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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.
Any more, it seems they ruin perfectly good movies with excessive bad content. I mean, does nudity enhance the movie at all? It could be just as good of a movie and be rated PG.
Wasn't the skeleton hugging the chainlink fence in T2?
When I am king, you will be first against the wall.
I saw it the first day it came out. It was pretty good, but the ending was a bit lacking. It leaves it real open. :D
I must say, some parts with the robots looked a tad too unrealistic. It just looked to fake. But then again, that was only one scene.
It is a good movie to see if you want a little action in your life or love Arnold.
-Boo
'Give me one more medicated peaceful moment'
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.
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
Having said that, if you watch the extras on the DVD, you'll understand that they chose the better ending....
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
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,
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.
Where the hell is Edward Furlong anyway? I bet he needs the work.
According to IMDB's T3 trivia page, they wanted Furlong to reprise the John Connor role, but he was too drug-addled to do it.
I haven't seen him in anything good in years, so he probably wanted to do it (especially since it's the role that made him famous) but they probably didn't want to gamble on him going off on a bender in the middle of production.
~Philly
Before I saw this movie, I really did NOT like the idea of a female Terminator. 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).
But the Terminatrix was actually cool. She often has this weird half-smile on her face, and her head is tilted down with determination. She reminded me of Haley Joel Osment from AI in some ways.
There are, of course, some frustrating sequences in the movie. The Terminatrix has about 1,000,000 opportunities to flat out kill John Connor and Kate Brewster, but never seems to take them. Like the Robert Patrick character, she can impersonate other people. She impersonates Kate's fiancee in one sequence, and has a 100% clear chance of killing her before changing to her "regular" form at the last minute and blowing her cover.
Overall, the movie was pretty good. The ending was much more bold than I was expecting, and it sets up T4 nicely (there are some big unanswered questions that the good Terminator poses that just beg to be answered in a sequel). Here's hoping that if there is a T4, it consists completely of the post-apocalyptic sequences.
The one thing I really dislike about the idea of T3 is the complete disregard for the basic premise set up in T2 (or even T1 for that matter). In T2 we see the Terminator and the T-1000 completely melt away. All research work into the project from recovered parts of the original terminator, have been destroyed, so there should be no skynet, no rise of the machines. If sky-net had this kind of advanced Terminator (T-X), why didn't it send that one back for T1 and it probably would have succeeded. There are almost 2 timelines to worry about here and they seem to be going in parallel.
The same sort of thing happened with the Highlander series. The 2 sequels completely disregarded the premise and plot/story lines set forth in the original (which was awesome). Very disappointed.
-- DuckWing
- The Terminator was sent into the past just before the big mainframe was to be destroyed by the rebels. John Connor had just about won the war.
- The materials from the Terminator sent into the past created Skynet. This plot line was addressed in T2.
- A la Hawkins, the Terminator could never succeed. If it did, it would cease to exist. Skynet would not have been created, and thus, it could never have existed. Ergo, no Terminator.
T2 took some of this plot, but conveniently forgot that the humans were about to win, and created the second movie.Problem: it's a time causality loop. You cannot stop it! Why? Because if you do stop the war, you stop the Terminators, and you then never get them sent into the past. Without them in the past, you cannot have Skynet. Get it?!!?!
T3 is thus the real stumper to me. By this time, all info about the cyborg chips was to be destroyed (remember going back to the office building and performing a bit of good "Office Space"-ish reconstruction). AAMOF, with the destruction of the Terminator in T2, there are to be no systems left. Recall Linda's final dialog . . . (paraphrase)I look to the future with hope...
And now, there's to be a T4 in discussions? Why would the Terminator be molded after an old man? Arnold looks great, but he's not the glistening Austrian god he was in T1. Oh well, I hear money calling...
...tizzyd
Ah, this is one article I am not going to read or any replies of the replies. I fear that T3 will suck, but I have a small hope that I won't. But I always like to know as little as possible about the movie before I see it.
my sig
Just as good as the others. Everyone should see it. Fit in well with the others, had some good jokes, the big truck chase scenes were great and brought back memories. The TX was hot. Arnie is still the man. Connor still has personality problems.
Blessed be he who reads this post, Cursed be he who tells my boss.
"T2 we see the Terminator and the T-1000 completely melt away. "
I'm pretty sure that in T2 they take care to destroy the hand left-over from T1. However, during the factory battle in T2, Arnold's Terminator loses another hand, which remains forgotten, undestroyed.
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
It comes with a scene where Sarah Conner is watching kids in a park, then starts yelling at everyone about impending doom, etc. A nuclear shockwave hits, park goes byebye and Sarah is reduced to a skeleton clinging to the fence.
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.
If only more people thought like that. And if only some of the people that did think like that were film directors.
I've posted before to this board that I dislike the increasing reliance on CGI in films. A fair point to make is that once upon a time The Last Starfighter was considered pixel-perfect, but now look. CGI dates a film really fast, because graphics improve all the time.
Cheers,
Ian
Bedtime for Bonzo was so much better than this Terminator stuff.
Well, five years at least- he was in American History X.
The actual movie was pretty much T2 Redux with a badder evil terminator and same old Arnold, and I'm getting reeeaaally annoyed that just any old liquid-metal-covered machine can zip through the supposedly organic-material-only time machine as easily as a human can. But I did find a few things interesting in T3:
****SPOILERS****
One is that Skynet is not the product of any one human or unique technology (eg, the computer engineer Miles Dyson, or the chip from the first terminator which was destroyed in T2, or even Kate Brewster's father in T3), but rather it is the result of the evolution of AI. Skynet is the product of unavoidable historical forces set in motion long ago by the Industrial Revolution, or perhaps even longer ago when man first learned how to make and use tools. Admittedly this is an old and recurring theme in many sci-fi movies, from 2001: A Space Odessy to Matrix/Reloaded, yet I am always interested in seeing different takes on it.
Further, it is interesting that Skynet is not hardware, it is self-aware software that uses the entire Internet as its corporal host, so to speak. I doubt the script writer was the first to come up with that idea, I'm sure its been floating around AI circles for some time now, but it was nevertheless a new concept for me to ponder. Talk about distributed computing... Are we all doomed to domination by a massive network of PS3's running Linux and infected by a self-aware nanovirus?
Flying is easy, just throw yourself at the ground and miss. -Douglas Adams
T1: In the future machines send back a Terminator to the past to kill John Connor's mother, because they are losing the war. The Terminator gets destroyed BUT a chip remains (the half arm in T2). The chip in the arm changes the timeline completely and accelerates the coming of Skynet.
T2: Despite Skynet beeing built earlier, humans still win in the future. Another Terminator is sent back (T-1000). Rebels from future manage once again to save their leader AND this time Sarah and John manage to destroy everything related to this new revolutionary CPU. This only delays the coming of Skynet, again, timeline is changed.
T3: There is no new CPU, but, there is near infinite computing power in the Internet. Skynet is born.
Skynet is inevitable, whatever takes form in a super CPU from the future or on the vast porcessing power of the Internet, it's inevitable.
IMHO, T3 plugged the hole of the paradox in T2. Ok story, nice movie, nothing to write home about.
T3 had too many gratuitous arnold-lines. "Ill be back" "She'll be back" "Get off." "I like this car."
i mean damn. But other than that, and a few other quibbles, it was a GREAT movie. I mean, it was a Terminator movie at heart. It was about the inevitablity of a horrific event that everyone was trying to stop, but couldnt. It even had a touch of the unwilling messiah theme going.
Really for me it all hinged on the end. The end of Terminator 1 was bleak but hopefull. Judgement Day was coming, but Sarah would have a son who would save the human race.
The end of Terminator 2 was bleak but hopeful. They thought theyd stopped judgement day, but they couldnt be quite sure.
If T3 had ended with a happy, for-sure avoidance of judgement day, i wouldve hated the movie, because it wouldve abandoned the theme. but no. Thankfully, the end of Terminator 3 was bleak but hopeful. Judgement day was fucking inevitable, and the best you could do was to do your best afterwards.
so i thought it was great, and i consider myself a fair if not good judge of movies. make your own choice of course.
Actually it's not as bad as you think and that's thanks to a massive plot hole in T2. If Skynet were truly destroyed in T2 and the war averted, then John Connor would have ceased to exist since his whole being was centered around the fact that he became the leader of the resistance and sent his father back to save his mother. So if you're going to harp on these details you're gonna have to jump on T2 as well.
Personally I liked T3. As shown, the continuity between the other two films wasn't bulletproof and you ALWAYS have to give the writers the benefit of the doubt on time travel stories because they always tend to be paradoxical on some level. T3 is for old school action fans who can appreciate REAL stuntwork and REAL explosions as opposed to the 3D Studio MAX fests that we see all the time now. This is how action was before people started trying to base their freaking worldviews on it and I, for one, welcome it.
I also liked the ending...
spoilers - though they'e probably been said 100 times before this post
A lot of people seem the miss the fact that the major Terminator theme is one of fate and destiny. The question is whether these can actually be changed. The ending of the 3rd film finishes an arc that gives their idea. Apparently the reason that Connor didn't disappear at the end of the second film was because the WAR STILL HAPPENS.
The first film was about preserving the humans' chance against the machines by making sure that John Connor is born. The second one was about keeping the war from ever happening. The third is the same but the reality of the situation becomes apparent, like the Terminator said, "Judgement Day is Inevitable."
I think it's cool that they took the darker path. While people say that it begs for a sequel, I think that it is the perfect ending to the story. John Connor is a classic literary JC character, which means that he CAN'T avoid his destiny. A destiny that becomes even more fitting to his type of character as you learn in T3.
Dissolve... Resolve... Evolve...
Even though it didn't take too much to do it, I doubt Edward Furlong would have the right mix of pathos and maturity in his delivery to pull off what is needed here - John Connor is now washed up, having given up his supposed "destiny," sort of like a spiraling downwards alcoholic.
Although he did show much promise in American History X alongisde Edward Norton. But I heard he was too much of a cokehead to do anything worthwhile anymore.
There are a huge number of yeast infections in this county. Probably because we're downriver from the bread factory.
At age 54, Arnold still kicks ass. But what the fuck happened to Claire Danes? When did she go from 18 to 40 overnight.... damn she looks like shit! Overall plot was a bit bland, but you can see the setup for T4. The action was great, nice effects! And the one liners were perfectly blended into the dialog. Well worth the few bucks, and a nice escape from the summer heat.
-Cnik
Seems like the T-universe supports determinism after all which makes sense and resolves some of the paradoxes; alas it invalidates Cameron's big "The Future Is Not Set" argument as it clearly is in a single universe set-up.
There are two arguments for time travel which strangely enough mirror the Matrix Reloaded's arguments about free will versus determinism:
The first theory is based on determinism: for time travel to remain consistent the past cannot be altered. In other words, the time traveller from the future always existed within the past so whatever changes he attempts to make cannot and *do not* occur in such a way to alter a future timeline. In other words the entire past is set in stone for the present to exist, and as the present is the future's past, the events of tomorrow are similarly predetermined to ensure continuity of the timeline. There is no free will, and the grandfather paradox does not occur: it will be impossible to murder your grandparents and any changes to the timeline you made in the past *always* happened in the past relative to your present.
The second theory is free will and relies on parallel universes. In this case the grandfather paradox is also fixed because each time traveller ends up in a similar but not equal universe to the one they left. If they change the timeline it does not effect the timeline of the universe they left, only the one they arrived in. Alas, this also means the chances of returning to the exact universe you left are remotely slim. You can never go home again.
Finally, a time traveller travels along a closed time-like curve that is created when the first time machine is created. In other words they would not be able to travel back to a point previous to the first time machine existing, and would only be able to travel along the 4th dimension on the fixed xyz co-ordinate of the time machine in question. This essentially invalidates all the Terminator films anyway as there is no evidence of time travel equipment present in the 1984 film.
Ronald Mallett is currently working on a light-based time machine (using the concepts of spacetime frame dragging) so we'll know what is right (if anything) when he turns it on.
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"
While I will most certainly agree that tossing some random naked chicks into a movie can't make up for a bad movie overall, it's not like said random naked chick can actually turn a good movie into a bad movie (unless, I suppose, it was a kids movie). If they're not replacing good content with nudity, then who cares? When it's a question of breasts vs. another ten seconds of a car chase, I'll take the breasts, thank you very much.
Now let's play "guess my age and gender!"
Besides LoTR and animated films like Shrek, almost all action/sci-fi/fantasy films lately have totally over done it with the CG effects. Way over the top. Its like directors and producers have this new toy and can't wait to exploit it every chance they get.
All I can say is give me animatronics. Give me real stunt people. Give me true artists. Not some kids out of college who just learned out to operate a 3D rendering application.
-matthew
"THERE IS NO JUSTICE, THERE IS ONLY ME." -Death
I will wait for the video to come out. I can't see paying money to see this movie. Before this review it was just a maybe I'll see it, and now I won't waste my money.
Ah, the American Way - let someone else make up your mind for you.
-- If we don't stand up for our rights, now, there will be no right to stand up for them later.
There are at least two series of books that pick up where T2 left off (I guess nobody thought there would be a T3). Both are very good, IMHO, and answer quite a few questions that may have been gnawing at Terminator fans of the "alt.nerd.obsessive" type since they saw the first movie. If you're hungry for backstory, continuation of the Terminator saga, and/or an account of what really happened on August 29, 1997, you ought to give both of these series a read.
The New John Connor Chronicles series, by Russell Blackford.
I've read only the first book of this series, but a second one is already out and a third is due in a month.
T2 series, by S.M. Stirling.
I've read the first two of this series, and the third is on its way to me now.
James Cameron has no connection with these books other than getting credit (and presumably, some sort of royalties) for originally creating the main characters and the world they inhabit. Having said that, though, the books do achieve a Cameronesque level of story detail, and they do dovetail perfectly with the films-- I don't recall coming across any discrepancies that made me stop reading and say, "Huh?"
~Philly
Before aol merged with time warner, terminator 2 and the matrix were both great movies...after the aol merger, their sequals were produced, and they were both sub par...is this only a coincidence?
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.
you know, T3 should be really short: all that bandwidth, so little content
Phus. Sysiphus.
Whoever told you that there were 500 megaton nukes 'pointed at the most critical targets' either was a dumbass or lied through their teeth. The largest deployed nukes were single warhead 25 megaton nukes on Soviet SS-18 missiles (the SS-18 also came in a 10 warhead, 550 kiloton per warhead, version). Optimal detonation height for blast damage varies depending on the yield of the weapon, but generally speaking, we're talking about 2000 feet. When you are looking at it from above (like in T3) it could very well look like it 'exploded' on the ground. What they captured well, and what I hadn't seen in a movie before (but have seen in actual test footage) was the blast wave's compression of water vapor into clouds.
IMHO this movie wasn't as good as T2, but it was better than the first Terminator, and what made most of the difference was that it could laugh at itself. Fumbling with car keys and blood splatters from off screen are a little cliched, but not exactly laughably bad images; the only real unintentional groaner was the "blow up ten supercomputers" line.
And the intentional humor more than made up for it. There were a couple failed tries ("She'll be back" was too obvious to be funny, for instance), but most of it came off well. Redoing the "naked Arnold walks into a bar to steal clothes" scene, but then tongue in cheek replacing the bar with a male strip club, was hilarious. The Terminator's exchanges with Kate managed to be witty without breaking character, as were the first few Terminatrix scenes.
I found myself thinking that if these two idiots are the best hope for mankind, I might be better off if I get caught in a blastwave on "Judgement Day".
The timelines don't match up. Kyle Reese was sent back to fight the T-800 in 1984. That was when he impregnated Sarah with John. So, John would have been born in 1985. John says that he was 13 when the second T-800 was sent back to protect him, that would have placed the events of T2 AFTER judgement day was originally supposed to happen(August 29, 1997).
Sarah being dead was a disappointment. But I like the fact that she was such a forward thinker, she made provisions, just in case it wasn't really over.
There is a repeated theme from T2, that is when they have eluded the new and improved terminator, they make the point of going into the Lion's Den, so to speak and try to save Kate's father.
How do Kate and John just waltz into a top secret military research facility? No ID? No search to see if they're armed? "Sure ma'am just bring in that AK-47 and those C4 charges. It's cool."
When the T-X is about to incinerate them at Crystal Peak, John actually takes the time to stop and thank the T-800. WHAT?!?!?!?! It's a F***ING MACHINE! It doesn't care about your gratitude.
They dashed to pieces John's belief that there was No Fate. Obviously according to this movie, there is fate. We can't stop or change it, we can only delay it.
Also, Skynet is no longer a single computer, but Skynet is software distributed over the widest of wide area networks. I guess I can understand that the internet was designed to operate in the event of a nuclear war, but when the power plants go out, so do all of the computers that make up Skynet.
If Skynet is no longer a central machine, how then can John and Kyle Reese "smash" its defense grid and defeat in 20 or so years?
I also thought that it was stupid that Kate starts to fall for John the SAME F'ING DAY that her fiance gets murdered by the T-X. Maybe a brief period of mourning would have been in order.
John is also a pill popping boozer. I'm not sure how that plays into his future role as "leader" of humanity.
But there were many points that I did like. For example, they showed what was obviously the first gen Terminator, the T1. They showed prototypes for the HK. They show exactly HOW it was that John came to be thought of as a leader.
Not perfect, not as good as the other two, especially when taking them all as a trilogy, but still worth plunking down $8.00 to see. I enjoyed it, more for the background on the Terminator universe than for its own merits, but I still enjoyed it.
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
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.]
I always thought that the series, especially the second, had an underlying moral that was offensive to me. That moral is that technology, beyond a certain point, should not be researched, that there are sanctimoniously-pronounced Things Man Was Not Meant To Know. The morality is over a hundred years old (except Frankenstein's monster had much better dialogue), but the presentation has the advantage of technological wizardry. Oh, sweet irony.
I can imagine the offscreen dialogue at the end of "T2":
World-Saving Heroes: Well, we've saved your asses.
Unwittingly Evil Scientists: Thanks!
WSH: Now, remember, no more robotics or artificial intelligence; it'll destroy humanity, and there's no way we can ensure that it doesn't.
UES: Umm. Right. So, guys, you want to... uh, take up pottery?
[rumble of sanctimonious approval]
And did I mention that Linda Hamilton's speech about the wonders of childbirth was possibly the most disgusting thing committed to celluloid in the last ten years? I think "T2" probably did as much for a shortage of kids becoming scientists as anything else.
--grendel drago
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca
Was that really a review of the movie, jamie? All we got was a list of "best" and "worse" trivialities. How lame.
Bottom-line: The movie is the first true ass-kicking movie of the summer. Everyone thought it would suck without Cameron, Hamilton, and so forth. It turned out to be very good, and it's exciting to see Arnold in a movie role that's perfect for him...it feels like 10 years haven't passed at all.
The car chase beats Matrix Reloaded's. My jaw was on the floor. And the fight scenes are refreshingly gravity-based. No wire-fu.
You'll love it. Go see it.
"Sufferin' succotash."
So is every lawmaker who ever tried to outlaw nudity.
Nuff said.
Free Software: Like love, it grows best when given away.
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.
Lets limit this to a scenario between the United States and Russia. No other scenario offers the all the actors in question the options that this scenario does.
Lets further limit to a general nuclear war scenario, ie, 'the big balloon'.
The highest priority targets would be C3I, command, control, communications, and intelligence targets:
- the National Command Authority (the President and his successors)
- NORAD
- Offut Air Force Base, Nebraska (HQ for Strategic Command),
- early warning radar stations in Greenland, Alaska, and Canada.
- emergency relocation centers
#2 priority targets would be nuclear forces themselves:
- ICBM HQs
- SAC Airbases
- Port facilities where nuclear weapons are stationed (ie, SSBN's - ballistic missile submarines
- ICBM silos
- nuclear weapon storage sites
Most of the above would be hit within the first two hours of hostilities.
#3 priority targets would be conventional warfighting targets:
- Army HQ
- Military unit locations
- military airfields/airbases
- military ports
#4 priority targets would be dual use targets:
- civilian ports
- civilian airfields
The following targets can be attacked at leisure (because they are not going to go anywhere). At leisure here means probably within 24 hours of hostilities.
#5 priority targets would be industrial and economic infrastructure necessary for warfighting:
- key factories (aircraft, tanks, ammunition, etc)
- electrical power generation facilities
- petroleum refineries
#6 priority targets would be other industrial and economic targets:
- transportation grid (rail and road hubs)
- food processing plants
- electrical power substations
- petroleum pipelines and storage areas
- computing centers
- ball bearing factories
Somewhere near the bottom of the list are urban centers in an of themselves (although they may be hit earlier for any of the above reasons).
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
That sort of depends on how you classify "free will" then, doesn't it? I mean, if from one view point, it's inevitable that you will choose path A over path B, then... even though you have to go through the trouble of actually "choosing" path A at the time, anyone who had the external view point would have know that your choosing path A was inevitable. And so you weren't really "choosing" at all. (Or at least, you may have seen it as a choice, but from the external view point, your choosing path A was a certainty.) (Things that are inevitable probably don't really count as choices, even if they seem like choices at the time.)
So... Does that really leave "free will"? Or just the illusion of it, since we can't see the predetermined timeline in its entirety?
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!
"Her identical twin sister 'Leslie Hamilton Gearran' was Linda's double in Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991)." (from IMDb)
"I would say that 99 per cent of what my father has written about his own life is false." - L. Ron Hubbard Jr.
[ Warning: extreme spoilage ahead! ]
The beginning of the film informs the viewer that a virus is rapidly spreading through the civilian and government Internet, disabling major infrastructure and causing general chaos. Furthermore, by evolving and adapting in ways never seen before by the military analysts, the virus is evading detection/disinfection, and as such is slated to infect the overwhelming majority of the internet in short order. The only seeming recourse available to the US military is to deploy an untested new artificial intelligence system called "SkyNet" that would take over control of nearly all computers in the world, and by some untold virtue of its (artificial) brilliance, expunge all of the world's infected computers of the virus.
However, the military big cheese (Robert Brewster) running the SkyNet project is very reluctant to deploy it, as he reveals in a prognosticative conversation with the Commander in Chief. The President suggests that launching SkyNet would wrest control of the US military's computers from the virus and give it back to the military. However, Brewster counters that launching SkyNet would give control of the military's computers to SkyNet -- instead of to humans. Nonetheless, when pressed he concedes that SkyNet will still be under human control.
Unsurprisingly, (consistent with the previously-released but chronologically-subsequent films,) when SkyNet is deployed it becomes sentient, decides that humans are its enemy, seizes control of itself from its operators, and begins the preparations for launching a massive nuclear missile attack against the major population-centers of the world. Our brave protagonists race to the supposed location of the mainframe that runs SkyNet, (deep within a desert bunker,) to destroy it before it can launch the missles. However...
[ EXTREME CRAPPY PLOT-TWIST SPOILAGE WARNING! ]
However, leaving the theater, I began to consider that perhaps the film's examination of the "Pandora's Box of defense technology" theme had a more specific message: if left unchecked, decentralized peer-to-peer networks would eventually cause the downfall of civilization as we know it. Their means of conveying this message seems to be a subtle strategy of suggestion, similar to the advertising practice of "product placement", (in which marketers attempt to improve the brand of a product by paying to have it appear in a positive light in a film.) As such, it seems reasonable that the metaphorical implication of the SkyNet plot-twist is an attempt by the MPAA and friends to cast a negative "branding" light onto decentralized peer-to-peer file sharing networks (like Kazaa) by associating them with the similarly-decentralized SkyNet network that in the film destroys the world -- and is the physical manifestation of the evils of hubris that the film thematically admonishes.
While the public debate on the efficacy of product placement is similar in nature to debates on the potency of all forms of advertising, (e.g. subliminal advertising,) marketing companies have no doubts that subtle branding has dramatic effects of the behavior of consumers; note the recent explosion of the "viral marketing" strategy in which agencies attempt to brand a product thro
my other lambda is a Y
I remember reading a really interesting essay about how T2 portrayed a conflict between gruff solid working class (Arnold) and the sleek shapeshifting, white collar middle middle class(T1000). Does anyone know who wrote it?
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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Arnold kills John in the future, then Kate captures Arnold and reprograms him. All of the robots that the humans used were captured - they could not manufacture them.
No comment at this time
An example of an 'external' view of the choice is the view of it from later in time. From my vantage point of this moment in time, I know that you chose to write the post I'm replying to here. Seen from here, it is a certainty.
But does that mean that you didn't have a free choice when you did this? I personally don't think so.
And did I mention that Linda Hamilton's speech about the wonders of childbirth was possibly the most disgusting thing committed to celluloid in the last ten years? I think "T2" probably did as much for a shortage of kids becoming scientists as anything else.
Look, I agree that Linda's ranting in T2 about how scientists are evil and so forth was insulting but I think it was pretty clear from the movie that she was just talking crazy. Even young John Conner realizes that she's teetering on shaky ground with the nonsense she spews.
The reasons why kids don't want to become scientists is a topic well outside the scope of movie reviews of T2 and T3. Here are a couple potential reasons that are much more likely than Linda Hamilton's speech in T2:
Well, I could go on and on. But I think you're way off the mark by blaming the current scientific woes on a blurb in one movie.
GMD
watch this
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.