Terminator : Dark Fate — The Feminist vehicle without a fuss
The latest installment of Terminator is pure delight in terms of action set pieces and a gripping storyline. The original triumvirate of Cameron- Hamilton and Schwarzenegger returns to breathe life into Director Tim Miller’s (Deadpool) assiduously crafted exoskeleton of a script. The reviews in general have been been favourable across the spectrum including favourable ratings on Tomatometer. The adulation for this ‘revival’ of a beleaguered franchise have poured in from all quarters.
While the film did not translate into a box office blockbuster, it scored big on one barometer — feminist portrayal. The film doesn’t masquerade as a vanguard of feminist assertion, it doesn’t have the overt pretense of ‘Whale Rider’ or ‘Thelma and Louise’ which no doubt pushed the envelope and presented a female narrative with passion but posited itself as a mould-breaking statement.
While movies like ‘Erin Brockovich’ ‘Orlando’ and ‘The Diary of a Teenage Girl’ prodded the audience to introspect and question the social structure, ‘Dark Fate’ doesn’t carry the same air of self-importance.
It is not as if Sarandon’s road trip drama did not do justice to feminist awakening. But, as post-modernist feminist writers have pointed out, there is more than one way to put the point across and here ‘Dark Fate’ falls in the league of ‘Alien (1979)’ and ‘Mad Max Fury Road’ released in 2015. Both these films fell under the genre of Sci-fi/action, a preserve of testosterone dripping male characters. These films gave voice to female characters without making an overt statement or speech.
This is where ‘Dark Fate’ triumphs, where this century has witnessed a spurt in female action heroes, they have generally been bogged down by the label of a ‘chick flick’ or promoted as a novelty by underlining their female protagonists. Movies like Wonder Woman, Atomic Blonde, Salt, Colombiana and the Resident Evil Franchise fall under this umbrella.
Then, there has been a slew of films where while strong female characters have been written into the script, they end up playing second fiddle to the male character in the final scene. The most glaring example of this is the climax scenes where the female characters are shown in a physical duel with each other while the male characters (the primary male antagonist and protagonist) are engaged in a simultaneous duel.
The most recent example of such a film is MIB: International, Tessa Thompson had to virtually drop two obvious dialogues on the eponymous organisation’s name in an effort to assert female power. While, there is no patent right way to approach feminist narrative in a movie. Terminator: Dark Fate does so with a ‘matter-of-fact’ nonchalant way.
This movie has Mackenzie Davis’ augmented soldier from future tasked with the protection of Natalia Reyes’ character — Dani who holds the key to stopping the apocalypse in future. Dani is also pursued by a deadly robot from future, the Rev-9. All this is familiar territory in the terminator franchise, the fresh breather here is that Davis is introduced as the primary protector without any fuss and then half an hour into the movie Linda Hamilton’s Sarah O Conner is introduced in a fashion hitherto reserved for yesteryear macho action stars. Rajnikanth would envy the kind of entry sequence that Linda was afforded.
Arnold is introduced only halfway through the movie and even post his introduction, the primary task of protection lies with Davis and the gritty dialogues are delivered by Hamilton. There is only once that this movie ventures into the territory of explicit preachy, and even that singular moment is handled with typical nonchalance.
The epoch of an artistic work lies in its ability to broadcast an alternative reality without the audience actively realizing the underlined message. This act of producing a powerful statement couched behind the veneer of a ‘normal’ state of affairs is what makes this one of the best feminist movies of this century. It’s simple, your mind did not perceive it as a movie featuring female heroes, it registered the movie as a high velocity action feature. This is where the success of a Trojan horse lies, it delivers the message without a fuss.
Writer: Joel Joseph
