is the same time-traveling humanoid / liquid metal bot army, to the point the movie didn’t waste time on showing a difference in the present or future. Introducing Legion would be totally unneeded if Skynet was only dormant.
• Even after Skynet was defeated, Carl appeared and killed John, because he had already been sent back in time. Sarah is busy hunting other limbo-Terminators for years (which is weird, if T2 Skynet had control of its timeline from 1997 onward). If these Skynet/limbo Terminators keep on coming out of time portals, can anyone ever feel safe from Skynet?

2: Sarah‘s arrival

This was meant to be badass… but the trailer nearly convinced me that the movie would be another cringe-fest. Sarah was great in the long arc of the movie, but here she casually fires a bazooka without breaking stride…?
Also unhelpful: Sarah faced one liquid metal robot before, but she did not bring special weapons, materials, or skills to fight this one.

After getting through this brief scene, we are left with the problem that Sarah has to explain how she arrived there. We learn that someone has been texting her some special chrono wave coordinates. And who could it be 🙄

• When did Sarah Connor decide a cell phone was OK? Was she off the grid 1997–2002, then when SMS goes mainstream in Mexico, she starts using a phone, and Carl finds her and fires off some texts?

• We see that Sarah has trouble crossing the US border. Do all limbo Terminators arrive in Mexico?
• Even with the arrival coordinates, how long did Sarah have to follow Grace and the new Legion Rev9, through a car chase?
• Grace has Carl’s house’s coordinates tattooed onto her. After watching the movie, I wonder if the house was meant to be a time-travel safehouse (like in the Sarah Connor Chronicles TV series), or if the coordinates only served to confirm that was the right direction to take.

How else could Sarah have arrived on the bridge?

Maybe Sarah extracted a list of names or coordinates from a dead Terminator. She can’t find Dani until she appears on TV or something (after all, how did the Rev9 know where and when to find her?).

Maybe she listened to a police scanner, and it’s open why she is in Mexico City.

Or I guess Grace could have gotten a tattoo with her phone number and texted?

3: Dani’s family is dead

During target practice:
Sarah: (whispers into ear) “A Terminator just killed your family.”
Dani: ….Thanks for the inspiration! Yes that literally happened yesterday?

4: Dani is John

This reveal was easy to guess during the movie. Grace didn’t explain why she needed to protect Dani, so it was clear something was up.

• I liked a Redditor’s idea that we need a movie where the human who invented the evil AI or something is getting protected by a Terminator, and we want them dead. Sarah Connor Chronicles had people who invented positive and negative things in the war, so I wondered if Dani had some technical skillset at the factory.
• The reveal came at a strange time, and put Sarah in an awkward position.
  I would’ve preferred if Dani did some badass leadership thing (maybe convincing the military guy to stop, trust, and rally support for them), and Sarah would be the one to recognize what was going on.
  “She’s going to be the leader, isn’t she? She’s John.”
• When we see Grace’s connection to Dani, it seemed up until the last minute like it might be an individual experience? It didn’t seem epic enough to me.

5: Carl

The movie needs to have Arnold, and needs to have humor. Remember, T2 had a bit where John teaches Arnold how to smile.

Here’s what I didn’t like:

• The obvious one — T2 Arnold was reprogrammed before he even arrived, and altered again in the present to learn for himself. After Carl arrived and killed John, how did he determine Skynet was finished and decide to become a laid-back guy with a family and a drapes business? AND make a time-wave detector to give up his compatriots to Sarah.
  Skynet would try to reestablish itself.
  Sarah says he is a trained infiltrator, but he turns out to be genuinely good.
• Carl doesn’t bring a defendable position, future weapons, military contacts, or any other real advantages to the team. Other than hand-to-hand combat with the Rev9, which is nothing new, what did Carl add that a human could not?

Going forward

The Terminator franchise needed a movie that James Cameron felt comfortable ending on. We might have that now.
If the movie makes bank, then we have a team to keep on fighting.

If the movie is not financially successful, the IP owners might switch over to a different medium (Clone Wars animation, Stargate live action shorts, graphic novels) which are still profitable.

Concepts that I would put in the next Terminator:

• Legion exists because someone had access to Skynet tech after all
• Dani training in weapons, wilderness survival, and/or technology
• Present-day Kyle Reese
• A Skynet Terminator kidnaps Dani to hide her from a Legion Terminator, or vice versa. If you have two big evil AIs, make them fight!