T3: Rise of the Robots
Okay, so nobody was realistically expecting anything as good as either of the first two, but it still would have been a nice surprise, wouldn’t it? I remember reading a couple of quotes suggesting it was actually not that bad (“TERMINATOR 3 is a damn good film” - aintitcoolnews), and this just ‘stoked my fires of intrigue’, giving me a false sense of hope that it would in fact be as good as T1 or 2.
To put it simply: It tries. It tries to be in the same league as Cameron’s Terminators rather than be its own …‘machine’, and this is probably why it ultimately ends up being a frustratingly unfulfilling film. There are far too many insider jokes from parts of the other two, and for the first hour it seems as though this has taken the place of the franchise’s plot. There is virtually none of the atmosphere or real vision of the previous chapters, and whilst it seems unfair to compare it to them, it is pretty much impossible not to do so considering all the little humorous references that exist.
There’s very little scene-setting or explanations towards what has happened in the past decade, other than that the Connors appear to have halted ‘judgement day’ and that John is now a bit of a homeless wreck. So then, without warning, the two machines appear in town, find their targets (and each other) and all hell breaks loose as they smash the crap out of several dozen cars and buildings in a reasonably good chase scene with a crane. I won’t bother with details here because to be fair, there aren’t any. The plot is told in a sort of ‘oh yeah and I forgot to mention, this happened. Oh yeah and then this;” and is totally secondary to the guns-blazing action sequences. In retrospect you can sort of see that might have something to do with the ‘unchangeable fate’ aspect – details of the future are irrelevant as you can’t do anything about them anyway – So all of this goes on for about 45 minutes whilst they urgently try and figure out why/how the terminators are still around trying to kill everyone, and how to do something about it.
It is around this point when you can start to make out the actual ‘point’ of this chapter in the overall story of the trilogy (thus far), and yes, this is when the film really starts. The action takes second place for the rest of the film whilst they try to take out SkyNet HQ, and you start to wonder why they hadn’t just kept this sort of mood for the duration, (as well as perhaps giving the film a higher rating, making the action sequences a bit more ‘shocking’ as opposed to just ‘moderately tense’). Okay. The last half an hour is a perfectly good addition to the story, taking it in an excellent different direction than you’d expect from the exceptionally predictable first hour. Not to say it’s a twist, as such, but it is a surprisingly daring departure from such an otherwise ‘Hollywood’ blockbuster. It also almost kills the need for a fourth movie too, as we supposedly already know what is going to happen next. Although I’m sure there’ll be one in a few years anyway.
Don’t expect too much from it, or the acting, or the… well, if you want a no-brainer, you’ll be happy with the action, and if you want another terminator, you’ll be disappointed with the atmosphere, and yet weirdly satisfied at the same time.
6.4
MD 15:36 1/08/2003