Terminator: Dark Fate is fast approaching, and we now have a fresh look at the movie thanks to some newly released stills. Before we get to those, though, director Tim Miller was asked about the struggles the franchise has had to find an audience since
Terminator 3 was released in 2003.
"I think the brand has been tainted a little bit," Miller admits. "I don’t want to disparage the work of any of those movies, and some of them were interesting, but I feel like they just played in the world of The Terminator – it was essentially a different thing. T2 was just one of those events that was a [frick]ing revelation. It's one of those films that everyone remembers what they were doing when they first saw it. I still don’t think I realise what I’m doing trying to follow that up…"
Oh, and for those of you worrying about how to keep up with the franchise's complicated timeline, fear not. According to producer Bonnie Curtis, Dark Fate will serve as a sequel to the first two films and the "other sequels" all take place in an alternate timeline.
"There was the first movie. Then there was the second movie. Then, after about 27 years, it’s our movie!" she laughs. That's bound to come as a relief...unless you loved Salvation and Genisys!
To check out these new
Terminator: Dark Fate images, simply hit the "View List" button!
Continue reading below for a reminder of Terminator:
Dark Fate reveals from this year's San Diego Comic-Con!
It Won't Feature Avengers: Endgame-Style Time-Travel
"The time-travel, for me, I loved Endgame I think it's fantastic. However, I feel like time-travel with multiple realities loses some stakes," director Tim Miller said regarding how this sci-fi adventure differs to the superhero ensemble after it brought time-travel back to theaters in a big way.
"If you can change time and it can be anything. I feel like you lose a little bit of the dramatic stakes. So, in the Terminator universe, there is only one timeline. If you change something in the past, it rolls forward and changes something in the future." He added that idea ties back into the first two films and noted that this one will deal with
"the consequences of destroying Cyberdine."
The Movie Is Officially Rated "R"
This is bound to be music to the ears of many fans:
Terminator: Dark Fate is officially R-Rated!
"The DNA of Terminator is an R-rated f*cking movie," Miller says. "So to not do it R feels disingenuous to the source material." The director added that there were some backup plans if the studio disagreed and that they shot PG-13 versions of key scenes. However, they listened to fans and decided that the best approach was going back to what worked for the original movies.
"I got so many takes of Linda saying [frick]," Miller joked. Not Arnie, though: "Robots don’t curse."
Why James Cameron Returned To The Franchise
James Cameron foolishly endorsed
Terminator: Genisys, but he's also taken an active role in the development of this sequel/reboot. However, when he was asked to return, he had one condition: Arnie had to come with him!
"If I was gonna do it, I wanted Arnold in...What do we do with the T-800? How do we create a new character for him, something no one has ever seen before?"
"I think we came up with something pretty good," he teased. The filmmaker went on to praise director Tim Miller and said that
"[we're] coming up with crazy new stuff you've never seen before." It was Cameron who convinced Linda Hamilton to reprise the role of Sarah Connor, and her love of the character is what led her to saying yes. So, it sounds like they have the right intentions.
Why Arnold Schwarzenegger Is Back...Again
Arnie's likeness was used in
Terminator: Salvation but he didn't truly fulfil his promise of "I'll be back" until
Terminator: Genisys. Well, he's returning again in this movie and says his decision boils down to:
"Of course I need to come back! I'm addicted to Terminator. Terminator is the movie that really launched my action movie career."
"I feel very indebted to Jim Cameron for having created that character," he said, before promising fans that this movie is going to be something special and a sequel they can get behind. "I think that you'll be really surprised at this movie because it's unbelievable and I was blown away when I saw it three weeks ago for the first time."
Tim Miller Is Well Aware Of Franchise Fatigue
A sixth
Terminator movie honestly sounds like a chore, especially as only two of the past five instalments have been any good! Well, Miller is well aware of this and can relate to how fans are feeling.
"How would I feel if they announced a sixth Terminator movie?" he posited.
"I’d feel f*ck me." He added that he knew from the start that the movie would have to be very different to get fans back on board, and that is why he brought Sarah Connor back because he knew they needed to find a part of the story that felt unfinished. We'll find out whether that's the case this November.
The T-800's New Name Is...Carl
Rumours have been swirling that Arnold Schwarzenegger is playing the human who the T-800 was based on, but we now know that's not the case. In the trailer that was shown to fans, it was revealed that he's playing a T-800 who has decided to live out his life as a human in a community where he's well-liked.
To the locals and his friends, he's known as "Carl" and Sarah Connor warns him that once their mission is done and he's outlived his influence, she's going to put the T-800 down once and for all.
Eddie Furlong Is Back As John Connor
Perhaps the biggest news to come out of the panel is the announcement that Eddie Furlong is set to reprise his role as John Connor. Catching up with that character promises to be a lot of fun, especially now we're returning to the "original" timeline to see what happened after the events of the second
Terminator film.
They've done a good job of keeping this secret, so time will tell just how big his role ends up being.
Footage Description
The new trailer has yet to be released online but here's a description courtesy of
Screen Rant:
It started off with a longer look at the car chase glimpsed in the movie's first trailer, with Grace (Davis) and Dani being pursued by Luna's Terminator. After that came a scene where Sarah gives advise to Grace, explaining that she and her son, John, changed the future (saving three billion lives) and that Sarah's been hunting terminators every since. Grace asks why she wants to help them and Sarah says she was Dani and "It sucks".
The three then go to a cabin in the woods where they meet Schwarzenegger's T-800. Sarah tries to kill him, but Grace stops her. The robot then introduces himself as Carl (Sarah says she'll never call him that) and he agrees to help protect Dani and teaches her how to fire a gun. In a later shot, Sarah says that she plans to kill Carl once everything's over and he seems to understand.
The footage also featured fresh shots from the post-apocalyptic future, Carl taking bullets for Sarah (something that makes her mad, but doesn't hurt him), Sarah and Dani in a humvee parachuting with Luna's Terminator attached, and Grace battling an army of Terminators with metal tentacles on their backs. Everything ultimately concludes with Luna’s Terminator telling the heroes to just hand over Dani, but Sarah says they won’t because they aren’t machines. (She also calls him a “metal motherf***er”.)
Sounds pretty fun, right?
Continue reading below to check out some recently
released hi-res stills from Terminator: Dark Fate!
Mackenzie Davis is clearly playing a robot created by Skynet meant to blend in with humans, but she seems convinced that she's real, and that could be where Arnold Schwarzenegger's character comes in - assuming he explains to her that the villainous organisation uses real people as the basis for their machines. Either way, she's pictured here alongside Natalia Reyes.
Sarah Connor's return has generated an awful lot of excitement and with moviegoers demanding badass female leads, it's pretty clear that she will be filling that void. This is an amazing shot, and while Emilia Clarke was fine in the role as a younger version of Sarah, it's good to have the real deal here!
Gabriel Luna's Terminator can clearly replicate himself, and he now has a name: Rev 9. Right now, we don't know what that's referring to, but speculation is running rampant that it could have something to do with the Biblical verse. A combination of both the T-800 and T-1000, he looks pretty damn formidable and could be the coolest villain this franchise has had yet. Well, maybe!
Arnold Schwarzenegger was barely featured in the trailer, so it's good to see him getting some action here. Rumour has it he's playing the human that the T-800 was based on, but could be be Carl, the owner of Carl's Draperies. That would be weird, but it's feasible!
Tim Miller was working with a limited budget on
Deadpool, so it will be interesting to see how he handles this leap to blockbuster filmmaking with a massive budget. Should the movie flop, that will set his career back quite considerably and probably means this series is well and truly a lost cause.