Fanboys Anonymous

Welcome to another edition of Predicting the Plot wherein I try my best to guess how an upcoming movie is going to play out from start to finish with as many details as I can possibly give, based entirely on the previews and lead-up material I've seen.

I might be dead wrong. I may get some things right. In any way, I encourage you to give your predictions just the same in the comments below.

For this edition, I'll be tackling one of the many sequels to my favorite movie of all time (Terminator 2: Judgment Day), which is the upcoming Terminator: Dark Fate.

Oh boy...you're not going to like this one, and neither am I...


The movie starts with either the typical recap of the Skynet future or we jump right into T2.

A terminator (Carl) kills John Connor. Mabye they show that he was a senator like in the other ending (the GOOD ending of this franchise). Maybe he's a junkie loser like in Rise of the Machines. More likely, though, knowing that there's a little kid in this film for reference, it'll probably be the young John from right after T2.

The point is, they're totally going to kill off John because this entire movie is going to be about beating you over the head with this concept of female empowerment and a "changing of the guard" like The Force Awakens / The Last Jedi where everything is a copycat of what it was before, but this time, they make the original character that was the savior a waste of space because they want to bring in a new character as the real savior.

Sarah spends the rest of her life not knowing what to do. John's dead. No Judgment Day. She has no purpose, other than hunting down terminators. Maybe Carl is the one that killed John and he has no purpose, either, and they see eye to eye like that. It'll be stupid, but this movie is going to be stupid, so I'm not counting anything out.

We're introduced to Dani Ramos. She's either a spitfire and TOTES TOUGH and can handle herself and has no real progression throughout the film because they're too afraid of making her appear weak, or she's a carbon copy of the Sarah Connor treatment in that she's the one at first who is screaming and needs protection until she bucks up.

She has a brother. Who cares?

She's attacked by Gabriel Luna's character. Surprise, he's a terminator. What the fuck is a terminator? Well, to explain that, here's the new modified cyborg woman Grace to explain the new future and how things have changed.

They "only postponed" Judgment Day, like before, and changed the details. Now, it's not Skynet, it's something else. With John dead, Dani is the new savior. Skynet 2.0 is SO MUCH WORSE YOU GUYS because they tell us it is.

Note: This is when everyone should realize that they just want to reskin the previous thing and say that their idea is even better, exactly like Star Wars has.

What is fundamentally the difference between John and the new protagonist? She's new, younger and a Latina woman. What's different between Skynet 2.0 and Skynet? Nothing, just like how The First Order is 100% the Empire. What's the difference between Grace and Arnold's T2 terminator? At its core, nothing, because both are just "robot thing that protects the hero". But Grace is a woman, so there's a sisterhood going on with her, Dani and Sarah. I wouldn't even be surprised if they say something about how in the future, they don't need men. At least they do have one difference in that one is an enhanced human and the other is an android, but that alone is like saying we should make a whole movie around remaking Terminator 3 and keep all the details the same except this time, Kate Brewster can be a human doctor instead of a vet. WHOLE DIFFERENT MOVIE GUYS, SERIOUSLY...

Anyway, back on track.

So they fight and fight and fight. Arnold's terminator sacrifices himself I guess, or Sarah does. Or both. Probably Arnold, because that way, they don't kill off one of the female characters and they can keep Sarah for another film if they're able to do another one. It's easier to kill Arnold because they can always have another and bring him back if they want, but they've killed Sarah multiple times before, too, and whatever. She's the one that makes the most sense as far as having it hit the audience harder, so let's predict that she's bites the bullet.

They kill the Gabriel Luna.

Ominous thing about how the future isn't certain but with the new savior of humanity now all tough and determined, she'll be ready to fight.

MAYBE if they want to backtrack on this, they tease something about John Connor still possibly being alive so that they can have a sequel where he's taking on Sarah's spot as the guide to help them out and possibly die. That's if they didn't do something blatant like have Carl take a shotgun and blow his head off.

Terminator theme plays in the credits, if we're lucky. Maybe not anywhere else in the movie.

Everyone watching goes "ugh...well, it wasn't as bad as that Genisys title or T3, but it still sucks compared to T1 and T2" and we continue the cycle of bad Terminator films and I die a little more inside, and if you complain about it, you're clearly only hating it because you obviously hate women—not that you could ever be opposed to the idea of taking a movie and going against its whole purpose to copy and paste it purely for the sake of unoriginality and trying to appeal to "woke culture" stuff and mask your negative reviews with a shield of #feminism.

There is no fate but what we make for ourselves. It's a shame this franchise was perfect and chose to take a dark fate of bad sequels to ruin it and make the ratio more bad films than good ones.

I'll say it right now: if this movie is nothing but a thinly-veiled excuse to say "the future is female" and literally serves no purpose but to replace John Connor with Dani Ramos because she happens to be Latina, I don't think I'll even bother doing a Reviewpoint.