Terminator - Understanding The Core

By Ephraim Belnap

In Terminator, the core is the power source without which the robot cannot function. A Terminator without the core is just a hulking pile of metal and flesh, with no energy or life.

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(This is the second prologue to my review of Dark Fate)

Terminator. Doggone Terminator. Just that word is enough to conjure whole worlds of experience for people. The terror of the monster. The thrill of the action. The nostalgia of seeing them for the first time. The warmth of hearing someone spit, "I'll be back!" And the endless waves of disappointment mixed with empathy as each new movie fails to hit the mark. 

Here's the thing - ever since Terminator 2 came out in 1993, no one has been able to make a Terminator film that everyone liked. They tried a sequel - didn't work. They tried shifting it forward and changing the genre. Didn't work. They tried rebooting the whole thing with a Marvel director and a PG-13, Game of Thrones-style finish. Didn't work. And every time the fans have said, "didn't work", they just got another thing that didn't work. How?! How did this happen? How can a series of directors, producers, cinematographers, dedicated actors, and marketers fail to recreate the magic of two two-hour movies?

Well, there's probably a lot of answers. Most of them are pretty mundane. Not enough money. Couldn't get these actors back. Trouble on location. Executives fiddled with the cut. Bad synergy. But when it comes down to it, the most tangible detail seems to be this - misunderstanding the core. The core appeals and principles that made up the first two and made them so long-lasting and profound. The answer isn't in the marketing or in the action or in the catchphrases. It's in the genre! 

Here's the thing about the first two films - they were fundamentally based in horror stories. Specifically slasher films. Halloween had come out four years before the first one, and the implacable, silent, hulking killer had been well-established. What Terminator 1 was was a horror movie ... with a strong military sci-fi bent, that actionized the story and got us invested in the heroes. T2 had the same roots, but upped the action and character investment. But it was still about being stalked by a monstrous killer. The sequel also upped it by adding the shapeshifting, body horror element. He wasn't just strong, he could look like anyone and adapt to anything. It was existential horror, pure and certain. Like The Thing (from the director of Halloween) that had been released in 1982. The presence of a horrifying, overpowering villain made the conflict clear and the characters clear in their motivations. It was complicated, but terrifically simple. And that's all there was to it. 

And that's what every sequel got wrong. 

It really started with Terminator 3. It's most responsible for all of this as the first sequel. Instead of leaning into the horror, it leaned into the action and "blockbuster" aspect, which is how we got a Terminator who inflates their boobs and controls vehicles like an evil Siri. Sexy and action-y? Yes. But scary? No! This tonal change meant that none of the story felt like the originals, and thus gave you no meaningful satisfaction at anything happening. Failure.

Salvation had the same problem. By switching the genre to post-apocalyptic survival story, it just became a generic adventure unrelated to the original. That might have succeeded as a spin-off, but it didn't really work when the franchise was barely sustaining itself. Didn't work. 

And then we had Genisys, which ONCE AGAIN veered from the horror roots in favor of a star-studded, over-lit, quippy, family-friendly smorgasbord that tried to turn itself into the Terminator Cinematic Universe instead of the sci-fi horror action flick it originally was. Total misfire.

Dark Fate's back on track. It understands it's about the monster. And it delivered a terrifying monster, courtesy of my boy Gabriel Luna. 

The Rev-9 is terrifying in its implacability and agility and stoicism. It plows through everything without thinking and doesn't hesitate to re-strategize. It attacks no less than five times, and it pushes them to the limit every time. A few small tweaks - making him feel a little emotion, making him a slightly better imitator, making him a bit more acrobatic - has invoked that "fear of God" feeling that the originals put into you. The creators understood where the core was, and how to activate it again, instead of letting it lie cold. Congratulations. 

(it's not a perfect one-to-one, I'll get into that later, but congratulations just for that)