postPerspective Update

Julian Clarke on editing
Terminator: Dark Fate
By Oliver Peters

Sarah Connor and the T-800 are back to save humanity from a dystopian future in this latest installment of the Terminator franchise. James Cameron is also back with writing and producing credits, which is fitting — Terminator: Dark Fate is, in essence, his sequel to Terminator 2: Judgment Day.

Tim Miller (Deadpool) is at the helm to direct the tale. It’s roughly two decades after the time of T2 and a new Rev-9 machine has been sent from an alternate future to kill Dani Ramos, an unsuspecting auto plant worker in Mexico. But the future’s resistance has sent back Grace, an enhanced super-soldier, to combat the Rev-9 and save her. They cross paths with Connor and the story sets off on a mad dash to the finale at Hoover Dam.

Miller brought back much of his Deadpool team, including his VFX shop Blur, cinematographer Ken Seng and editor Julian Clarke. This is also the second pairing of Miller and Clarke with Adobe. Both Deadpool and Terminator: Dark Fate were edited using Premiere Pro.

I recently spoke with Clarke about the challenges and fun of cutting this latest iteration of such an iconic film franchise.

This film tends to have elements of humor unlike most other action films. That must have posed a challenge to set the right tone without getting campy?
Terminator 2 has a lot of humor throughout. We have a little bit of humor in the first half and then more once Arnold Schwarzenegger shows up, but that’s really the way it had to be. The Dani Ramos character is devastated when her whole family is killed. Having a lot of jokes would be terrible. It’s not the same in Terminator 2 because John Connor’s stepparents get very little screen time, and they don’t seem that nice. You feel bad for them, but it’s OK that you get into this funny stuff right off the bat. On this one, we had to ease into the humor so you could [experience] the gravity of the situation at the start of the movie.

Did you have to do much to alter that balance during the edit?
There were one or two jokes that we nipped out, but it wasn’t like that whole first act was chock full of jokes. The tone of the first act is more like Terminator, which is more of a thriller or horror movie. Then it becomes more like T2 as the action gets bigger and the jokes come in.