Terminator: Dark Fate review – Linda's back with a blast, and Arnie's a family guy

Martin Scorsese has recently caused a lot of upset with the simple observation that Marvel superhero movies aren’t cinema, as he understands it. “Honestly, the closest I can think of them, as well made as they are, with actors doing the best they can under the circumstances, is theme parks.”

There’s no point in denying that’s what the Terminator franchise has become. Its first actual theme park opened in Universal Studios in Florida in 1996, closing in 2017 to be replaced by The Bourne Stuntacular.

Another branch in Hollywood closed in 2012, to be replaced by Despicable Me Minion Mayhem — but there’s still one in Japan, T2-3D: Battle Across Time. The stunning first Terminator film of 1984 was the making of both director James Cameron and mechanic Arnold Schwarzenegger; 1991’s big-budget sequel, Terminator 2: Judgment Day, was a triumph too, the most advanced CGI yet seen, the highest-grossing film of its year, “a flawless masterpiece” according to Kingsley Amis.

Subsequent films not directed by Cameron, and made without Linda Hamilton, were little better than franchise rip-offs though — Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines, Terminator Salvation, and in 2015, Terminator Genisys, effectively a kidult superhero movie. This last grossed $440 million worldwide but was not a critical success and the planned Genisys sequels were cancelled.

Now, 35 years after T1, 28 years after T2, they’re back (sorry, best to get it over with). Cameron (as producer, having delegated direction to Tim Miller of Deadpool) has sidestepped all those diffusion lines to make a film that picks up straight from T2 — and it is the best episode since then, although, being a pretty direct remake, it doesn’t deliver the shocks that it did back in the day.

The time is now. The updating includes a new Latino emphasis — heroine Dani (Natalia Reyes), who must be saved from the Terminator sent back in time to assassinate her, is Mexican. There’s a new emphasis on women as heroines. Dani is herself the key threat to future world dominance of the machines, not as the potential mother of a saviour. And the future soldier sent back to help her, an augmented human this time, is female: Grace (an athletic, slightly androgynous, crop-haired Mackenzie Davis).

The backdating is a lot more startling. Are these the most long-delayed job resumptions ever? Linda Hamilton’s whole career has been defined by her two performances as Sarah Connor (she moved in with Cameron in the year of T2 and had a daughter with him, before they divorced in 1999). Now she returns to the role, aged 63, Sarah having spent 28 years in a rage, fighting Terminators whenever they appear and drinking herself into oblivion.

Here, she is to help Grace and Dani in their hour of need, toting heavy weapons as convincingly as ever. Gravelly-voiced, grey-haired and wrinkly-faced she may be — Hamilton is a dedicated smoker, her ciggies in T2 being one of its startling anachronisms when seen now, alongside the big hair and the absence of mobile phones — but she still has that focused physical presence. This could so easily have been a calamitous reappearance, a painful revelation of ageing, so much of Sarah Connor’s original impact having been erotic. But Hamilton alone still owns this role (Emilia Clarke made a booboo of it in TG) and she reclaims it completely.

Then there’s Arnie, the good old-fashioned T-800 Model 101, who’s on the right side again this time. While Sarah’s been festering for three decades, this Terminator, now known as Carl, has been making the most of himself. In the absence of further orders, he’s been living quietly in the countryside, bringing up a family and running a curtains business, Carl’s Drapes. “Caring for this family gave me purpose,” he says. “Wait — you grew a conscience?” asks Grace. Yes, he did. His partner didn’t notice he wasn’t human, weighed 400lbs and never slept? “Our relationship isn’t physical,” says Carl severely, adding proudly: “I am reliable, a very good listener, and I’m very funny.” There you go, guys, all it takes.

Carl’s also winningly into his drapes. Once a customer wanted to put solid colours into a little girl’s room. “I said, don’t do it, you need butterflies, balloons.” Austrian accent please.

Schwarzenegger, 72, is still a marvellous brute but now quite a tubby and grizzled one, especially in his more domestic scenes. Sagely, Cameron and his crew don’t try to explain this too precisely. A T-800 has living skin, doesn’t it? So that’ll crinkle and sag. But it doesn’t eat hot dinners, does it? Never mind. You cease to worry once the thumping starts.

The Terminator-on-Terminator action here is just a little advanced on that in T2, since the new guy, a Rev-9 model (Latino-looking Gabriel Luna), although basically relying on the reforming liquid metal thing again, has a new trick, being able to double himself up from time to time, into a red-eyed metallic skeleton plus a softer, more human-looking version. He also sometimes gets his way with charm instead of slaughter. Management tip, there.

There’s walloping galore, aboard cars, trains, helicopters and a colossal plane, and underwater. None of it has quite the force of the original, CGI and the superhero explosion having rendered such pounding commonplace. No matter. It’s a ride. Sometimes a ride is what you need.