Mackenzie Davis’s Terminator: Dark Fate Character Will Break You

One of the most intriguing films (that we know about—there’s plenty of secrets to be revealed) coming to San Diego’s Comic-Con next week is director Tim Miller’s Terminator: Dark Fate. Miller knows a thing or two about Comic-Con—before he made his name directing Deadpool, he’d been coming to the Con for 25-years.

Miller spoke to Variety about coming to this year’s Con, where he’ll be joining his cast, including Arnold Schwarzenegger and Linda Hamilton. For Dark Fate, Miller had the benefit of working with Terminator creator James Cameron. He also took an unusual approach when he set about trying to figure out the story. As he told Variety, before he brought in any screenwriters, he tapped novelists to discuss what could make this latest installment in the franchise pop.

One of the things to know right off the bat about Dark Fate is that it picks up after the events of Cameron’s Terminator 2: Judgement Day. This means that all the films that followed T2 can be more or less forgotten. One of the ideas that really struck Miller when he met with the novelists is that the first two Terminator films revolved around a key structure.

“Joe Abercrombie [writer of the First Law series], who pointed out that the Terminator films tend to have a trinity of main characters,” Miller told Variety. “One of those is the protector, the Kyle Reese character. Joe came out with this idea that a new protector from the future is a machine fighter. It’s a painful life, and they’re scarred and take a lot of drugs to combat the pain of what’s been done to them. They don’t live a long time. It’s a very sacrificial role; they risk death to save others. And from the very first suggestion it was always a woman. We had to look for someone who has the physicality, but I’m very sensitive to actors. I didn’t just want a woman who could physically fit the role but emotionally as well. Mackenzie really wanted to do it; she came after the role. She worked harder than anybody.”

So now we know what Davis’s character is—a machine fighter. As for whether he’s worried about trolls on the internet having an issue with a strong woman at the heart of the new film who’s named not named Sarah Connor, Miller says he doesn’t care (only his language is more colorful). Here’s a bit of that response:

“If you’re at all enlightened, she’ll play like gangbusters. If you’re a closet misogynist, she’ll scare the f__ out of you, because she’s tough and strong but very feminine.”

We saw some glimpses of Davis’s tough-as-nails Grace in the trailer. Now that we know a bit more about her, it’s fun to rewatch it with this information in mind;

Davis is a major talent, and we can’t wait to see her kicking machine butt in Dark Fate. 

Terminator: Dark Fate arrives in theaters on November 1, 2019. We’ll know a bit more after the panel on July 18.

Featured image: Mackenzie Davis stars in Skydance Productions and Paramount Pictures’ “TERMINATOR: DARK FATE.”