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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.
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'
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.
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,
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
"True Lies"
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
Not having an offsite backup is what defines a company as being on the bleeding edge...
Cheers,
Ian
Now see thats the way you should be thinking, people seem to forget that the way they are using time in the terminator movies is how they use time in say, Orson Scott Cards "Pastwatch: Redemption of Christopher Columbus"
Each time the machines send back a terminator they create a small paradox, IE things stop happening the way that they happened the previous time.
The first skynet could have been created in a different manner the first time, but by sending back the first terminator also facilitated his existance at an earlier date.
When they destroyed the hands and such of the first terminator in Terminator 2, they merely destroyed the timeline that involved skynet coming to exist in 1997.
In fact, they boldly say that is the case in the movie, when he is talking about the chick and how he met her, and he said "if you had never been sent back that time, I would have hooked up with her then"
The original part of the series "could" happen, simply because UNTIL the first terminator was sent back, things DID happen where skynet was created, and almost created its own causal loop in creating john connor, who might not even have had the same father in the original timeline (ie some guy other than the future guy).
Then when he came back he becames the father, thus destroying some of the time line, etc..
it gets complicated but if you think of time is completely mutable from any instant to the intstants ahead of it, then the plot can work out just fine.
If you don't vote, you don't matter, so don't waste your time telling me your opinion
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...
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
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!"
Some poeple in the US tend to be a little to uptight about this.
I mean, there is nudity in reality, so why shun it from a movie? A bit of realism in movies doesn't hurt, it's not like you'd want to remove the blood and noise from Saving Private Ryan and show it to your children.
I always find it hilarious when movies obviously avoid nudity at all cost, which is no problem for a movie that was meant to be hilarious in the first place, but would really destroy the experience of most movies for me.
As far as I know, most nude-scenes are cut out anyway for the US-versions.
Actually, in europe, we regard violence in movies as more harmful to young people than nudity, so even without a single nude scene, it wouldn't ever be rated what we call equivalent to PG.
Remove the violence, leave the nudes, and it would be a perfect PG over here. (this may not apply to all of Europe, but at least significant parts)
You have your opinion about nudes, however many (or most?) people don't mind, and movies are not produced for you alone. Live with it.
As far as plot justification goes (I haven't seen the movie yet) there is an existing explanation for why the time travellers need to go sans-clothing. As far as I'm concerned, a movie that gets rated PG means the director/script-writer pulled punches and sacrificed content so the uptight censorship idiots won't get their chastity belts in a knot. The real world features violence, nudity, sex, offensive language and concepts. Deal with it... there is no reason to sanitize and dumb down a story so that the over-sensitive can handle it.
perl -e 'print $i=pack(c5, (41*2), sqrt(7056), (unpack(c,H)-2), oct(115), 10)'
I don't think the nudity per se is the issue for a lot of people, it's the pandering aspect. What T&A says to the audience is "this is meant for horny straight males - anyone else is just tolerated here." AKA, the E3 effect.
The straight male desire assumption (when it shouldn't be necessary in works with more universal appeal - erotica/porn is another question) is more offensive to me than depictions of sex or incidental nudity.
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.
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
I'm distinguishing between the nudity and the pandering; you obviously can have either without the other. It's the promise of nudity, rather than the delivery of it, that secures the eyeballs of the teen male demographic (obviously, they need to stay within ratings limits to get that demographic.) My issue is with the selective representation of desire, and the way it creates a "canonical" audience when there isn't any call for it. Some films do have a reason for a canonical audience (Porky's, for example, or even American Pie); for others, it's unnecessary. This translates to games, as well.
Oddly enough, I'm more patient with Tomb Raider per se because I think the cheesecake factor is part of its raison d'etre, rather than being a gratuitous add-on.
I haven't seen T3, so I'm making a bit of a prediction: that the nudity of the Terminatrix was filmed in a far, far different way than the nudity of male terminators was. If you take a lot of these movies and invert the genders - not just for the story line, but for the way they're filmed, the way that the figure of the woman as an object of desire is portrayed in a way that most males would never accept a man being portrayed - you'd see what I mean.
The odd thing about a lot of Japanese anime and game culture is that they sometimes play with this sort of asymmetry of desire with gender-flipping plots and ambiguous characters, as if the artists are chafing at the market constraints and subtly undermining them. Think of "Bridget" from Guilty Gear XX, or Ranma...
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"
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!
[ 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've noticed that most of the anti-nudity holier-than-thou crowd in America are people you wouldn't want to see naked anyway.
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)