The buzz leading up to TERMINATOR: DARK FATE (2019), the sixth film in the TERMINATOR franchise, was that Linda Hamilton was returning to the series as iconic character Sarah Connor.

Hamilton had been absent since the second film in the series, TERMINATOR 2: JUDGMENT DAY (1991). Her return after so many years reminded me of a similar return last year, when Jamie Lee Curtis reprised her Laurie Strode role in the latest HALLOWEEN movie, innovatively titled, eh hem, HALLOWEEN (2018). While Curtis was fine in her return, the movie wasn’t. The 2018 HALLOWEEN was pretty bad.

The good news here is Linda Hamilton fares better, because TERMINATOR: DARK FATE is a much better movie than HALLOWEEN (2018). But don’t break out the champagne yet.

See, while I certainly liked TERMINATOR: DARK FATE, as the sixth film in the series, there is a lot that is redundant here. As a result, this latest Terminator tale while well-made and entertaining is far from anything special.

If you’ve seen any of the other TERMINATOR movies, the plot of this latest entry will no doubt be familiar. A woman named Grace (Mackenzie Davis) is sent from the future to protect a woman named Dani (Natalia Reyes) in the here and now from a murderous Terminator, the Rev-9 (Gabriel Luna), also sent from the future, his mission being to kill Dani for reasons the movie doesn’t want to tell us at first, but you can be assured that it has something to do with her saving the future from the murderous machines, the thinking being, eliminate her in the past, and the machines win in the future.

When will these villains in the future realize that this sort of plan never works? At the end of every TERMINATOR movie, these machines from the future fail. Six films into a series with the same plot point grows kinda tired.

Anyway, old friend Sarah Connor (Linda Hamilton) has been traveling the countryside destroying Terminators from the future whenever they arrive, as she receives anonymous tips from an unkown secret source alerting her of these arrivals, which is how she meets up with Grace and Dani and helps them fight off the Rev-9.

Why is this still happening when Sarah Connor supposedly saved the future back in the day? It turns out she saved only one future. While her actions at the end of TERMINATOR 2: JUDGMENT DAY saved the world from the evil Sky Net corporation, it turns out another evil company took over and basically did the same thing, create machines that eventually took on the human race.

Yeah, right. I mean, seriously, what are the odds?

Another old friend also shows up, as Arnold Schwarzenegger returns as a variation of the Terminator from TERMINATOR 2, who’s been living the dream since the 1990s and learning what it is to be human, and so he too joins the fight to save Dani from the Rev-9.

I say “variation” because TERMINATOR: DARK FATE not only chooses to ignore the last three TERMINATOR movies, but it also changes events that happened at the end of TERMINATOR 2. I can’t say that I enjoyed this change. It always feels like a cheat to me when filmmakers go back and change things in a story that has been known for years. No. Sorry. That’s not what happened. This is what happened.

Anyway, this twist didn’t ruin TERMINATOR: DARK FATE for me, but it didn’t help either.

Linda Hamilton enjoys a successful homecoming as Sarah Connor. Older, grizzled, and just as tough, Hamilton gives Sarah Connor a triumphant return to the big screen.

Lost in the Linda Hamilton buzz was that Arnold Schwarzenegger also came back for this one. Of course, his return is less of a story since he’s only missed one Terminator installment, the fourth one, TERMINATOR SALVATION (2009).  Still, Schwarzenegger makes the most of his screen time, and he has some of the better moments in the movie, a lot of them of the humorous variety.

Which reminds me: one of the best parts of the original TERMINATOR back in 1984 was that Schwarzenegger’s Terminator character was the villain. In subsequent movies, his character joined the good guys, and while this was fun, the character was never as good as he was in that first movie when he was the villain. We’d be looking at quite the different TERMINATOR series had that change not been made, and I think you could make the argument that it would have been a better series.

Mackenzie Davis is very good as Grace, the enhanced human sent back from the future to protect Dani from the latest Terminator threat. She’s believable in her action scenes, and she has enough personality to hold her own next to Hamilton and Schwarzenegger.

The same can be said for Natalia Reyes as Dani. She’s also quite good. And when these four are on-screen together they do generate some chemistry and are fun to watch.

Getting back to Mackenzie Davis for a moment, she was also memorable in TULLY (2018), where she co-starred with Charlize Theron, and she also appeared in THE MARTIAN (2015).

Who’s not overly memorable here is Gabriel Luna as the latest Terminator, the Rev-9. It’s not really Luna’s fault. The character isn’t given much personality. He’s mostly based on CGI effects.

And yes the effects here are all top-notch, as are the action scenes. In fact, some of the fight sequences and chase scenes are among the best in the entire series. Director Tim Miller, who directed DEADPOOL (2016), does a masterful job with the action sequences. Everything looks great, the sound is awesome, the stunts and CGI all believable.

If only these well-orchestrated events had resonated on an emotional level.

The screenplay by David S. Goyer, Justin Rhodes, and Billy Ray does what it sets out to do, in that it tells a Terminator story and it connects all the dots so things make sense. But the problem is that it’s pretty much the same Terminator story told in all the movies, with the exception of TERMINATOR SALVATION, which told a somewhat different tale. Ironically, TERMINATOR SALVATION tends to be the least favorite of the series among Terminator fans.

The fact is in spite of all the technical success here, nearly everything in this story rang hollow. There wasn’t one moment in the film that reached out and grabbed me. It all felt like deja vu. Even down to the ending. Yup, if you’ve seen one TERMINATOR movie, you’ve seen them all. Don’t get me wrong. I like the TERMINATOR series. But originality hasn’t been the series’ strongpoint. The movies are very repetitive and really haven’t made much of an effort to tell different and new stories. They just sort of repeat the formula from the first movie.

My favorite TERMINATOR move remains the first one, THE TERMINATOR (1984). I also really like TERMINATOR 2: JUDGMENT DAY. After that, they’re all about the same. Entertaining, action-packed, satisfying, but not very original.

TERMINATOR: DARK FATE benefits from having two of the series’ original stars, Linda Hamilton and Arnold Schwarzenegger, back on the big screen together, along with some talented newcomers, and superb special effects and action sequences, but at the end of the day, you’ve seen this shtick before.

Even the series’ catchphrase seems to return with every film, I’ll be back.

Which is fine. I just wish once in a while they’d be back with something different.

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