Paramount has dropped the new trailer for the latest film in the Terminator franchise and, whisper it quietly, but it actually looks pretty good after years of diminishing returns since the high point of 1991's Terminator 2: Judgement Day.
The signs are definitely good. The rights to the franchise reverted to Judgement Day creator James Cameron this year, and he has wisely opted to discard the various fluff that has been foisted on audiences in his absence and treat the new film as a direct sequel to that film, picking up 27 years after its conclusion.
Cameron will produce this time – he's probably busy with Avatar directing-wise – but we can take solace in the fact that he has also written the storyline for the new film, and handed directing duties to Deadpool 2's Tim Miller, who seems a safe pair of hands.
The film will also bring old favourites back to the franchise, including Linda Hamilton as Sarah Connor, and Arnold Schwarzenegger as the, surely rusting by now, T-800 model terminator.
From the trailer, we can surmise that a new super terminator (that makes Judgement Day's T-1000 look obsolete) has been sent back in time to kill a young girl. We don't know exactly why, but it's safe to assume it's something to do with timelines and ensuring the destruction of humanity.
This time around however, the hunted youngster has some kind of human/terminator hybrid by her side as protector. And it seems that at some point in the past, the hybrid was the very girl it is protecting, which probably goes a long way to explaining why Skynet and the terminators want her out of the way.
It's too early to make much in the way of judgement, but the trailer is definitely promising. There's an intriguing premise, a nice, brooding sense of doom hanging over it and, frankly, after the shambles that was 2015's Genisys, anything would be an improvement.
Terminator: Dark Fate is due to release in November.
