For better and worse, Terminator: Dark Fate is a throwback for the franchise

The Terminator franchise has always had a fundamental problem: past the hit film that kicked off the story, nothing that happened in the series really mattered. The timeline got complicated, screenwriters monkeyed with the story mechanics, directors brought new special effects into the battle to keep the action fresh. And yet every Terminator story basically assumed the same thing: that a sentient, murderous AI called Skynet would rise, design a series of powerful kill-bots called Terminators, largely wipe out the human race, then send Terminators back in time to kill off anyone who might have a prominent part in resisting the genocide.

Every movie or TV episode in the series was a desperate battle for survival, but because of the...

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