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Review of T3: Rise of the Machines
Let me first draw your attention to CNN's review. The CNN reviewer tells you this "darker and slicker" sequel is "worth the wait," gives you the long-form plot setup, shows you the sexy look of the "babe-a-licious" babe, and promises you "emotional weight" with "wit" and a "stunning and thought-provoking" climax. What he doesn't mention is that CNN and the movie's producer/distributor are both owned by AOL Time Warner.
It's been ten years since I watched the first Terminator and maybe I'm remembering it better than it was. But it had an emotional depth, a heart that neither of its sequels matched. T3 is slicker, yes, but darker!? It's light fluff. The nightmare of nuclear destruction in the original was rendered without CG effects, but I'll remember the skeleton clutching the chain-link fence long after I've forgotten this week's pixel-perfect explosions. And the "storm is coming" ending of the original was genuinely thought-provoking, with a chilling resolve that just embarrasses this week's Hollywood ending. Claire Danes is no Linda Hamilton.
The effects are what you'd expect from a modern zillion-dollar action movie, but not groundbreaking the way that T2's were at the time.
I found nothing about it witty. I chuckled through the chase scenes -- it's mostly chase scenes -- because they were so over-the-top and the plot holes were so glaring. Apart from that, there was only one funny line. (I assume everyone else is as bored as I am with the "dry cool wit like that" dialogue.)
Best unintentionally funny line: "I've got enough C-4 to blow up ten supercomputers!"
Best unintentionally funny visual: tie between fumble for the car keys, and offscreen killing sprays blood across photo.
Dumbest joke: gratuitous mocking of effeminate guy.
Best absurd effect: missile blows apart the wall in a small office ten feet from our heroes, they avoid injury by diving to floor. Duck and cover!
Best plot hole: Terminatrix's chronic failure to remember that she can run fast.
Heavy on the exposition, light on brains and heart, forgettable. See it if you really jones for big trucks smashing stuff. If you just have to see a movie, see "28 Days Later" instead. Rated R, not recommended for anyone whose mental age matches their valid ID.
That movie could have been named "One Dumb Move After the Next"
The only reason for calling it 28 Days Later is because it had more blood and rage than a menstruating lesbian convention.
Anon Coward must be a female. :)
I remember the piss-my-pants excitement of going to see T2 in the cinema. I remember thinking "The ONLY thing that could be better that this would be a new 'Star Wars' movie."
Be very careful what you wish for kids, it may come true.
If you watched T2, you know this never happened. So why bother?
Director: Up and at them.
Arnold: Up and atom.
Director: Up and at them.
Arnold: Up and Adam.
Director: Up and at them.
Arnold: Up and atom.
Seems like an ideal thread for him to spin off into some tirade about T3, columbine, and americas wasted youth.
- Toby
It has Arnold.
It has explosions.
It has Arnold.
It has violence.
It has Arnold.
It doesn't have Jar Jar.
It has Arnold.
George Lucas never touched it.
It has Arnold.
Trolling is a art,
Heavy on the exposition, light on brains [...]
ITYM "heavy on the exposition of brains"
You can attach boosters to anything. It just costs more. -
Anonymous Coward on Sunday November 07, @12:26PM
Does anyone have any good Arnold governor campaign slogans for Arnold's possible pending T4 in Sacramento?
"T4: The Rise of the Political Machine"
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
Arnold: LEFT 30, FORWARD 10
Clare: Picasso! Picasso! Picasso! Picasso! Picasso! Picasso! Picasso! Picasso! Picasso! Picasso!
Bedtime for Bonzo was so much better than this Terminator stuff.
Not having an offsite backup is what defines a company as being on the bleeding edge...
Cheers,
Ian
I knew those backups will be the end of us! Thats it, I'm off to the machine room with a baseball bat! Destroy your backups, before its too late!
T4: The Terminator Returns Again
T5: The Terminator & Robin
T6: The Terminator vs. Mothra
T7: The Attack of the Clone Robots
T8: Abbott & Costello & The Terminator Go To Mars
T9: Terminator Resurrection
T10: Star Trek: Nemesis
T11: The Terminator Has A Fistfull of Dollars
T12: The Terminator Goes To The Grand Canyon With The Brady Bunch
Rise of the Machines?
More like Rise of the Robots.
Here's hoping no-one's forgotten the above abomination of gaming... =)
"I hate Cthulhu, Cthulhu hates me, I kill his cultists, He eats worlds for tea"
That's perfectly rational IMHO. Defenseless geeks are much easier to assassinate than geeks who can fight back
-- "At Microsoft, quality is job 1.1" -- PC Magazine, Nov. 1994
By far the best unintentional joke was:
I am paraphrasing, but it is a pretty accurate quote:
"Skynet is connected and now controlling the worlds neworks. IT IS PUSHING DATA THROUGH AT 60 TERAFLOPS A SECOND."
I laughed out loud so hard when they said that that people thought I was having a coniption.
Come on, what can top that?
-ddw
Mark it down: this is the first time I've ever heard anyone use "like AI in some ways" as a reason to go see a movie.
Then she wakes up... and decides to go assassinate a poor defenceless geek who just happens to be involved in the future creation of skynet.
Too bad no one had a permonition in 1970 to go assassinate a certain geek that was about to ruin the tech industry.
I've had enough abrasive sigs. Kittens are cute and fuzzy.
"It always pisses me off when filmmakers try to mix sexiness with sci-fi or horror (probably because I'm so conditioned to having the sex appeal subtract from the main story)."
So this is the reason sci-fi porn doesn't work.
When the 'internet' was becoming self-aware I just sat there and shook my head and thought, no way in hell would this ever happen with Microsoft products running on 80% of the machines out there... but then I remembered Clippit.
We don't need to worry about Skynet or whatever, we just need to obliterate that fucking paper clip and we'll save the world.
Good security is based upon reality and common sense. Common sense is a function of having common knowledge.
I did. Trust me, the other guy was going to be much worse than this Bill Gates character.
If the Internet is Skynet then I guess that explains why it only sends naked Terminators back in time. Most of what it knows about humans involve being naked.
you know, T3 should be really short: all that bandwidth, so little content
Phus. Sysiphus.
Male, between 12 and 65 (older if you take Viagra). :)
-Alex
...imagine a beowulf cluster of those!
(sorry!)
The way T3 ends, if they ever make T4 they won't have much choice except doing exactly that...
I think you need to watch "Escape from the Planet of the Apes."
T4 could easily take place in an undestroyed world, but I suppose they'd have to send Arnie back to the mid-60's and have him start killing everyone even remotely connected with the development of the Internet. Or.. wait!
[EVENING. The TERMINATOR walks up to a LANKY KID in Harvard Square, in 1975]
TERMINATOR: "Are you William Gates the Third?"
LANKY KID [nervous]: "Uh... yes. Who are you?"
[The TERMINATOR thrusts his right arm out quickly. TERMINATOR'S hand enters LANKY KID'S chest and emerges a second later holding LANKY KID'S heart. LANKY KID drops to the ground, dead.]
[Cut to BEDROOM in FINLAND. Camera pans to SLEEPING BOY (AGE 6) who, apparently dreaming, smiles and giggles in his sleep. Camera pans to DESK, where we see SCHOOLWORK with the name "LINUS" written on it in crayon. It appears to be a DRAWING of a PENGUIN.]
Yeah, but they didn't understand time travel in the 80s like we do in the 21st century. They didn't have the advantages of all the Star Trek experiments to iron out all the kinks of time travel theory. *grin*
-Alex
Don't you mean SKY.NET?
One line blog. I hear that they're called Twitters now.
And in nuclear winter, will it really be a priority for regular people to maintain their PCs?
But you just have to run Windows Update. Oh yeah, and don't forget to defrag.
I'd rather be a conservative nutjob than a liberal with no nuts and no job.
According to that IMDB trivia page ...
"Former WWF wrestler Chyna was originally slated to play the Terminatrix"
Thank you cast directors! I would NOT want to see her naked rear when she first arrives in the past (the movie's present).
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Check out my blackbox styles
"English motherfucker, do you speak it?"
For the record, you can clearly see the T1000's penis on arrival in the 20th century, at the beginning of T-2. If you've got the DVD, check it out.
This was the source of quite a bit of humor last time I watched the movie; a bunch of us were just back in from the bars, and we popped the movie in. Normally, everyone would pass out within the first half hour of the movie at 3am, but we were all laughing so much when one of the girls pointed out the T-1000's penis that we watched the whole thing.
Great movie though, of course.
"Stumble before you crawl"
When I heard Claire Daines was going to be in it, my first thought at the title was "My So-Called Terminator"
Skynet wasn't a Beowulf cluster. Sorry, but that ruined any shred of credibility the movie had.
It is easier to build strong children than to repair broken men. -Frederick Douglass
Just kidding!
One line blog. I hear that they're called Twitters now.
Furlong has a drug problem? Oh, come on, that's such bullshit! I mean, what kind of proof is there for that? Nothing, that's what!
I've noticed that most of the anti-nudity holier-than-thou crowd in America are people you wouldn't want to see naked anyway.
a T3 is still better than dialup
Damn! Here I thought T3 was a movie about excessive bandwidth. Now I don't wanna see it.
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On the other hand, that fucking paperclip seems to do whatever the fuck it wants.
You cannot apply a technological solution to a sociological problem. (Edwards' Law)
The Microsoft collective will become Self-Aware on the 1st of September 2003......
Ripping an new rectum in the fabric of spacetime.
It would certainly make for an interesting match -- at the WWF Arena, the Gubernatorial Smackdown: Arnie vs. Jesse! Minnesota battles California for supremacy!
The winner would get to be governor of both states and take all the women of the losing state as a private harem. OTOH if Jesse were to lose, well, Minnesota has ICBMs.
Hey, they were even in Predator together...though Ventura *definitely* had the cooler weapon. ;-)
Cheers,
Ethelred
PS: Sorry, my geek imagination went a little wild there...I have myself better under control now. Really!
Everyone wants to be Ethelred. Even I want to be Ethelred.