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Like the Terminator himself,Terminatoris the franchise that just won't die.
At CinemaCon Thursday, Paramount Pictures presented the very first footage from their latest attempt to breathe new life into this classic series, Terminator: Dark Fate.
Directed by Tim Miller (Deadpool), the new film picks up after T2and brings back not only Arnold Schwarzenegger but Linda Hamilton, who remains every bit as cool as she ever was.
SEE ALSO:Revisiting the superhero films of the '90sThe new footage, which Miller cautioned did not have complete sound or VFX, began by introducing us to Mackenzie Davis' Grace, whose naked body we first see falling to the ground from a ball of electricity that's formed in the middle of a Mexico City bridge. A young man and woman see the apparently injured woman and try to help, only for the cops to show up and try to arrest them.
Bad move: She perks up and quickly lays waste to the cops, saving the couple who'd tried to assist her. Based on her robotic viewpoint of the scene, and her superhuman physical command of the situation, it's clear she's not human.
The couple thanks her for saving them, but she's not done -- she peels off in their car, having taken the man's clothes. "'Help me with her,' you said," the man grouses to his girlfriend in Spanish. "'She's hurt,' you said."
The second scene included in the reel showed Gabriel Luna's Terminator character taking the shape of a bland, unassuming man, as Grace and Dani, a young woman played by Natalia Reyes, try to get away. "When they start to kill me, run," Grace tells a terrified-looking Dani.
Things look dire for the pair, as they're beset on all sides by killer robots. But then a car pulls up, knocking of them to a ground, and Sarah Connor steps out. She's come prepared, armed with enormous guns and a bazooka, all of which she uses to blow the bad guys away.
Grace and Dani look stunned. "What the fuck is that?" asks Dani. Grace doesn't know.
The video finished with a sizzle reel of the other action to come: bodies being blown away, vehicles going up in flames, Grace fighting in a post-apocalyptic world, Schwarzenegger's Terminator and Sarah Connor shooting at bad guys side by side.
Then we're back on the bridge with Sarah, Grace, and Dani. Sarah casually drops a grenade over the side of the bridge, and walks away as it explodes.
"I'll be back," she growls.
It's a line designed to get cheers, and get cheers it did -- including from Miller, who gushed, "What a fucking badass!" into the microphone.
While Miller and his stars -- Schwarzenegger, Hamilton, Davis, Luna, and Reyes -- wouldn't say too much about the plot of the new film, Miller did tease that the new Terminator's new feature is that he can split into two to become twice as deadly.
Reyes, for her part, called attention to the diversity of the cast. "Hollywood has changed, and this is the result of it," she said.
Given the track record of the previous Terminatormovies (who even remembers Genisys?), you'd be forgiven for being skeptical of this new one. And sure, this could just be a really solid promo for an otherwise blah movie. But between Davis and Hamilton, the Dark Fatefootage made a strong case for at least giving this one a shot.
And if it turns out to suck? Just wait a few more years until they decide to reboot it again.
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