Editorials
Love It? Hate It? Let’s Discuss That Shocking Opening Scene of ‘Terminator: Dark Fate’
This article contains massive spoilers. Obviously.
Many films in recent years have digitally de-aged their actors for nostalgic purposes, but Terminator: Dark Fate uses the technology for an incredibly insidious goal. The opening sequence of the franchise’s best sequel since T2 reminds us that Sarah Connor and her son John prevented “Judgment Day” back in the 90s, before showing us an event from a few years later that alters the course of the franchise. Incredible digital wizardry puts T2-era John Connor and his mom on a beach in Guatemala, one year after the Judgment Day they prevented.
The sequence initially provides a sense of warm nostalgia – in particular, it’s quite special to see a young Edward Furlong back on the big screen – but the rug is quickly pulled out from under us with a shocker of a twist: another T-800 had been sent down to kill John Connor, and this particular cyborg succeeds in his mission. Looking like a young Arnold Schwarzenegger, the T-800 guns down John Connor with ease, killing off the one character whose survival in the first two films was the single most important thing in the entire world. Game. Changed.
Most films wouldn’t dare kill children – or their franchise’s central character, for that matter – but Terminator: Dark Fate goes one step further by killing one of the most beloved kids in franchise history, literally bringing John Connor back for the sole purpose of wiping him clean off the slate. As it turns out, that was producer/co-writer James Cameron’s idea.
Cameron explained to the Los Angeles Times, “I said, ‘Let’s take him out in the first 30 seconds. They’re sitting in a pizzeria, a Terminator walks in and blows him away. You’re one minute into the movie.’ Everybody went, ‘Really? You want to do this?’ I said, ‘Yes!’ You pull the rug out from underneath the entire construct that’s been going on for the last three decades.”
Not surprisingly, the decision has proven quite polarizing with Terminator fans, many of whom were excited to hear that Edward Furlong’s John Connor would be back but were ultimately left wishing the character hadn’t been brought back at all. The nihilism of Dark Fate‘s opening sequence is sitting about as well with many fans as Alien 3‘s total disregard for Newt and Hicks sat with fans of Aliens back in 1992, but at the very least you have to respect the sheer gall it took for Cameron and the team to kick-start a new era with such a shocker.
Thankfully, the cold-blooded murder of young John Connor serves more of a purpose than mere shock value in Dark Fate, as it horrifyingly exemplifies both the film’s title and the core theme of the franchise as a whole: “Judgment day is inevitable.” A “dark fate” has been looming over every character in the franchise since the very beginning, and though Sarah and John Connor were able to prevent Judgment Day back in the 1990s, the realization that they only prevented *one possible* form of the apocalypse is pitch-perfectly fatalistic for a franchise centered on the eventual fall of humanity. It’s inevitable that the machines are going to rise up and crush humanity, so the franchise’s heroes are only ever out-running their inevitable fate.
Ironically enough, it was because Sarah and John succeeded in their mission to prevent the Cyberdyne-caused version of Judgment Day back in 1995 that John was rendered disposable – now that’s a fascinating consequence of T2‘s triumph. Dark Fate introduces a brand new apocalypse in a brand new timeline, so it’s only natural that a new savior comes into play.
The murder of John Connor at the hands of a T-800 also allows for some really interesting character developments and dynamics. Arnold Schwarzenegger plays “Carl” in Terminator: Dark Fate, the T-800 who killed John in 1998 but has been adjusting to life as a “human” ever since. Carl’s tale of redemption is one of several hearts beating at the center of Dark Fate, and it’s fascinating to see how the machine has been reckoning with its sins in the wake of fulfilling the orders he was programmed to carry out – in many ways, Schwarzenegger’s Carl is the perfect completion of an arc for the T-800 model across the three films that belong in this particular continuity, from monster to man. Equally compelling in Terminator: Dark Fate is the dynamic between Sarah Connor and the T-800; Sarah is forced to work side-by-side with the machine who killed her son in yet another quest to save the world from annihilation.
All this great character material would simply not be possible if not for Dark Fate taking us back to the ’90s to kill John Connor, and the movie is honestly better because of it. While something special that was present in the original two films is overall lost in a blizzard of messy CGI action here, the character work in Dark Fate is the best since T2. The movie catches us back up with both Sarah Connor and a classic T-800 at fascinating points in their lives – Sarah has become a full-on Terminator hunter in the years since John Connor was terminated, low-key aided by the redemption-seeking Terminator who took her son’s life – and John’s death drives each of them forward in ways that make Dark Fate a rich, emotional experience.
Sometimes the most interesting thing a franchise can do is kill its darlings and see what doors open up as a result, and I can’t help but admire James Cameron’s desire to take the single most important character from his two Terminator movies and casually wipe him from existence right out of the gate. Every sequel past T2 made John Connor one of the central characters, and if you’re asking me, it’s nice to see some new blood take up that heroic mantle for a change.
What do YOU think of Dark Fate‘s grim fate for John Connor? Sound off below.
Here’s what we know about Longlegs so far. It’s coming in July of 2024, it’s directed by Osgood Perkins (The Blackcoat’s Daughter), and it features Maika Monroe (It Follows) as an FBI agent who discovers a personal connection between her and a serial killer who has ties to the occult. We know that the serial killer is going to be played by none other than Nicolas Cage and that the marketing has been nothing short of cryptic excellence up to this point.
At the very least, we can assume NEON’s upcoming film is going to be a dark, horror-fueled hunt for a serial killer. With that in mind, let’s take a look at five disturbing serial killers-versus-law-enforcement stories to get us even more jacked up for Longlegs.
MEMORIES OF MURDER (2003)
This South Korean film directed by Oscar-winning director Bong Joon-ho (Parasite) is a wild ride. The film features a handful of cops who seem like total goofs investigating a serial killer who brutally murders women who are out and wearing red on rainy evenings. The cops are tired, unorganized, and border on stoner comedy levels of idiocy. The movie at first seems to have a strange level of forgiveness for these characters as they try to pin the murders on a mentally handicapped person at one point, beating him and trying to coerce him into a confession for crimes he didn’t commit. A serious cop from the big city comes down to help with the case and is able to instill order.
But still, the killer evades and provokes not only the police but an entire country as everyone becomes more unstable and paranoid with each grizzly murder and sex crime.
I’ve never seen a film with a stranger tone than Memories of Murder. A movie that deals with such serious issues but has such fallible, seemingly nonserious people at its core. As the film rolls on and more women are murdered, you realize that a lot of these faults come from men who are hopeless and desperate to catch a killer in a country that – much like in another great serial killer story, Citizen X – is doing more harm to their plight than good.
Major spoiler warning: What makes Memories of Murder somehow more haunting is that it’s loosely based on a true story. It is a story where the real-life killer hadn’t been caught at the time of the film’s release. It ends with our main character Detective Park (Song Kang-ho), now a salesman, looking hopelessly at the audience (or judgingly) as the credits roll. Over sixteen years later the killer, Lee Choon Jae, was found using DNA evidence. He was already serving a life sentence for another murder. Choon Jae even admitted to watching the film during his court case saying, “I just watched it as a movie, I had no feeling or emotion towards the movie.”
In the end, Memories of Murder is a must-see for fans of the subgenre. The film juggles an almost slapstick tone with that of a dark murder mystery and yet, in the end, works like a charm.
CURE (1997)
If you watched 2023’s Hypnotic and thought to yourself, “A killer who hypnotizes his victims to get them to do his bidding is a pretty cool idea. I only wish it were a better movie!” Boy, do I have great news for you.
In Cure (spoilers ahead), a detective (Koji Yakusho) and forensic psychologist (Tsuyoshi Ujiki) team up to find a serial killer who’s brutally marking their victims by cutting a large “X” into their throats and chests. Not just a little “X” mind you but a big, gross, flappy one.
At each crime scene, the murderer is there and is coherent and willing to cooperate. They can remember committing the crimes but can’t remember why. Each of these murders is creepy on a cellular level because we watch the killers act out these crimes with zero emotion. They feel different than your average movie murder. Colder….meaner.
What’s going on here is that a man named Mamiya (Masato Hagiwara) is walking around and somehow manipulating people’s minds using the flame of a lighter and a strange conversational cadence to hypnotize them and convince them to murder. The detectives eventually catch him but are unable to understand the scope of what’s happening before it’s too late.
If you thought dealing with a psychopathic murderer was hard, imagine dealing with one who could convince you to go home and murder your wife. Not only is Cure amazingly filmed and edited but it has more horror elements than your average serial killer film.
MANHUNTER (1986)
In the first-ever Hannibal Lecter story brought in front of the cameras, Detective Will Graham (William Petersen) finds his serial killers by stepping into their headspace. This is how he caught Hannibal Lecter (played here by Brian Cox), but not without paying a price. Graham became so obsessed with his cases that he ended up having a mental breakdown.
In Manhunter, Graham not only has to deal with Lecter playing psychological games with him from behind bars but a new serial killer in Francis Dolarhyde (in a legendary performance by Tom Noonan). One who likes to wear pantyhose on his head and murder entire families so that he can feel “seen” and “accepted” in their dead eyes. At one point Lecter even finds a way to gift Graham’s home address to the new killer via personal ads in a newspaper.
Michael Mann (Heat, Thief) directed a film that was far too stylish for its time but that fans and critics both would have loved today in the same way we appreciate movies like Nightcrawler or Drive. From the soundtrack to the visuals to the in-depth psychoanalysis of an insanely disturbed protagonist and the man trying to catch him. We watch Graham completely lose his shit and unravel as he takes us through the psyche of our killer. Which is as fascinating as it is fucked.
Manhunter is a classic case of a serial killer-versus-detective story where each side of the coin is tarnished in their own way when it’s all said and done. As Detective Park put it in Memories of Murder, “What kind of detective sleeps at night?”
INSOMNIA (2002)
Maybe it’s because of the foggy atmosphere. Maybe it’s because it’s the only film in Christopher Nolan’s filmography he didn’t write as well as direct. But for some reason, Insomnia always feels forgotten about whenever we give Nolan his flowers for whatever his latest cinematic achievement is.
Whatever the case, I know it’s no fault of the quality of the film, because Insomnia is a certified serial killer classic that adds several unique layers to the detective/killer dynamic. One way to create an extreme sense of unease with a movie villain is to cast someone you’d never expect in the role, which is exactly what Nolan did by casting the hilarious and sweet Robin Williams as a manipulative child murderer. He capped that off by casting Al Pacino as the embattled detective hunting him down.
This dynamic was fascinating as Williams was creepy and clever in the role. He was subdued in a way that was never boring but believable. On the other side of it, Al Pacino felt as if he’d walked straight off the set of 1995’s Heat and onto this one. A broken and imperfect man trying to stop a far worse one.
Aside from the stellar acting, Insomnia stands out because of its unique setting and plot. Both working against the detective. The investigation is taking place in a part of Alaska where the sun never goes down. This creates a beautiful, nightmare atmosphere where by the end of it, Pacino’s character is like a Freddy Krueger victim in the leadup to their eventual, exhausted death as he runs around town trying to catch a serial killer while dealing with the debilitating effects of insomnia. Meanwhile, he’s under an internal affairs investigation for planting evidence to catch another child killer and accidentally shoots his partner who he just found out is about to testify against him. The kicker here is that the killer knows what happened that fateful day and is using it to blackmail Pacino’s character into letting him get away with his own crimes.
If this is the kind of “what would you do?” intrigue we get with the story from Longlegs? We’ll be in for a treat. Hoo-ah.
FALLEN (1998)
Fallen may not be nearly as obscure as Memories of Murder or Cure. Hell, it boasts an all-star cast of Denzel Washington, John Goodman, Donald Sutherland, James Gandolfini, and Elias Koteas. But when you bring it up around anyone who has seen it, their ears perk up, and the word “underrated” usually follows. And when it comes to the occult tie-ins that Longlegs will allegedly have? Fallen may be the most appropriate film on this entire list.
In the movie, Detective Hobbs (Washington) catches vicious serial killer Edgar Reese (Koteas) who seems to place some sort of curse on him during Hobbs’ victory lap. After Reese is put to death via electric chair, dead bodies start popping up all over town with his M.O., eventually pointing towards Hobbs as the culprit. After all, Reese is dead. As Hobbs investigates he realizes that a fallen angel named Azazel is possessing human body after human body and using them to commit occult murders. It has its eyes fixated on him, his co-workers, and family members; wrecking their lives or flat-out murdering them one by one until the whole world is damned.
Mixing a demonic entity into a detective/serial killer story is fascinating because it puts our detective in the unsettling position of being the one who is hunted. How the hell do you stop a demon who can inhabit anyone they want with a mere touch?!
Fallen is a great mix of detective story and supernatural horror tale. Not only are we treated to Denzel Washington as the lead in a grim noir (complete with narration) as he uncovers this occult storyline, but we’re left with a pretty great “what would you do?” situation in a movie that isn’t afraid to take the story to some dark places. Especially when it comes to the way the film ends. It’s a great horror thriller in the same vein as Frailty but with a little more detective work mixed in.
Look for Longlegs in theaters on July 12, 2024.
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