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Review of Terminator: Dark Fate (Tom Holkenborg)

FILMTRACKS RECOMMENDS:

Buy it... if you have a high tolerance for the flailing redundancy of this franchise and its music, Tom Holkenborg basically sufficing but not always excelling at resurrecting the concept's most famous thematic identities.

Avoid it... if you still await a composer who can provide the heartbreaking main theme for Sarah Connor with proper, authentic dramatism in the face of tired "slash, slur, and clang" techniques for each successive terminator foe.

FILMTRACKS EDITORIAL REVIEW:

Terminator: Dark Fate: (Tom Holkenborg) If you assumed that the return of James Cameron and Linda Hamilton to the Terminator franchise for its sixth entry, 2019's Terminator: Dark Fate, would save the concept from itself, then you were wrong. A once compelling and thrilling franchise has devolved into one depressing alternate universe after another, all the redemption of the finale of Terminator 2: Judgement Day replaced by ridiculous temporal alterations necessary to convey new actors in redundant chase scenarios. The return of both Hamilton and Arnold Schwarzenegger in Terminator: Dark Fate is complicated by an opening scene in which their impressively de-aged characters depict the slaughter of a young John Conner shortly after the events of the second film, a decision made by the filmmakers to "reset" the concept and one met with extraordinary backlash from audiences. From there, the film is a massively wasted opportunity to explore the evolution of the Sarah Conner and T-800 terminator characters in their likely final appearance together. An entire film could have been sustained by their interactions alone, minus new characters and those redundant chases and climactic battles in industrial settings. Just the looks they exchange are dramatically poignant and even vaguely comedic, as at the start of a target practice scene. But no, Cameron returns to familiar highway battles and other tired scenarios involving yet another advanced terminator sent back to kill another youngster. The film lost its studio more than $100 million, so one can only hope that we have seen the last of many wasted opportunities to tempt but disappoint us. The music by Brad Fiedel for the first two films was a good match and narrative arc for their films even if the music remains largely unpleasant on its own, especially the second score. Everything since has been frustratingly divorced from the heart of Fiedel's music, though Lorne Balfe's Terminator Genisys at least infused some dramatic weight into the equation. Tackling Terminator: Dark Fate is Tom "Junkie XL" Holkenborg, now firmly established apart from Hans Zimmer in his own highly active composing career in many genres.

The Terminator franchise maintains one of the most romantically engaging main themes of any concept in Hollywood history. In fact, despite its famous industrial conveyance over many of these films' end credits, it remains among the greatest movie romance themes of all time. Many listeners forget that the idea was originally for Sarah Conner's journey as defined by her affection for Kyle Reese and her son, John. The idea evolved into something of a victory anthem for her, and, in retrospect, it has made sense that the identity only had a minimal impact on the film scores for the entries not directly featuring the original Sarah plotline. With Dark Fate disregarding all the stories after Judgement Day, Holkenborg had the opportunity to return completely to Fiedel's established thematic applications and general sound design, all the while updating that style to fit a more symphonic ambience as expected. He only partially succeeds, and it's possible if not probable that the frustrating, wasted opportunities within the score are directly due to the movie's own similar ills. The work is moderately orchestral, dominated by a huge brass section and utilizing synthetic effects to represent the new villain as expected but supplying symphonic atmospheres for the character interactions. The redundant new hybrid-liquid terminator receives the most direct Fiedel inspiration, as does the horrific opening scene. Holkenborg did devise numerous new themes and motifs for Dark Fate, but the idea for the Rev-9 terminator is a tired rehash of the descending brass-slurring effect used for such liquid-like adversaries going back to the second film. The composer expands the heavy industrial sound to any scene involving the central chase, doing very little to reinvent a wheel that already has a flat tire on it. The action music in this score is hideously obnoxious, so awful that Holkenborg incorporated an alarm effect as a rhythm-setter in "The Wall" against a cacophony of grinding metallic samples manipulated alongside equally distorted organic recordings. Passages like "Iron Spike" and "Screaming Turbines" are so mind-numbingly brutal that they cease to maintain any real purpose in extending the narrative. The suspense portions aren't much better, cues like "REV 9," "Drones Coming," and "HUMV" offering unpleasant dissonance with little intelligence, as Holkenborg doesn't succeed in approaching these terminator pursuit scenes any better than previous sequel composers.

The bulk of interesting material in Dark Fate relates to Holkenborg's admirable but not always successful establishment and continuation of the themes. Aside from the slurring motif for the evil terminator, two main ideas return from Fiedel's work. The primary, five-note rhythmic motif underlying the main theme is a fan favorite, replacing an ominous, less stylish four-note identity for the T-800 in the original film by Judgement Day. Holkenborg seems to tease the notion that this pounding, slapping five-note identity has shifted to Sarah by Dark Fate, a somewhat humorous but appropriate reassignment given her career spent as a bad-ass terminator hunter. But, in the end, the motif is applied as simply an affectionate representation of the whole franchise, heard at the crescendo of "Terminated," at 0:40 into "REV 9," and as the rhythm setter for the finale at "0:41" into "Epilogue" and throughout the end credits suite, "Dark Fate." The quick "Sunglasses" cue with the most obvious rendition of this rhythm for the T-800's near return to early form is missing from the album. The "Terminated" cue in particular is a massively missed opportunity to more closely connect with Fiedel's original ideas; while Holkenborg does revisit Fiedel's palette in this cue, which seems repeated in parts during the Sarah video flashbacks and the actual opening scene, the new score fails to provide the four-note or heartbeat effects from the franchise's origins, downplaying the connective horror of the sequences. More intriguing is how Holkenborg applies the main franchise theme. It remains tied primarily to Sarah, but not as impactfully as needed. Allusions at 3:22 into "C5" and 2:30 into "Terminator" are underplayed, and the composer only truly unleashes them in the closing trio of "For John," "Epilogue," and "Dark Fate." While its use in these later cues is quite impressive (certainly more than any of the other sequels, thankfully), it is distinctly disappointing that Holkenborg failed to offer at least echoes of this theme at the outset of the opening execution scene and during emotionally powerful conversational scenes involving Sarah talking about her past and, in particular, not having any photographs of John. The music in these scenes is either absent or dialed back, and it robs a vital chance to further develop this optimistic and determined but sad identity. This leaves the payoff performances for yet another T-800 sacrifice and the "driving off to destiny" scenes at the end, which work well enough to satisfy at the most basic level.

Of interesting note in Dark Fate is Holkenborg's decision to cut off the main theme before the final note of the fourth phrase, never allowing it resolve quite like it used to until "Epilogue." Instead, it shifts to a more triumphant tone in its new resolution. This choice makes sense, given Sarah's loss of family and identity, but it also makes the lack of the theme's original resolution at the outset of the opening scene an even greater waste. The "Dark Fate" suite instead cuts off literally the last descending note as it transitions into the Latin instrumentation to reflect the new, young heroine, Dani. Because of her Mexican heritage, her instrumental representation is shamelessly Latin in its acoustic guitar personality. Holkenborg starts her idea with the same rising three notes as Sarah's before meandering off into an unmemorable progression that doesn't stick in memory. The idea is introduced at 1:37 into "My Name is Dani," and the style of this performance occupies the planning scene in "Coyote." Sarah's theme merges with Dani's not surprisingly in the "Dark Fate" suite; among the more bizarre things to be heard is the acoustic guitar performance of Sarah's main theme with the Latin flair in this cue, this despite Fiedel's use of the instrument for Sarah's older self in the alternate Judgement Day epilogue. The more interesting but underplayed idea in the score exists for Grace, the enhanced human sent back to protect the target of this film. This character's depressing story arc is treated to a theme opposite in structure to Sarah and Dani's, two descending trios of notes leading the way at 0:26 and 1:37 into "Grace" and at 3:12 into "You Saved Me," a cue that offers some vague melodramatic extensions of the idea, it seems, but not obviously. It receives its catharsis late in the film, a choral and solo cello expression of lament for her own sacrifice at 2:47 into "For John" followed by a coda at 7:16 into that same cue. As the audience sees a young, blissfully unaware version of Grace in the contemporary timeline at the outset of "Epilogue," Holkenborg offers a surprisingly bleak and tepid rendition of the theme, not creatively providing the segue from the dead, older version of the woman to the younger one playing in park with some dramatic blend of melancholy but heart-warming optimism. It's in part because of poorly or underplayed cues like this one that the movie as a whole is such a downer. The theme for Grace, like the one for Dani, isn't as memorable as necessary because such passages needing more engaging music were either missed in the spotting or post-production phases.

There is irony in the fact that Dark Fate is more thematically developed that the three prior scores in the franchise, especially putting those by Marco Beltrami and Danny Elfman to shame, and yet the score's application of those ideas is simply amiss somehow. These movies and scores have always struggled to address the human drama element of the entire Terminator concept. The only composer to really nail this aspect was Lorne Balfe for Genisys, and Holkenborg tries to traverse the same path with less success. A touch of this Balfe character drama from the prior film exists in the strings early in "You Saved Me," and it seems too much of a coincidence that Holkenborg offers largely the same rising progressions and choral effect as Balfe at 3:49 into "For John" for a partially faceless T-800's heart-breaking sacrifice while restraining a superior terminator. It should be noted that the choral element in Dark Fate is badly undermixed; for most of the score, you can barely tell that it is even there, a problem that also existed in Genisys and seems senseless given that the fantasy element of the franchise could be well served by its greater presence. Overall, you have to commend Holkenborg for returning to Fiedel's established themes, samples, and modes. Enthusiasts of the franchise's vintage, metallic thrashing for action scenes will appreciate the bare and raw carnage that Dark Fate extends. Many casual moviegoers will also appreciate the better enunciation of the five-note concept rhythm of coolness and Sarah's main theme in the closing scenes. But the actual spotting, rendering, and placement of this score is oddly dissatisfying throughout. There are better fan-made tributes to Fiedel's original material than what we hear from a composer paid significant money to produce generally the same thing, and Balfe's arrangement of the Judgement Day end titles remains superior. On album, the score's weaknesses are exposed to a far greater degree than in the film. A CD version from La-La Land records is limited to 3,000 copies and suggests in its track listing that only the final two cues use Fiedel's main theme even though this is very much not the case. (The label must have had to omit instances in which Holkenborg doesn't complete more than three phrases of the theme, which is silly.) The ills of this score are closely tied to those of the film, the lack of satisfying development and closure for existing themes matching the all-too-few interactions between Sarah and the T-800 in this story. This franchise needed to conclude with Sarah on that park bench in Cameron's alternate ending of Judgement Day, for all the films and music that followed in the concept have failed to truly capture our hearts and ears.  ***

TRACK LISTINGS:

Total Time: 57:57

• 1. Terminated (1:28) • 2. My Name is Dani (3:39) • 3. Rev 9 (3:10) • 4. Iron Spike (2:52) • 5. Enter Sarah (0:59) • 6. Grace (4:24) • 7. Drones Coming (1:46) • 8. The Wall (4:12) • 9. Terminator (2:57)

• 10. Coyote (2:18) • 11. The Picture on the Fridge (0:42) • 12. C5 (4:10) • 13. HUMV (1:59) • 14. You Saved Me (5:41) • 15. Screaming Turbines (4:13) • 16. For John (7:59) • 17. Epilogue (1:10) • 18. Dark Fate (4:19)

NOTES & QUOTES:

The insert includes a list of performers but no extra information about the score or film.

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