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Start Date
25-6-2022 12:00 AM
End Date
25-6-2022 12:00 AM
Abstract
Terminator: Dark Fate, released in 2019, is the 6th reboot of the science fiction franchise, with Arnold Schwarzenegger reprising his signature role as the increasingly human, time-traveling robot T-800. The aging Arnie, however, does not appear until halfway through the film, playing the comic, if still lethal, wingman to no less than three kickass action heroines: Sarah Connor (Linda Hamilton), now a crusading vigilante wanted in 50 states; Grace (Mackenzie Davis), an enhanced bodyguard sent from the future, and Dani (Natalia Reyes), the target of the machines’ latest assassination attempt – the woman who represents humanity’s last hope.
In keeping with the pleasures of genre movies, and sequels in particular, this female-dominated line-up offers a blend of novelty and continuity. On the one hand, the threesome represent a break with a very masculine tradition; on the other, the film reboots many of the themes and tropes associated with the heroines of the previous films… albeit with a self- conscious twist.
In this paper I will explore the reimagining of the action heroine through the six Terminator films, with particular emphasis on the critical, if often opaque, distinction between woman as subject and woman as object of the narrative.
“No fate but what we make for ourselves”: agency and the action heroine in the Terminator films.
Terminator: Dark Fate, released in 2019, is the 6th reboot of the science fiction franchise, with Arnold Schwarzenegger reprising his signature role as the increasingly human, time-traveling robot T-800. The aging Arnie, however, does not appear until halfway through the film, playing the comic, if still lethal, wingman to no less than three kickass action heroines: Sarah Connor (Linda Hamilton), now a crusading vigilante wanted in 50 states; Grace (Mackenzie Davis), an enhanced bodyguard sent from the future, and Dani (Natalia Reyes), the target of the machines’ latest assassination attempt – the woman who represents humanity’s last hope.
In keeping with the pleasures of genre movies, and sequels in particular, this female-dominated line-up offers a blend of novelty and continuity. On the one hand, the threesome represent a break with a very masculine tradition; on the other, the film reboots many of the themes and tropes associated with the heroines of the previous films… albeit with a self- conscious twist.
In this paper I will explore the reimagining of the action heroine through the six Terminator films, with particular emphasis on the critical, if often opaque, distinction between woman as subject and woman as object of the narrative.
Bio
Dr Christa van Raalte is Associate Professor of Film and Television and Deputy Dean in the Faculty of Media and Communications at Bournemouth University. She gained her BA in English from Oxford and her MA in Cultural and Textual Studies from Sunderland, where she also completed her PHD: Women and Guns in the Post-War Hollywood Western. Current research interests include constructions of gender in science fiction and action films, narrative strategies in complex TV, and workforce diversity in the media industries.