In honor of Terminator Salvation, I will be taking a look back at the three Terminator films as this is a franchise I’ve known since I could crawl and love deeply. Each day we’ll bring you a review of all three films before capping it off with my full review of Terminator Salvation. Today brings us to the bastard child of the series; Terminator 3.
TERMINATOR 3: RISE OF THE MACHINES
If there had to be a Terminator 3, it should have returned Arnold as the villain and have him chase after John Connor. Already you have a great emotional conflict with John being forced to destroy what is essentially the only father he’s known. Instead, the makers of this film decided they wanted to make Arnold the good guy, have a villain partially made of liquid metal, give John Connor a tough, brash female to have boss him around, and have one human responsible for mankind’s destruction. Sound familiar? Well it should because Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines is select scenes from each of the previous installments to try to make something coherent. What’s left is a film that’s as soulless as it’s main antagonist and as messy as the nitpicks at all of the time travel in this series.
The problems with this film begin at what has been a staple of the franchise in having a memorable villain. The T-X isn’t anywhere near as threatening or as engaging as the T-800 or the T-1000 were. She’s supposed to be “the most advanced prototype” but she feels like a downgrade from the T-1000 if anything. Seriously, how is throwing liquid metal over an endoskeleton an upgrade from an ALL liquid metal Terminator? The next screw-up comes in making everything the T-X says a one-liner and making her an outright parody. The first two terminators were based on fear and spoke softly. Kristanna Loken doesn’t help matters by giving one of the worst performances of the whole series and portrays a villain more concerned at giving silly lines than wanting to maim her next target. Also with this new model, Terminator’s have now learned to cum as the T-X gives an orgasmic reaction after licking a bloody bandage. These are supposed to be ROBOTS who’s purpose is to destroy all opponents, not women from the future with sick fetishes. Yes, Arnold’s T-800 acts more human as the film goes on but that plays on the theme of the film and is developed. Here we’re just told to buy that the T-X acts so incredibly human without her studying or learning human interaction. She’s a joke of an antagonist that shouldn’t even be mentioned in the same breath as the two that came before her.
But the downgrades don’t end there, as the movie devolves the tough, spunky John Connor from the end of T2 into a whiny, scared wuss. Life hasn’t been kind to John who only works day labor, is homeless, and constantly on the move. Nick Stahl for whatever reason decides to play John pathetically. T2 had established that John was anything but a wuss and was an independent figure who was already learning his way. This John Connor is a wimp, always whining at someone for not listening to him or when a main character doesn’t do what he wants. It’s a drastic and unbelievable change from the John Connor we came to know and way too unbelievable this is the guy who will lead us against Skynet. If anything, Claire Danes’ Kate Brewster is more “John Connor” than Stahl’s take as she’s actually kicking some form of ass in her first scenes. She might be annoying, but at least by the end she’s accepted what’s to come and opens a case of ownage on a prototype Hunter-Killer. Stahl’s Connor bitches through the whole thing even in scenes he doesn’t need to, such as the attempted suicide. When John tells Kate “you remind me of my mother” he must mean because she’s the one taking out machines and not him, much like what happened when he was just ten. Connor at this stage deserves to be strong, independent and hardened yet instead is the antithesis of that.
Arnold once again returns to the role that made him a superstar and he’s just going through the motions as what’s now the T-850. It’s not told why he’s the T-850 now and he’s never called that in the film. His one-liners which once felt so natural now feel here just to please fans and a majority of them fall flat. He plays up the more comedic elements higher than he did in the first two films and it falls unbelievably flat. “She’ll be back,” is one of the stupidest lines in the picture, followed by the T-850 literally talking to a hand after he’s instructed to by a male stripper. The character many children admired has been turned into a complete joke of what he once was, and like the T-X, acts way too human for his own good. Yes, the T-800 begins to become human toward the end of the last film but he is taught to be like that by John Connor. This “T-850″ (lame) shows up and acts like every other Arnold role the guy has played. The character has lost that charm that made him so unique in the first two films, not because he’s old, but because the filmmakers make him a caricature.
The same could be said for the film on the whole which follows Terminator 2 to a T, only without the heart. Jonathan Mostow does an admirable job directing the action scenes, but there’s nothing too original about them. The film takes scenes from T2 and alters maybe one or two details but keeps everything generally the same. Watch the truck chase in the previous flick and the one present in this movie and you’ll see they begin and end the same way. We’ve seen the Terminator wipe out cop cars with a mini gun and not kill anyone, why does it need to be rehashed? True, the last film took the basic concept of the classic original and altered a few things, but those had to do with the plot and not the action. This venture doesn’t develop the characters as well and the plot lacks the heart and deepness of the first two. The ending is the best thing about the film but feels wasted when the journey to get there is all but meaningless. I’m aware I’ve compared this a lot to the other two and to the films credit if it wasn’t a Terminator film it’d be a great sci-fi action epic but it since it carries the brand name it has to be judged as such. At the end of the day, this is a movie carrying a brand name it feels like it has no association with.
You’ll notice this hasn’t been as long winded as the other two reviews and rightfully so. After what is one of the top three sequels of all-time, Terminator 3 sunk the franchise well below the good will established by the first movie. It didn’t need to try and outdo the second but I suppose the filmmakers felt too afraid of their own ideas so they copy and pasted every action scene for this. The villain is unmemorable, there’s no character development, and it tries and fails to have the themes the first two films established. If there has to be a sequel to T2, give me T2: 3-D – Battle Across Time. Yes it’s a lot shorter, but at least it’s immersive, slightly original, and is thrilling. This film belongs right next to Alien3 and Alien Resurrection, RoboCop 2 and 3, and whatever other movie franchise has lame sequels that need to be forgotten from the canon.
