KILLING TIME
HISTORY IS A FLEXIBLE THING IN THE Terminator universe. Timelines are there to be tweaked, the past amended, the future rewritten.
It’s a fourth-dimensional battlefield and now even the franchise itself is meddling with everything you knew to be true. Terminator: Dark Fate may technically be the sixth film in the apocalyptic Skynet saga but it’s out to convince you it’s the third: a direct sequel to T2: Judgment Day that obliterates the accumulated screen mythology of the last two decades. All those underwhelming reboots and requels piled on the shelves of your local CEX? Crushed like so many human skulls beneath gleaming, mechanical heels.
Yes, everything from 2003’s Terminator 3: Rise Of The Machines to 2015’s Terminator: Genisys – even TV’s The Sarah Connor Chronicles – is officially consigned to the skip marked alternate realities. Consider them multi-million dollar apocrypha. Or maybe they’re just “bad dreams”, as producer James Cameron cheekily suggests.
BACK TO BASICS
Returning for the first time since , Cameron is the key weapon in the fight to torch and rebuild the franchise as a blockbuster proposition. He launched it all with 1984’s – a and worked closely with director Tim Miller, who was equally committed to a back-to-basics approach, scything the tangle of continuity to recapture the essential muscularity of the series.
