Of the many charms of the “Terminator” franchise, the most delightful is the emergence of a new etiquette. Once hom*o sapiens and hom*o roboticus begin to interact, and once time ceases to be something that you waste or spend and becomes a portal through which you pass, the language of social custom shifts accordingly. Thus, in the latest installment, “Terminator: Dark Fate,” one character says to another, “When are you from?” Better still, because it’s uttered by Arnold Schwarzenegger, is the exquisite line “May I ask what you are?”
The director is Tim Miller, though the name that shines out from the credits is that of James Cameron, who is listed as a producer and as one of five contributors to the story. The first two “Terminator” films, in 1984 and 1991, were directed by Cameron alone, and, after his departure, the ensuing movies—“Terminator: Rise of the Machines” (2003), “Terminator Salvation” (2009), and “Terminator Genisys” (2015)—are widely held to have suffered a process of gradual decay, like unrefrigerated fish. Much is expected, then, from the return of the king.
The action starts with a grainy clip of a scene from “Terminator 2: Judgment Day,” in which the heroine, Sarah Connor (Linda Hamilton), ranted about a looming apocalypse. Thanks to her intervention, it was averted, but we now learn of a reloom—a second-generation disaster, in which cyborgs spawned by an A.I. program called Legion will get seriously futuristic on the world’s ass. The good news is that Sarah’s back, and hellbent, once again, on stopping the horror before it happens. What she’s been doing in the interim is unclear, though my guess is that she’s been rehearsing her heavy-weapons drill and, to judge by her voice, smoking forty Camels a day.
The plot consists of heated-up leftovers from the first three “Terminator” films. An unrelenting android, Rev-9 (Gabriel Luna), is dispatched from the years to come and lands in the present day, his duty being to destroy a young Mexican woman, Dani (Natalia Reyes), for reasons as yet unrevealed. Against him are arrayed the following: Sarah, who brings along a rocket launcher as you or I would pack an energy drink; Grace (Mackenzie Davis), who is like any other human, only more so, having been “augmented,” as she says, with superior powers; and a grizzled old geezer named Carl (Schwarzenegger), who lives near Laredo, Texas, with his family and runs a business making drapes. When you hear how decisive Carl can be with his customers—“The guy wanted solid-color blocks for his little girl’s bedroom, and I said, ‘Don’t do it’”—you wonder vaguely what he did before.
Schwarzenegger is oddly touching and funny here, but don’t take my word for it. Take his. “I’m reliable, I’m a very good listener, and I’m extremely funny,” he says, with a face of steel. Having been a killer in the first film and a protector in the second, he is now steered into a wholly novel groove. I don’t buy those changes for a moment, though I applaud the effort, whereas poor Rev-9 is, if anything, a downgrade from T-1000, the villain in “Judgment Day.” Both can assume any guise and, when smashed or shredded, mold themselves back into shape; the difference is that, whereas the earlier model was like quicksilver, the new one appears to be made of molasses. If you attacked him with self-rising flour, two eggs, and a handful of raisins, you could turn him into a fruitcake.
Despite the déjà vu, there is plenty to savor in Miller’s film, and the final third, in particular, is quite the light show. Any fool can, say, jump from a Lockheed C-5. To be inside a Humvee, however, as it drops out of a flaming C-5 whose rear end has been sheared off, and to have your chute deposit you on the lip of a hydroelectric dam, gives you so much more to talk about at parties. As Sarah, Dani, and Grace join forces to trounce their sticky foe, you realize that this is what used to be known as a woman’s picture, propelled by female sacrifice and pluck, and that Mackenzie Davis—tough but not invincible, and wise to her own frailties—is at the core of the propulsion. Meanwhile, for anyone still clinging doggedly to the primacy of the male warrior, the most pressing question is “Will it be curtains for Carl?” Wait and see.
Going to the movies on a date, especially a first date, is a risky business, and many a tender romance must have foundered, in the late nineteen-seventies, during showings of “I Spit on Your Grave.” Never before, though, have I seen anything as openly destructive as “Marriage Story,” the new film from Noah Baumbach, which ought to come with a warning from the M.P.A.A.: “Contains scenes that may wreck your relationship.”
Charlie (Adam Driver), a theatre director, lives in New York with his wife, Nicole (Scarlett Johansson), an actress, and their eight-year-old son, Henry (Azhy Robertson). We start with two declarations of love. Nicole tells us what she loves about her husband, and he returns the compliment. Each praises the other’s warmth as a parent, plus a variety of respective quirks—Charlie’s tidiness, or Nicole’s knack for opening jars. Notice, by the way, that both parties are described as “competitive.” For a second, we glimpse what lurks ahead.
Baumbach is toying with us. Those declarations, it transpires, are part of a mediation session, which goes badly; the marriage is melting. Nicole flies to Los Angeles to film a pilot for a TV show, taking Henry with her. They stay with Nicole’s exuberant mother (Julie Hagerty). Also around is Nicole’s sister, Cassie (Merritt Wever), who pulls off the funniest and most flustered sequence in the movie—serving Charlie with divorce papers when he arrives. Not funny at all, for him.
That blend of tones, with near-farce and emotional brutality blitzed together, is pure Baumbach, and he dishes it up for two hours straight. Not that his comedy is black. Rather, the damage to hearts and minds is somehow inflicted with a terrible buoyancy of spirit, and at an unbearable cost—literally so in the case of Nora Fanshaw (Laura Dern), the top-rate lawyer who represents Nicole in the split. “Sorry I look so schleppy,” she says, sashaying across her office in lofty scarlet heels, curling up beside Nicole, and offering tea and cookies (“I’ll send you home with some”). Dern is in devilish form, right down to the little moue of sympathy that she gives when Nicole says, “I don’t want any money or anything.” Yeah, sure.
In the opposite corner is Jay Marotta (Ray Liotta), a bruiser in a suit the color of rain clouds, whose basic retainer is twenty-five thousand dollars. Initially, Charlie goes for the cheaper option, employing Bert Spitz (Alan Alda), who operates out of a crummy joint with a microwave and a cat, and who seems, at least, to register the vandalizing of human dignity on which his trade relies. When the fight gets dirty, however, Bert isn’t up to scratch. “I needed my own asshole,” Charlie says, switching his allegiance to Jay.
Something should be pointed out here, something that you hardly realize as you revel in the expertise of “Marriage Story,” and in the gutsy panache of the performers. It may be something of which the movie is itself unconscious, so steeped is its creator in the world that he describes. This is a frighteningly first-world piece of work. Viewers in countries whose litigious instincts are less barbaric may watch it in amazement, as if it were science fiction. We laugh at Jay’s astronomical fee, but the real joke is that Charlie pays it—that he can afford to pay it—when it comes to the crunch. How about the vast majority of husbands and wives, especially wives, who cannot abide the misery of their union but lack the funds to either solve or dissolve it? The crunch will slay them. In court, it’s true, a judge refers in passing to people with fewer resources than Charlie and Nicole; but one line barely leaves a dent.
Now and then, Baumbach tips his hat to Bergman. “Scenes from a Marriage” is the headline on a magazine article about Charlie and Nicole, and she even plays Electra onstage, as Liv Ullmann’s character does in “Persona” (1966). To be honest, though, we are leagues away from Bergman, and “Marriage Story” belongs more to the long and hissy saga of antagonism between Los Angeles and New York. Nicole’s Off Broadway endeavors are dismissed in California as “downtown sh*t,” and Charlie protests, with ardor, that “we’re a New York family, that’s just a fact.” Hence the devastating shot of him alone on Halloween in L.A., dressed as the Invisible Man, with a bandaged head, and gazing forlornly at the TV. Late-capitalist anomie in a nutshell.
And yet, to be fair, both players are given their say, and their clamorous voice, in equal measure. Johansson unfurls a long and demanding soliloquy, persuading us that Nicole’s role in Charlie’s existence had dwindled to “feeding his aliveness.” Driver, inflating his lungs, responds with a glowing rendition of “Being Alive,” from Stephen Sondheim’s “Company,” which sends you reeling and should—but does not—bring the movie to a close. So, which half of the couple is in the right? Neither of them. And both. And who is more alive? It’s a tie.♦
An earlier version of this piece misstated dialogue said to the Nicole character.
