Welcome to the show.

We celebrated Melanie’s birthday with a screening of TERMINATOR: DARK FATE. We went in spite of many of our similar-thinking content creators on YouTube panning it for being “woke.” We’re glad we went. It was a really good flick. Linda Hamilton was One Buff Senior Citizen, and did her best acting yet in a Terminator movie. Arnie, of course, was back, and he did a stellar job as well. (Jim is an unabashed Arnie fan, fu shu.) The series newcomers playing Grace (Mackenzie Davis) and Dani (Natalia Reyes) were fantastic. Series creator James Cameron’s return as producer and co-writer definitely helped. Director Tim Miller, also the director of DEADPOOL, did a masterful job overall.

To address the Social Justice/Girl Power aspect of DARK FATE: Yes, it was there to an extent, but it did not mar the action or the overall story. Our only disappointment was with the casting of the actor playing the new terminator, Gabriel Luna. He simply didn’t look or act menacing enough for the role. (Robert Patrick, the bad guy Terminator in T2? Now, THERE was one scarily intense bad-ass!)

One big question, which inspired the title of tonight’s show: How does a machine (Schwarzenegger’s T-800) grow wrinkles and whiskers? We got past that fairly quickly in order to enjoy the movie, but the question is still out there for anyone to answer.

Overall, we had a fun night out watching a good old-fashioned popcorn movie. Due to some bad press and audience burnout from sequels that didn’t match up to the classic first two in the series, this movie has lost tons of money for Paramount and Fox, which is a shame. it’s a fun action movie. Check it out if you can.