‘Terminator: Dark Fate’ Will Show The Consequences Of A Critical Moment In ‘T2’
Ask a person to summarize theTerminatortimeline, and you might just drive them insane enough to create a world-destroying AI technology. James Cameron’s first 1984 sci-fi/horror movie and its 1991 sequel,T2: Judgment Day, were straightforward enough action movies with some admittedly loose approaches to time travel. But things went downhill from there — both creatively and canonically — as sequels, spin-offs, and reboots fudged the timeline up even more.
But directorTim Millerpromises all that will change withTerminator: Dark Fate. The upcomingTerminatorsequel stands apart from the other films, Miller says, because theTerminator Dark Fateplot deals directly with the consequences of Sarah Connor’s (Linda Hamilton) critical action inT2.
We’ve known for a while thatTerminator: Dark Fatewillignore the eventsof theTerminatorfilms that followedT2(because really, who wants to rememberTerminator: Genisys?), but Miller reveals that the upcomingTerminatorsequel will deal more directly with the events ofT2than any film has attempted to before. In an interview withEntertainment Weekly, Miller said that his upcoming sequel will deal with the aftermath of Sarah Connor destroying Cyberdyne Systems, the company whose Skynet would eventually try to destroy humanity in the future. “I honestly believe this would be the best version of the movie after the second one,” Miller said, adding:
“The first two movies really deal with time as a loop, what’s happening is the same thing that happened before and everybody is fighting to ensure that happens again. And Jim [Cameron] had this lucky break that he only broke that rule at the end ofTerminator 2when Sarah destroys Cyberdyne, it’s the first thing that happened that hadn’t happened before, and so it was going to change the future — but no one knew how. And I don’t think the movies that came after it really explored that in a clean way like I believe we are, with true consequences, and it makes perfect sense for Sarah to be the one to face those consequences since they were her choices to begin with.”
The end ofT2saw Connor destroying Cyberdyne and facing the future with hope, though it seems like her efforts ultimately failed considering she is still battling time-traveling killer robots 28 years later. But it’s the way thatDark Fatewrangles with the aftermath of Cyberdyne’s destruction that we see why Connor is back (as well as Hamilton, making her lauded return to the franchise) as a grizzled, bazooka-wielding Sarah Connor.
“There is a real gift in that so much time has passed, and that gives me so much more to explore with the character,” Hamilton told EW, continuing:
“Sarah Connor is the same person but I wanted to see how the difference in events have changed her and shaped her and send her forward. There was meat there. I didn’t want to just recycle the same idea. It’s a woman who has a different mission, a different story, so I wanted to see what we could do with that.”
We’ll certainly see whenTerminator: Dark Fateopens in theaters onNovember 1, 2019.
