Yesterday marked a very special anniversary for fans of the Terminator franchise. It was 35 years ago that the first Terminator film was released. 35 years later the sixth film in the franchise is in post production getting ready for release this fall. Director Tim Miller celebrated the anniversary by letting fans know that the first trailer for Terminator: Dark Fate is on the way, and showing us a single shot from that trailer, Sarah Conner looking badass.
Linda Hamilton's return to the Terminator franchise has to be the highlight of the upcoming film. We haven't seen the original Sarah Connor on the big screen since Terminator 2: Judgement Day in 1991. The fact that Linda Hamilton would return to the franchise after all this time is seen by many a good sign. If she's willing to return now after turning down previous, generally viewed as bad, sequels, then this means that Terminator: Dark Fate has what those other movies were missing, right?
Well, one thing those sequels were certainly missing was Sarah Connor holding a rocket launcher, and it looks like Dark Fate has that based on the single frame we see of the upcoming trailer. This is exactly the sort of thing that fans are probably looking forward to with the new film.
In the original Terminator Sarah Connor was a woman in over her head and the run for her life. However, knowing that she needed to be able to protect herself she became a fighter and had transformed by the time we saw her in Judgement Day. It seems the plan for Terminator: Dark Fate is to pull the same movie as the recent Halloween sequel, by ignoring all sequels that came after T2 and picking up the story from there.
This is probably a good move as the most recent sequel, Terminator: Genisys, didn't really go over well except in China. It made some pretty significant changes to the canon which didn't sit well with fans. Although, the fact that the movie came out so recently, certainly has the potential to confuse fans if the new movie is just going to pretend it didn't happen.
While the post on Twitter doesn't reveal when we'll see the new trailer, Terminator: Dark Fate is a Paramount Pictures film, and the next big release from that studio is the Elton John biopic Rocketman so there's a good chance the plan is to attach the trailer to that film. Of course, since most trailers get dropped online first, we'll likely see this trailer hit sometime in the next two weeks ahead of the movie.
Since the previous Terminator film didn't do all that well in North America, this trailer has some important work to do. It has to convince fans that they need to check out the new movie, after many have apparently decided to write off the franchise. It seems so often that trailers exist only to increase the hype for things people already want to see, but this one really will need to energize an audience that has clearly become tired of this particular franchise.
Terminator: Dark Fate is set for release November 1.
