The thought of a new Terminator film isn’t exactly the same excitement-inducing thing it once was. But Terminator: Dark Fate is bucking the trend because of a number of reasons.
It’s directed by Tim Miller, who did Deadpool and knows how to fix a beloved franchise that’s been hard done by, it’ll ignore all the films after Terminator 2: Judgment Day, and James Cameron is onboard as a producer to make sure they don’t mess it up again.
But the biggest reason why Dark Fate is incredibly exciting is because women are back in the lead. They got Mackenzie Davis as the lead terminator role of Grace and they’ve they’ve brought Linda Hamilton back to reprise the role of Sarah Connor, aka one of cinema’s greatest action heroes.
In a new interview with Variety, Miller said that the lead terminator role was always intended to be played by a woman, calling the human/machine character a “new protector” who doesn’t “live a long time”, is basically in a “sacrificial role”, and someone (something?) who’s had a “painful” life that’s numbed by “a lot of drugs”.
While this may seem like a case of token casting, Miller explains that they “did not trade certain gender traits for others” when developing Grace, calling the character “just very strong.”
Unsurprisingly, the internet bros had a lot to say about Dark Fate‘s female characters when the first poster and trailer was released, which won’t bode well for them when they actually see the film because Miller thinks Grace will “scare the f**k” out of “closet misogynists”, not that he gives a crap what online trolls think anyway.
What some people forget is that a lot of why the first two Terminator films (aka the good ones) worked was because it was driven by a strong female lead in Sarah Connor. It’s perhaps no surprise that the lack of good female leads from Terminator 3 onwards resulted in rapidly diminishing returns.
By bringing Linda back as Sarah and creating a badarse new female lead for Dark Fate, the filmmakers are doing what made the series so good in the first place, which immediately renders whatever weak “argument” trolls have about Grace and Dark Fate‘s emphasis on female characters moot.
We’ll find out if Dark Fate has managed to put all the pieces together when the film drops on November 1, but the thought of the movie making whiney bros cry with its female empowerment is more than worth the price of admission.