By TIM DAVID HARVEY
(For the latest scene of #FilmsForFridays' new feature, #SceneStealing-were we breakdown the best scenes in films in more detail-we go on a familiar road to the 'Dark Fate' of the latest Terminator sequel. WARNING: Specific scene spoilers follow.)
"GET DOWN!"
Shotguns and roses come out as thorns and buckshot fall and Arnold Schwarzenegger's iconic 'Terminator' from the fist classic sci-fi horrors delivers the ultimate twist before the spoiler alert age of movies these days, were we have more reveals than social media accounts ruining them before we even get a chance to see the trailers on our phones. Let alone the actual movie on the big screen (if we're ever able to do that again...hence this new feature). This time he's the good guy, as the cop set up to be good is actually as bad and as crooked as those cake tin like bullet holes that are about to pierce his body in amazing for the time CGI. This is the golden era of the 90's and one of the best blockbusters ever in the G.O.A.T. ranks like a last dance is about to play and get it stepping. We've had one hell of a biker leather set-up to the bone, as both these machines playing as men started this movie as naked as we all are at home right now in quarantine. You thought Arnie who really is back was about to be bad to the bone again with Robert Patrick's T-1000 playing the Kyle Reese freedom fighter. How wrong we were like the turn made by that "hey you can't be back here" guy with hot coffee about to be burnt. Edward Furlong's Jon Connor in that iconic Public Enemy can't believe the hype and doesn't know whose number one as the two powers fight. He makes for a moped that squeals like he does and we are off to the races as a lorry commandeered by a cop charges after him with all eighteen wheels. All before Arnie gets to a chopper and chases the predator through the Los Angeles storm drains and thunders a shotgun at him, spin cycle reloading the chopper on the back of his steel horse as he rides. And last year as 'Dark Fate' would have it last falls latest 'Terminator' sequel bringing everyone back like Schwarzenegger, played perfect homage to this iconic moment and highway segueing scene switching it up again. All for an epic, entertaining stellar scene in a film as such from 'Deadpool' director Tim Miller. Don't believe the lack of hype from critics. Aren't you tired of people telling you a film is garbage, before you even have chance to sit your can down and enjoy it? Well we're all thinking twice about spoiling what we had now aren't we? This writer seeing this lost in Tokyo as he took a train through some liquid metal subway station creative, commercial advertising, in the Shinjuku cinema made famous for having Godzilla roaring above it with the molten display of a real Terminator prototype prop from the premiere out front knew this beast was a thumbs up.
As 'Fate' would gave it, slow motion walking towards a man in a hard hat and orange vest at her factory scene setting work, the great Natalia Reyes' Dani has a look of confusion on her face that reads, "what the hell is my father doing here?!" But before she has chance to process he might just be here to bring her lunch, that all changes as a service weapon materialises in his brown bag hand and he begins to raise it and draw aim on her. Then before she has chance to process THAT family revelation, his head blows apart in a sticky mess of Venom symbiotic like oil. I guess its a good job he wore that hard hat hey?! Pellets continue to pepper him in the same slo mo as she screams. Completely forgetting he just tried to do the same to her (it is her own flesh and blood after all). "Noooo!" she cries as he keeps getting pounded and slow motion becomes rapid fire as we see a security guard ('The Martian' and 'Blade Runner 2049' star Mackenzie Davis) in cap and short sleeve blue unload a blunderbuss on him (the coolest weapon in this action franchise) reloading with machine gunner precision. Before starring him down with the shotgun and blowing him away for what seems like good. "PAPI!" Dani SCREAMS still not believing what has just happened, her brother (a brilliant Diego Boneta) beside her in the same bewildered disbelief. "That is not your father" the security guard says like a reverse Vader, as she holds Dani back from getting closer like cops do in the movies when someone sees their loved one turn into a chalk outline right before their eyes. Dani struggles, the guard grabs just below the neck and pulls her close, her eyes serious with "come with me if you want to live" intent. "Hey! You come with me or you're dead in the next thirty seconds." "That was a machine sent here to kill you," as what looks like oil comes together like water and this all begins to make sense and materialize.
"Who are you," Dani asks the woman now in complete control, running away and taking both the kids that have just become orphans under each arm with loving protection. "I'm the person saving your life" she confirms. Meanwhile what was once their father but now looks more like the 'Ghost Rider' of 'Agents Of S.H.I.E.L.D' star Gabriel Luna looks like he's flying the way he's scaling scaffolding after them with terminating intent. He breaks up their little family moment as bodies splay everywhere and their security reaches for a nearby tool and her sidearm. She runs across his killer path, letting off a few shots before executing a Jordan or Maisie Williams, Frost King killing 'Game Of Thrones' like spin move under this Terminator's baseline and drives. He swings at her with what looks like a knife. She loses her hat. Drops the spent gun. Puts both hands on the other hammer like a Wolverine sword and swings like she's trying to get out a bunker. BANG! He's out of there! She treats this heavy hammer like a baseball bat. Strike one. Strike two. Strike three. It turns a concrete column into dry-wall. The kids make a break for it. The Terminator would be after them fast if it wasn't for their security changing the guard. She flips the hammer up to get a better grip like someone holding stage with a microphone and then she really sings. Running him down with that same never glazed over focus now in "all you need is kill" mode. Then she goes all Kathy Bates in Stephen King's 'Misery' with the sledgehammer on our new James Caan about to be Godfather-ed. Grabbing his sword modified arm like it's a letter opener. Using its momentum to hit him. Disable it. Hit him again. Stomp parry his other sword modified, materialising arm into the ground, keeping it there. Disabling that. Before she does the same to his trailing leg. Crippling it from the knee down for your, "ooooh" moment, as she spins, swings and knocks him out the park. The kids look on like this is a baseball game and all they need is a hotdog and soda instead of making that home run like they should. It's hammer time now as she chases after him and begins pounding his head like those drinks you had last night. One. Two. But then no three?! That same Venom like blood materialises around the club of the hammer and the next time she lifts it up to her shock the Terminator comes up with it and then with that same letter opener clips it at the root before saying my turn with a barrage of an attack. It all sounds like thunder and lightning in this very, very frightening scene as sheet metal starts banging like Gallileo. "Stay behind me," the guard orders the brother and sister as she tries to keep control. The Terminator cuts a piece of metal in two like a paper trimmer and that's when our guard regains control and uses the former one piece as two weapons in her arsenal. Hitting the Terminator in what looks like a stainless steel pillow fight that would turn you into ashes and dust, not feathers. She slams him down on an seemly line, screaming like she's about to dissassemble him and then the brother screams "hey lady" as he pushes that big red button you're not supposed to-but always have wanted to-as the woman ducks and an engine crushes him into oblivion.
"Grace!" She says our of breath (and you have no idea what that name means to me). "My name is Grace."
"That won't kill it...come on!" "What?" That won't kill him. This unbelievable action spills onto the streets in dual scene, landscape changing moment on the car chase of this 'Judgement Day' homage, as a station wagon is trailed by a truck...and you know who's behind the big wheel. "Drive! Can you drive!?" Grace asks Dani as she's already getting out the drivers seat. "I can!" The brother sidles over as Grace let's him take the wheel and heads out the window. Taking her shirt off and revealing the bulging biceps in her 'Die Hard' beater vest. This amazing Grace is a machine as she gets into the back of a wagon and picks up pipes like they were Kerplunk sticks. And starts playing darts with the truck for all the marbles to come down. Strike one. Just missed. Strike two. Right between the eyes. But the Terminator uses it to his advantage as he materialises around it and let's his venom crawl all over it right onto the hood of the truck were he appears again...but wait! He's still in the drivers seat...in more ways than one. This machine's made a copy like Xerox. Now there's two of him. Two Terminator's on their tail. Before Grace can register this strike three hits the heart of the engine and the Terminator bails and grabs for the back of their ride with knives out like you know who...and this time I ain't talking about Rian Johnson. Getting took to the toolshed, before slashing the tyres like an angry ex as the wagon flips all over the place. Sparks fly followed by everyone else. Before this road rage to pile up all become stationary and Grace looks out the game...but still iconic. Meanwhile the Terminator has just been run over, but the pink polo coming out to ask him if he's OK didn't see that this guy just had an engine dropped on him and tis but a scratch. His symbiote is already working his way through the engine, stealing this concerned citizen who is about to be run over before the Terminator tyre tries to run down his target's car. Just like Dani's brother Diego is trying to convince her he's OK with one of those poles coursing through his stomach. She screams for Grace who comes to and comes to help until she realizes she can't move him. "He'll bleed out!" There's a car coming towards them, at at hurtling, hurting speed. "Dani, we have to go!" "I'm not leaving him!" "Take her. Save her," the hero of a brothers keeper says in one of the most emotional moment of this epic. "I'm sorry" Grace says with genuine concern and regret as she takes a refusing Dani like a new born and crouches and shields her as the Terminator turns his truck and pink polo's pride and joy into petrol and a memory. "Why did you do that," Dani screams and scolds with the same disbelief that took her father. "We have to go," Grace pleads this time. "Or he died for nothing," she counters as Dani cries for Diego. Trying to reason with both hands on her shoulders that already now carry the weight of two worlds. All as the Terminator in liquid metal that looks like the cars oil (you can see why they chose this look now) comes back together in an iconic stream homage that may not hit the way the before their time, game changing graphics of 'T2' did in 91...but like the kids say, still slaps as Gabriel plays it like coming out of a rebirth. And these guys are about to hit too as a pole slams into the concrete road at Grace and Dani's feet as battle lines are drawn. First from the Terminator copy, minus a visible cranium and then the main event itself walking through a highway guardrail like its water to his oil. Grace snatches and picks up the pole, steeling herself for battle, shielding Dani again. "When they start to kill me...run." Now has a harder sentence been uttered? "What?!" I said, now has a harder sentence been uttered?
BOOM! A Range Rover steps on her moment and turns the second endoskeleton like Terminator into roadkill. Now it's the original part that looks in disbelief, as those iconic workman boots that told you they'd return step out in slow motion and the camera pans up past combat fatigues, a military grade bulletproof vest and aviators to that stern, killer face holding this machine gun. Linda Hamilton's Sarah Connor who then just unloads on Luna's machine, bolting for the girls like Usain. She picks up the pace and the trigger as he comes apart like me asking out a girl and before he has chance to reach out and touch them he goes off the bridge like skipping stones. Dropping the machine gun like a bad habit and swinging a rocket launcher from around her back like a guitarist about to deliver one hell of a solo, Connor sees the skeleton come back to life, doing that possessed raised resurrection these Terminators do, adjusts the rocket like it was a telescope and lift off shoots for the stars. Sending the skeletal frame back into the cars before he can Usain the same. Night, night. Dismissing the bazooka like Heath Ledger's Joker in, 'The Dark Knight', like it was garbage in the cinema and then causally walking over to the bridge edge without acknowledging Grace still holding the pole and Dani still behind her. Reaching in her utility belt bag of tricks like she was reaching for a can of Coke she ring pulls a grenade and tosses it over the side like it was pennies in a wishing well, before taking out a sawn off shotgun and walking away from the blast as casually as cool girls don't look at explosions too after turning to Dani to Grace and almost meta, self-aware ironically simply saying...
..."I'll be back!"
And there's that chest thumping score.
BOOM! A Range Rover steps on her moment and turns the second endoskeleton like Terminator into roadkill. Now it's the original part that looks in disbelief, as those iconic workman boots that told you they'd return step out in slow motion and the camera pans up past combat fatigues, a military grade bulletproof vest and aviators to that stern, killer face holding this machine gun. Linda Hamilton's Sarah Connor who then just unloads on Luna's machine, bolting for the girls like Usain. She picks up the pace and the trigger as he comes apart like me asking out a girl and before he has chance to reach out and touch them he goes off the bridge like skipping stones. Dropping the machine gun like a bad habit and swinging a rocket launcher from around her back like a guitarist about to deliver one hell of a solo, Connor sees the skeleton come back to life, doing that possessed raised resurrection these Terminators do, adjusts the rocket like it was a telescope and lift off shoots for the stars. Sending the skeletal frame back into the cars before he can Usain the same. Night, night. Dismissing the bazooka like Heath Ledger's Joker in, 'The Dark Knight', like it was garbage in the cinema and then causally walking over to the bridge edge without acknowledging Grace still holding the pole and Dani still behind her. Reaching in her utility belt bag of tricks like she was reaching for a can of Coke she ring pulls a grenade and tosses it over the side like it was pennies in a wishing well, before taking out a sawn off shotgun and walking away from the blast as casually as cool girls don't look at explosions too after turning to Dani to Grace and almost meta, self-aware ironically simply saying...
..."I'll be back!"
And there's that chest thumping score.
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