The Terminator franchise just hasn’t been the same since Terminator 2: Judgement Day. With key creative and performing players missing, it seemed like it would meet a dark fate. However, director Tim Miller and producer James Cameron promise that Terminator: Dark Fate will be different.

Not only are they bringing back Linda Hamilton as Sarah Connor, Arnold Schwarzenegger as the T-800, and Edward Furlong as John Connor, but the film will also be a “relentless” and “white-knuckle” actioner going back to the franchise’s R-rated roots. Check out the featurette below.

Let’s face it, anything after Judgement Day left fans bitter. It’s like the sequels forgot what made the first two films so great. “Tim has recaptured that tone,” Cameron assures. “It’s R-rated, it’s grim, it’s gritty, it’s fast, it’s intense.”

That may be great and sounds like a return to form, but will it be enough to recapture that magic that had all of us on the edge of our seats? Honestly, this featurette sounds like a mere pitch to tell us that this will be an R-rated Terminator, so let’s use as many expletives and show as many violent scenes as possible.

Of course, this is only a minute and a half featurette. Not the entire film. Still, this feels like a last-ditch attempt to keep the franchise alive. The set pieces we have seen, the truck chase, the fight in the factory, and the mid-air battle sequence, all look cool – even on a laptop – but they will be hollow if there is no organic lead into it or a great story to support those sequences.

Natalia Reyes says Miller brings in a fresh vision coming off his feature debut Deadpool.

The featurette then goes back to Cameron, who calls Terminator: Dark Fate a “fast, white-knuckle ride” that follows tonally in the footsteps of The Terminator and T2.

Hamilton adds that the “action is ten times bigger. It’s like holy shit, holy shit, holy shit.”

Again, sounds great but that doesn’t mean it’s a ringing endorsement.

Then Miller exclaims that “this is fucking insane.” And it finally closes out with a T-800 shooting one of those “metal motherfuckers” right in the face, which does not phase them in the slightest bit.

Also starring in the movie is Mackenzie Davis, Gabriel Luna, and Diego Boneta.

Here’s the official plot synopsis:

27 years after the events of Terminator 2: Judgment Day, a new, modified liquid metal Terminator (Gabriel Luna) is sent from the future by Skynet in order to terminate Dani Ramos (Natalia Reyes), a hybrid cyborg human (Mackenzie Davis), and her friends. Sarah Connor comes to their aid, as well as the original Terminator, for a fight for the future.

Written by David Goyer, Justin Rhodes, and Billy Ray, Terminator: Dark Fate opens in theaters on November 1, 2019.

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[Source: Paramount Pictures YT]