Terminator: Dark Fate
Nov. 9th, 2019 02:37 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
psocopteraHoly shit, I loved Terminator: Dark Fate. I'm sure the people who hate women will have many very rational reasons why it was a terrible movie, and possibly people with interesting opinions will also have complaints, but it was everything I personally was looking for, and I was super into it. More behind a cut:
Oh my god, starting the movie with the death of John as a kid was *devastating*, and also brilliant a) as a way to recenter the story and b) for character development for Sarah, of the "what's the worst thing we could do to this character" type. I have no patience for the fridging of women to give dudes manpain, but I love Sarah getting to have this epic tragic series-spanning narrative arc like that. I cried so much at "for John" at the end, but then she gets to resume her life's work training the leader of the resistance, waaah. Linda Hamilton's first appearance onscreen was thrilling, OH GOSH. And Mackenzie Davis was so badass (and does she look kind of like Mary Stuart Masterson in Some Kind of Wonderful? Between Davis and Hamilton we were *really* hitting my teenaged "gee I don't know why I'm so into these actresses in these movies but I sure am" button. Hamilton's pull-ups in T2 practically installed that button.) And then, let's see, tons of delightful, ludicrous action sequences, and appropriately nifty-creepy special effects (I loved the skeleton walking in and out of the liquid part). Oh, and the migrant imagery! Some of that was so good - the train, and Grace standing on the train, and the menace of the drone, and the CBP detention center, and that bullshit line about "they're not prisoners"... obviously in real life I don't wish for harm to real people and just hope that people find their conscience, quit, and spend the rest of their lives trying to make up for harm, but it was sure satisfying in a fantasy action movie to watch that terminator tear through those CBP officers. Logan did some similar stuff, using the visual language of our real-life authoritarian nightmare. The way that for the people in the cages, the dystopian world of surveillance and domination by a compassionless enemy is already here, damn. And Dani is so perfect as the emerging hero. The scene on the plane, that she is the future... it was *so good*, and the way that changes how Sarah sees her, and the way her future and present timelines cross with Grace's... the relationships between these three women were such a good story. I also really liked Carl (who found a conscience! see, even murder robots can do it!) although it's weird to see him in movies and be like "wait, he was the governor of California?". But I liked that he got to do one more heroic self-sacrifice. Good stuff. Oh, and! The remixing of the theme as classical guitar at the end was *excellent*, I really love that kind of thing.
Oh my god, starting the movie with the death of John as a kid was *devastating*, and also brilliant a) as a way to recenter the story and b) for character development for Sarah, of the "what's the worst thing we could do to this character" type. I have no patience for the fridging of women to give dudes manpain, but I love Sarah getting to have this epic tragic series-spanning narrative arc like that. I cried so much at "for John" at the end, but then she gets to resume her life's work training the leader of the resistance, waaah. Linda Hamilton's first appearance onscreen was thrilling, OH GOSH. And Mackenzie Davis was so badass (and does she look kind of like Mary Stuart Masterson in Some Kind of Wonderful? Between Davis and Hamilton we were *really* hitting my teenaged "gee I don't know why I'm so into these actresses in these movies but I sure am" button. Hamilton's pull-ups in T2 practically installed that button.) And then, let's see, tons of delightful, ludicrous action sequences, and appropriately nifty-creepy special effects (I loved the skeleton walking in and out of the liquid part). Oh, and the migrant imagery! Some of that was so good - the train, and Grace standing on the train, and the menace of the drone, and the CBP detention center, and that bullshit line about "they're not prisoners"... obviously in real life I don't wish for harm to real people and just hope that people find their conscience, quit, and spend the rest of their lives trying to make up for harm, but it was sure satisfying in a fantasy action movie to watch that terminator tear through those CBP officers. Logan did some similar stuff, using the visual language of our real-life authoritarian nightmare. The way that for the people in the cages, the dystopian world of surveillance and domination by a compassionless enemy is already here, damn. And Dani is so perfect as the emerging hero. The scene on the plane, that she is the future... it was *so good*, and the way that changes how Sarah sees her, and the way her future and present timelines cross with Grace's... the relationships between these three women were such a good story. I also really liked Carl (who found a conscience! see, even murder robots can do it!) although it's weird to see him in movies and be like "wait, he was the governor of California?". But I liked that he got to do one more heroic self-sacrifice. Good stuff. Oh, and! The remixing of the theme as classical guitar at the end was *excellent*, I really love that kind of thing.
