Terminator 3 review (Spoilers included)

[Shrubz]

Well I just got back from a sneek peek of Terminator 3: Rise Of The Machines.
First I will say it's completely entertaining, well-made, clearly conceptualized, and a worthy addition to the Terminator franchise.
Having said that, I had a few problems with it. First off, the movie as a whole felt a little bland, like the director, Jonathan Mostow, has no unique style and just shoots scenes exactly as they are expected to be shot. Now this isn't neccisarily a bad thing I suppose, I just don't care for that. Secondly, I feel like the introduction, when both Terminators appear and proceed to get clothes etc. in our world, was just a re-hash of T2. Now I know, there are only a limited amount of things you can do with this, but I just felt they should've done something more creative.
Having said that, the story is intriguing, the action scenes involving and well-made, and the ending leaves it wide open for a sequel... no complaints here. And no, it does not top T2, sorry.
I reccomend you go see this (and avoid Legally Blonde 2... please).

3/5 Stars

[wirm]

Alrighty, this is encouraging. I might just go.

[radstar]

i very much enjoyed it!!!! :big grin: :big grin:

woot! i loved it!!!! i wuz kinda expecting to be disappointed but no way i didn't. it wuz the best way to end the trilogy. at least i hope it's the end. i do have a feeling that there's gonna be a fourth. but it's better be alll battle.

spoilers:

arnold schwarzeneggar.... man i gotta hand it to him. i wuz reminded why i wuz soo in love w/ him. he did extremely well. i don't really get the "shutted-himself-down" part. that made me had to think and tried to make sense of it. but i just moved on and enjoyed the ending. sooo sad tho. they're never gonna get some rest! heck- after watching this movie i needed some rest myself. i cannot imagine being in their shoes.

the sunglasses thing.... funny stuff

"talk to the hand" thing.... sooooo STUPID!!! why did they do that?!?! i actually rolled up my eyes...

and the sexy thing... she enlarged her breasts.... ehh that wuz definitely for the guys. a "men-in-black II" deju vu.

so okay... the cemetary thing... one thing that doesn't make sense. john conner knew nothing about the weapons but the terminator did???? sarah conner knew she wuz dying so she hid the weapons... why didn't she tell john conner about it???? and how in the world did the terminator know about the weapons and not remembering who sarah conner wuz??????

and the keys thing... in the truck. now- he doesn't remember hasta la vista and chill dude.... how did he know about the keys thing, to look above behind the sun-blocking thing?

yah i look at specifics stuff in this movie. i hardly do that. but when it's a sequel or a big deal to me- i look at the specifics.

i thought it ended out really well. at last- the war has began. now we know for sure. who knows if there will be a 4th sequel. no more chasing john conner please!!!! hehe

again.... AWESOME AWESOME MOVIE!!!!!!!!
definitely gonna buy it... hehe 4.9/5

[corfy]

Originally posted by radstar
so okay... the cemetary thing... one thing that doesn't make sense. john conner knew nothing about the weapons but the terminator did???? sarah conner knew she wuz dying so she hid the weapons... why didn't she tell john conner about it???? and how in the world did the terminator know about the weapons and not remembering who sarah conner wuz??????

Well, I haven't seen it yet (although I plan to), but I have a theory that might explain it.

I think the future John Connor remembered the Terminator getting the weapons in front of the "current" John Connor, so the future Connor told the Terminator where the weapons were before he was sent back, thus showing the "current" Connor where the weapons are.

As I said, I haven't seen the movie, so I could be completely off base on this one.

[TheeNobleKnight]

T3 is a very good and entertaining, non stop roller coaster ride, of action and excitement!!! The special effects are amazing!!! CGI is used alot, however it was not as noticible as it was in Matrix: Reloaded or X-Men 2. As a matter of fact, Terminator 3 has a chase scene that blows the chase scene in Matrix Reloaded away!!!

At first, I was very skeptical of T3. The trailers didn't really impress me all that much, and I thought it was going to be a desperate rehash of T2. Nevertheless, I'm very happy with T3!!!

The movie completely takes a dead franchise and does something with it that I couldn't have imagined possible. While the trailers made T3 look like nothing but a retread of the first two TERMINATORs, with time travelling killers going back to yet again kill John Connor so he can't lead the human resistence against them in the future, T3 completely turns this on its head.

No, there is no clean ending. Furthermore, there is no cheap hook to get us to believe the legitimacy of why this movie can even take place. The reasoning is brilliant and frankly there are so many good dialogue exchanges that totally speak to the theme of the movie. One that comes to mind is John's early "we will do the greatest thing ever, but only after terrible things happen" sums up the movie.

T3 is not about yet again thwarting the evil terminator and saving the world. No, the world, in fact, is not saved. The movie ends with nuclear war for god sakes. My god. The screen is filled with an image of Earth being pummelled with nuclear weapons, humanity being obliterated. And the audience clapped when the credits rolled. That is how powerful T3 is as a drama. In these times of fear and terrorism, here is a movie that ends with humanity causing our own destruction, hope but a glimmer in a shiny metallic eye crushed under a mountain somewhere, and yet the audience claps.

Sarah Connor lived long enough to believe the inevitable had been avoided. But we learn that even she hedged her bets. The cemetary scene was just brilliant. The story is just so spectacular. The future cannot be avoided unbelieveably, our heroes cannot thwart the efforts forever. John Connor tells Arnold to hell with being a leader, why not stop the war before it begins? But yet in the end the inevitable must occur and it does, to STUNNING effect.

And yet through it all, the machines seem oblivious to the very fact that their own actions contributed to causing the inevitability. The moment the TX kills Brewster's (first name escaping me atm) fiance I thought, hmm, if the fiance had lived then that may have been better for the machines. But that's what makes the movie so great. That's the point! The machines even for all their power and for all they try, they cannot escape the inevitable and they cannot grasp the very role that they play in bringing about their own destruction, very similar to the way the humans, in creating Skynet in the first place, cannot comprehend their own hand in their own eventual near-destruction. In the end, Connor will lead humanity to victory, but only after a huge cost.

On to the semantics. This movie just kicks *** in so many ways. First of all, I thought the idea of a female terminator was going to be complete crap, another female hero to copy BUFFY and all the others. But the writing and whoever it was who played her totally prove me wrong, delivering the best Terminator villain yet. They don't try to needlessly recreate the coolness factor of T2 by focusing on her morphing abilities. They're just a fact of her existence and we only see her liquid form a few clever times. Nor did they exploit her female attributes in a childish manner. You never once throughout the picture see the TX as a woman--you only see her as the vicious killing machine it is. She appropriately materializes inside a woman's clothier amongst the mannequins, which her arrival melts. Such wonderful panache, again glimpsed in the last third of the picture when after thoroughly womping Arnold, she gets a swagger in her step and briefly (and subtley) turns to check herself out in a mirror, adding just a bit of sinister character to the TX that never goes overboard.

The action. The chase sequence is at the beginning of the movie. My god, what a chase!!! The case was amazing!!! A hard hitting crunch fest that blew Matrix: Reloaded out of the water! Plus they used very very little CGI for that 10 minute scene. And I'm glad, because in the long run, it paid off and made things much more realistic. Matrix: Reloaded's chase scene was too CGI heavy. Another great thing about T3's chase scene is the distinct lack of music, amplifying the intensity of the set pieces as we are treated to remote controlled police cars and major construction and fire trucks, walloping down the street, taking entire city blocks with it, and having Arnold hang from a crane hook for half of it.

The FX are just spectacular!!! There isn't a single shot that lacks credibility or makes you think they did it cheap or couldn't get it right. Before the finale, we've already seen entire trucks barreled up into the air, careening all over the place. But the way it ends is just so awesome. Arnold drops the hook down the sewer, the TX gets back on the truck, the cable catches, rips up the street and then sucks down the truck for its final spectacular collapse. And this after something like a ten minute chase sequence!

The characters. Claire Danes and Nick Stahl are just amazing. The acting is great!!! I was continually surprised at how much good dialogue there was! I can't remember a line that fell flat. Arnold adopts an obsolete catch phrase (talk to the hand) from his now-trademark-walk-into-a-weird-bar-and-get-clothing entrance, and it perfectly ties into how HE is the obsolete terminator, just short of cutting edge, "so five years ago."

Danes starts off with a bang, showing that she has major balls by taking the drugged up Connor's gun and locking him in a dog kennel. This is later revisited with such spectacular satisfaction when she guns down a proto-skynet aerial drone in the military facility and John--who we by now know will marry her in the future--looks at her and says in perfect Oedipan (sp?) fashion, "you remind me of my mother!" My god, the irony is just creeping in. It's one of thost moments typing in so much meaning from so many different levels that you can't help but be satisfied.

The fights. Not a one disappoints. Arnold and the TX in the bathroom was particularly enthralling!!! Urinals and toilets going everywhere, both Terminators slamming into walls and making huge indentations in the ground. I've never even imagined that urinals could be utilized in such a manner! All leading to a satisfying character turn for Arnold's character himself, fighting between the TX's reprogramming and his own knowledge of his true mission to eventually shut himself down and finally thwart the TX's efforts to capture him and use him for its own bidding.

T3 also capitalizes in so many ways because the first two movies developed so much character and so much history. Although, this movie could have been 30 minutes longer to develop increased character development for Arnold. Create some father/son re-bonding between John and Arnold. That sort of thing, it would have made Arnold's sacrafice much more emotional.

Finally after all this time we can see how Skynet--only delayed by the efforts in the previous films--comes to life. We see the terminators and the aerial drones under construction and we learn how Skynet disguised itself as a computer virus only to finally take command and we witness the moments when it activates its self-awareness and launches the human race into nuclear holocaust. Everything that you always wanted from the first movies and was only ever hinted at.

And yet with all that, T3 manages to completely set up at least two if not three more movies, and it's not a cheap setup for sequels. They MUST occur!!! The TERMINATOR story has now been enlarged more than you could ever imagine and there is an entire epic to be told about humanity's own hubris leading to our own destruction, not by killing each other, but by engineering weapons that do it for us. The revelation that Skynet is decentralized via the Internet--totally updating the TERMINATOR mythology for the modern era, is just so great. T2 came out BEFORE the birth of the Internet as we know it for god sakes! So it just makes it that much more satisfying.

Arnold explains that in the future John reaches a point where he must, from what I could gather, sacrifice himself in order to allow Arnold to go back and try one more time to save him. So that right there just lines up so many threads for the rest of the series. The whole theme of inevitability is both depressing and yet exciting because although we know by the end of T3 that humanity is mostly destroyed, the Earth in nuclear ruin, we also know that humanity eventually will rise up and win in the end, after going through the hardship.

Hollywood can disappoint so easily and so often has. For a dead franchise like TERMINATOR to literally rise like this with such a rousing movie, and one that is well written and sets up such spectacular, and BOLD and ballsy implications for a future series of movies, I am thoroughly impressed. I, and the audience I sat with, jumped aghast, cheered, squealed with excitement and clapped numerous times througout T3.

I can't wait to see this picture again. It's just so satisfying, I am just speechless!!!

[TheeNobleKnight]

I would have put this above...but it said my post was too long.

Ok, now for some random thoughts...

Instead of Arnold telling the TX that she's "Terminated" during his last scene. I really wish he would have said, "Hasta La'Vista Baby!" That would have been much more cooler!!!

Another thing, did anyone catch all those various weapon settings the TX could switch too??? You know that scene when her plasma cannon is damaged, and she switches to a flame thrower. Well, it shows that she could have utilized lots of other weapons too. I thought one was a 35mm cannon. I could be mistaken. But it would have been smooth if they could have had her switch around to more weapons. Maybe during the military base scenes. She could have took down a tank or something...maybe an Apache.

The ending was amazing, stunning, shocking, and breath taking. I was very speechless. I was like, holy ****! Oh my god! That ending scene makes me wish they'd remake that one older sci-fi movie called, "The Day After." Now that would be smooth with modern day special effects.

Arnold needed bigger guns though!!! T2 gave Arnold lots of realy cool big guns!!! I wish he would have had some really awesome big guns here. Like maybe the rail gun he used in Eraser...or something huge.

Oh well, reckon I'm done. I am going to go see this movie again tonight...at the 9:00pm showing!!! This movie was sooooo much better than Marix: Reloaded. So far this has been a great year for movies!!! I can't wait for Bad Boys II, Kill Bill, Tomb Raider 2, Matrix: Revlolutions, and LOTR 3.
:big grin:

[wirm]

when you write a spoiler, can you please use the spoiler tag for it?

thx

[radstar]

i guess it's the best thing to have a sucky trailer for a great movie.

cuz if the trailer wuz just awesome... then we would have left from seeing the movie sadly disappointed.

the trailer looked pretty cool and had us all worried... the movie ended out really awesome.

[TheeNobleKnight]

WIRM...my subject matter clearly stated "SPOILER INFESTED REVIEW"

Didn't see you asking Radstar for some tags. :big grin:

[Guiboche]

Well, everyone here putty much said everything I could/would say, but I'll just say, I liked it just as much!

It was great, and fit nicely into the Terminator saga. I almost want a part 4, but if they never do make a part 4, I'll be extremely happy with the current 3 films

[hicks]

I saw the movie today.

It definatley doesn't top the second film, but it is pretty good. The action was almost non-stop which was really good for a film so overdue.

I'm sure there will be a 4th film... and I'm sure it'll take place during the actual war against the machines. I was scared about how this one would come about since Judgement Day was "stopped." The film definately wasn't out of place in the storyline. Well done.

[blugh]

Saw it. Loved it. Worthy successor. Awesome ending. Won't spoil.

4.5/5

[wirm]

I liked the movie. Like you said, non-stop action. That's always good.

It is a pity that they didn't leave any room for more installments of terminators being sent back into our time to kill Conner. But I suppose an apocalyptic war is ok too.

[redbear]

i didn't like it. they could have done alot more with this movie and they didn't. they tried taking a franchise that really could have ended in the 2nd installment and ruined it. there were no catching lines, no charisma, nothing to really grab you and make you want to enjoy this film. unless you enjoy mindless non-stop action just for the sake of putting it in there. granted, the action and the CG were the only things i think saved this film from being a total disaster. Nick Stohl was blah as John Connor. Arnnie was blah as the T-800 and the female was just doing her part of being a blah character. the only thing i liked was Claire Daines. she is the only character i liked....
i am so glad that i don't have to pay to see this, or i would have asked for my money back....

[Gaumont]

ok movie. first hour felt very much like a repeat. Nothing fun really. I was just being bored by it. But it got better after a while. I Liked the ending.
I know it opens up for sequals, bu ti hope they stay at this.