Starring Linda Hamilton, Mackenzie Davis, Natalia Reyes, Arnold Schwarzenegger

Directed by Tim Miller

In case you’ve lost count, Terminator: Dark Fate is the sixth entry in the time-travelling killer cyborg series and it’s the third one — other than the 1984 original and 1991’s Terminator: Judgment Day — to be approved by creator James Cameron.

Taking a leaf from last year’s Halloween playbook, Dark Fate brazenly abandons the storylines in previous chapters (including the short-lived TV spin-off The Sarah Connor Chronicles) — all of which Cameron had zero involvement — picking up two decades after the events in T2.

Cameron, being the King of the World, managed to persuade ex-wife Linda Hamilton to come out of retirement and reprise her iconic role of survivalist champ Sarah Conner, still a big Second Amendments supporter, always prepared to crash any apocalyptic party.

This time, Sarah isn’t protecting her would-be saviour son John (his fate is explained in the prologue —so if you miss it, you’re going to have a tough time keeping up with the rest of the movie) but Danni (Natalia Reyes), a car factory worker in Mexico City.

Clearly, this nobody will be somebody of great significance in the future. Why else would she be targeted by a new Terminator called the Rev-9 (Gabriel Luna)?

The Rev-9, like the T-1000 in T2, has shape-shifting capabilities, but with a few upgrades (it can split into two separate entities that fight independently!) While the T-1000 is silver, the Rev-9 comes in matte black; imagine Venom made from liquid metal.

Back from the future too is Grace (The Martian’s Mackenzie Davis, mesmerising), a resistance fighter with bionic implants assigned to guard Danni from the Rev-9. Together, the women do what characters usually do in a Terminator movie: they try to get away from the metallic assassin as far as they can in what is essentially an elaborate chase and fight.

Franchise stalwart Arnold Schwarzenegger turns up in the second half of the movie as a bearded T-800, offering plot exposition (again, you’ll be lost if you miss the prologue), jokes about home decor (really funny), and, of course, additional firepower. Arnie is 72 and this can very well be his final tour as T-800. So savour the moment.

Director Tim Miller does a good job with keeping the pace brisk and the heavy metal mayhem energetic (including one that takes place inside a C-5 aircraft) as he did in Deadpool. But Dark Fate would just be another go-for-broke action thriller if not for Hamilton who injects the movie with pathos and poignancy. At 63, she can still play a badass.

She works well with Davis’ enhanced super-warrior. If this were a cop movie, they would’ve made the perfect mismatched duo. That, or as estranged mother and daughter in a terminal illness drama. Better yet, estranged mother and daughter who happen to be a buddy cop duo?

As the future MVP in the fight against the machines, Reyes, a Colombian actress making her US film debut, doesn’t quite register as well. She looks like she just stepped out from The Maze Runner or one of these interchangeable young-adult dystopian fantasies.

Elsewhere, Luna, best known as the Ghost Rider on Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., does his best playing a dismal and impassive high-tech killer. I mean, what other ways can he play the Rev-9? Once you’ve seen Robert Patrick’s performance in T2, you’ve seen it all. Sorry.

That’s the thing about Dark Fate: it feels like a spiritual remake of T1 & T2 a la Star Wars: The Force Awakens. Part nostalgia exercise, part reboot, it has familiar elements to keep fans happy and enough new stuff to appeal to novices (hello, Mackenzie Davis!).

All in all, it reminds me of a scene on the Emmy-winning HBO hitman comedy Barry, where one character says, “Oh, come on. You guys are like Fleetwood Mac. You break up, you get back together again, and then you go out and make a great album, like The Best of Fleetwood Mac.”

That isn’t so bad, right? (***1/2)

For more on Terminator: Dark Fate, listen to our chat with Daniel Martin on CNA938’s Trending.