Look, the guy said he'd be back.
So what exactly did you expect?
Well, if you expected a ton of Easter eggs and fan service, than you were exactly right,
because Terminator: Dark Fate serves up plenty of both.
And we're about to serve up a heaping helping of SPOILERS, because we just have to talk
about all the inside references in the sixth Terminator film.
One of the more obvious wink-and-nod references in Dark Fate isn't to the Terminator films
at all, but rather to another fan favorite adventure epic: The Bible.
At one point, Sarah Connor sarcastically refers to herself as "Mother Mary," which makes sense
if you ever attended Vacation Bible School.
That's because Mary is the mother of Jesus, the prophesied savior of humanity, just as
Sarah herself is the mother of John Connor, another prophesied savior of humanity.
Less obvious, though, is another biblical reference hidden in plain sight.
The newest model of the Terminator is called Rev-9, which seems to be a reference to chapter
nine of the Book of Revelations, which describes the end of days, when "the sun and sky were
darkened by the smoke from the Abyss" and a third of humanity is "killed by the three
plagues of fire, smoke and sulfur."
Kind of like the robot-fueled Armageddon that eventually results in the creation of Rev-9
himself.
Director Tim Miller told Syfy Wire that the one specific Easter egg he insisted on inserting
into the film was Dwight Yoakam's hit rockabilly song "Guitars, Cadillacs."
"The Dwight Yoakam song 'Guitars, Cadillacs,' that's my little Easter egg, because, you
know, that's the [Terminator 2] scene that [Schwarzenegger]'s walking into the bar and
they play that.
That was my big one."
In Terminator: Dark Fate, the song can be heard when Rev-9 falls out of the clear night
sky into a random family's backyard barbecue.
Talk about crashing a party!
Still, while it might stink to have a killer robot wreck your barbecue, at least you've
got a kickin' soundtrack to go along with it.
In Dark Fate, Arnold Schwarzenegger is back, and his Terminator unit has settled down into
a quiet family life, complete with the new name Carl and a day job as a draper.
At one point, we see on the side of his van the company phone number: 888-512-1984, which
is a reference to May 12, 1984, the day the original Terminator film hit theaters.
Best of all, if you call the number, you actually get Carl's answering machine, complete with
a message from Arnold himself saying "Hasta la vista."
Now that's a solid Easter egg!
One of the more interesting additions to the Terminator franchise is Grace, a warrior from
the future who we soon learn is actually a half-human, half-robot cyborg hybrid.
And maybe the most fascinating part is that the character is an oblique nod to possibly
the least well-regarded film in the entire franchise, Terminator: Salvation.
That movie's major plot twist, of course, is the revelation that Sam Worthington's character,
Marcus, is actually a half-human, half-Terminator hybrid.
Of course, that entire timeline is erased from existence at the beginning of Dark Fate.
Or is it?
The existence of Grace opens up a lot of questions, which so far don't seem to have any clear
answers.
Terminator 7, anyone?
If there's one film in the Terminator franchise even less highly regarded than Terminator:
Salvation, it's arguably Terminator 3.
But even Terminator 3 gets its own homage, and during the film's climax no less.
At the end of Terminator 3, the T-850 Terminator played once again by Schwarzenegger, of course
defeats the technologically superior T-X model by removing his own power core and jamming
it into the bad Terminator's head.
Well, Dark Fate ends in the exact same way this time with heroine Dani removing Grace's
power core and jamming it into the Rev-9's head.
Note to our future robot overlords: maybe rethink your power core design, because it's
not working out for you so far.
The 1980s saw the rise of the movie catchphrase, and arguably none have had as much staying
power as "I'll be back," which Arnie first uttered in the original Terminator film in
1984.
In Terminator: Dark Fate, "I'll be back" is back once again, showing up as it has in every
single Terminator film the twist being that this time, it's Linda Hamilton's Sarah Connor
who delivers it.
"I'll be back"
That's just one of several catchphrases that get brought back, including a new version
of the classic "come with me if you want to live" line.
Perhaps the most interesting Easter egg dialogue, though, comes when Grace tells Dani that if
a hundred police officers got in the way of the Rev-9, all that'd be left would be a hundred
dead cops.
That's a sly reference to the infamous police station scene in Terminator when Arnold's
original model massacres an entire building full of police officers a scene which Terminator:
Dark Fate later replicates in a fight at an ICE detention center on the Mexican border.
Finally, there's the biggest and most subtle Easter egg of all: the entire movie.
Sure, we've seen this kind of wholesale repurposing before, like the way Star Wars: Episode VII
The Force Awakens borrowed the entire structure and several key sequences from the original
Star Wars.
"It's another Death Star!"
"I wish that were the case, Major.
This was the death star.
And this is Starkiller Base!"
But Terminator: Dark Fate takes things to a new level, with scene after scene directly
inspired by sequences from Terminator and T2.
The chase scene on a Mexican freeway emulates the aqueduct chase from T2, there's a scene
in which the bad guy steals a police helicopter, just like they did back in T2, there's a scene
in which the good guys hide out in a seedy motel, there's a moving finale when Arnie's
Terminator sacrifices itself and is just a single thumbs-up short of pure homage, and
there's even a playground sequence to call us back to Sarah Connor's nightmare from T2.
It's actually easier to list the parts that are entirely original, such as the film's
progressive choice to make a Mexican woman the savior of humanity.
One thing is for sure, though: there's never been a Terminator film that's as much a Terminator
film as this Terminator film.
And for any fan of the franchise, that's high praise indeed.
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