Terminator: Dark Fate made $261.1 million at the box office. Read that number again, then read the title of this article, knowing that it’s absolutely true. The film cost just under $200 million to make. Since it’s a legacy sequel in a tremendous franchise, Dark Fate had tremendous expectations on its shoulders. It failed to meet those expectations by such a massive margin that its most impressive accolade is its place on a list of box-office bombs. Despite all of that, millions of Netflix viewers are discovering that it’s a pretty good film.
Director Tim Miller is an odd figure in nerd circles. He’s more of a producer than anything else, putting his name on several interesting projects. He directed the original Deadpool, instantly cementing him as a name to watch. Most of his recent work has taken place in anthologies like Love, Death & Robots and Secret Level. He was also smart enough to keep his name out of the credits for Borderlands, for which he directed reshoots.
Terminator: Dark Fate Fixes the Future on Netflix
Dark Fate is the sixth entry in the Terminator franchise, which has undergone some truly terrible modernization. The original 1984 classic was James Cameron’s big break, allowing him to create one of the finest sequels ever made in T2. Rise of the Machines is a mixed bag, but everything beyond that initial trilogy has been a bit of a mess. Dark Fate takes the legacy sequel approach, trying to bring things back to the T2 glory days. Of course, nearly every entry in the franchise does something along those lines. All they seem to want to do is start over, despite the fact that moving forward is the only way to save the franchise. Another soldier hops back in time to protect another young lady from another robot assassin. The elements are switched around, but the framing remains the same. Still, it’s one of the better entries.
Terminator: Dark Fate stands below the first two films but well above its immediate predecessor. It’s still obsessed with its own mythology, but it manages to deliver enough new stuff to make it worth watching. If you could somehow watch Dark Fate without its connection to the other films, it would be a compelling action sci-fi feature. That couldn’t happen, because the film is essentially a Marvel “What If…” scenario for the Terminator franchise. In all honesty, Dark Fate bombed at the box office because of Terminator Genisys. You know how every president inherits whatever successes or failures their predecessor instituted? Franchise media is much the same. Dark Fate struggled because people went to see the movie right before it, lost faith, and wrote off a much better sequel.
As it stands, Dark Fate will always wear the franchise’s foibles around its neck. Netflix viewers have finally rediscovered a movie that disappeared into a bad overarching narrative. With a 70% on Rotten Tomatoes, Dark Fate is far from underrated. Anyone who hasn’t travelled back to 2019 for this experience will find a lot to love in this astonishing financial failure.
