Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines
Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines
In 1991, as Terminator 2: Judgment Day's end titles faded to black and the theater's lights came back up, we were left to believe that Sarah Connor (Linda Hamilton), her son John (Edward Furlong) and a reprogrammed Terminator (Arnold Schwarzenegger) had not only defeated the advanced T-1000 Terminator which had been trying to "terminate" the future leader of the human resistance against the murderous Skynet computer network, but also changed history by preventing the development of Skynet itself. After all, the formidable trio had destroyed the Cyberdine Corporation's main lab, Skynet's "father," Dr. Miles Dyson (Joe Morton), was dead, and all traces of the original Terminator – the mangled arm, the strange chip that Dyson had reverse engineered, and the T-101's CPU itself – had been melted in a vat of of hot liquid metal, along with that formidable pair of good/evil Terminators. End of movie, end of story, right?
While I'm not sure if James Cameron, the Terminator's creator, thought that there would be a Terminator 3, Arnold Schwarzenegger's undeniable popularity and Hollywood's affinity for profitable sequels practically guaranteed there would be a film like 2003's Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines.
T3 takes up the narrative of a twenty-something-year-old John Connor (Nick Stahl) some eight years after the events chronicled in Judgment Day,, but his tale is that of a man headed for a deathward spiral rather than that of a contented savior of mankind. When we first meet John, he is barely recognizable (he abuses drugs and alcohol in order to escape inner demons and to cope with his mother's death) as the future leader of the resistance against Skynet. Rootless and without purpose, young Connor drifts about the city of Los Angeles, unaware that his old nemesis from the future, Skynet, has some more tricks up its virtual sleeves.
As imagined by screenwriters John Brancato and Michael Ferris (who co-authored their original screen story with Ted Sarafian), the destruction of the Cyberdine lab, the death of Dyson and the incineration of the T-101 and all traces of the first Terminator hindered rather than halted the military's work on Skynet, an advanced computer network designed to automate the United States' strategic arsenal in an era of budget cuts and downsizing of conventional forces. Under the leadership of Air Force General Richard Brewster (JAG's Robert Cresswell), the programmers and technicians assigned to the Skynet program have not only built the sophisticated CPUs and software that will place America's nuclear bombers, subs, and ICBMs totally into the automated "hands" of a hyper-intelligent computer, but also created the first generation of hunter-killers and Terminator prototypes.
To make matters worse, the future Skynet has refused to accept defeat at the hands of the Connor family. Having been frustrated in its attempts to prevent John from being born in 1984 and to kill him as a pre-teen in 1997, Skynet dispatches a third Terminator even more advanced than T2's infamous liquid metal T-1000 model: the prototype Terminatrix T-X (Kristanna Loken).
As beautiful as she is deadly, the T-X (in a tip of the hat to the first film) arrives in a chronosphere sans clothing and commandeers a woman's Lexus and her clothes in order to not only hunt down John Connor but all his future lieutenants in the resistance movement, including Kate Brewster (Claire Danes of My So-Called Life), a veterinarian who not only is Gen. Brewster's daughter but is also destined to be John Connor's most trusted aide...and his wife.
But even as the T-X methodically hunts down Connor and Skynet's future enemies, another chronosphere arrives in L.A. and deposits another outdated (and reprogrammed) Cyberdine T-101 Terminator (Schwarzenegger). Its mission: to once again serve as John Connor's protector and ensure his – and Kate's – survival. Now it's a question of which Terminator will win the race against time....and whether or not Skynet can be stopped before the nuclear fires are unleashed.
Although Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines earned good professional reviews when it was released theatrically in 2003 (CNN's Paul Clinton hailed it as "Utterly spectacular. The best action film of the year."), I was skeptical and opted not to watch it at the multiplex. To me, a Terminator film without James Cameron's input either as writer or director was as viable as a Star Wars film without George Lucas' cooperation. I wasn't sure if the writers had done a good job or if the producers had remained thematically faithful to Cameron's original vision.
Now that I own the Warner Bros. Video DVD of Terminator 3, I can say that although I think Rise of the Machines feels a bit superfluous, it is a very watchable action film. Its saving graces are:
Involvement of Terminator series producers and other behind-the-scenes veterans: Okay, so Cameron decided to sit this one out, but original producers Mario Kassar, Andrew Vajna, and Gale Ann Hurd are back, as well as the Terminator-effects creator Stan Winston and the special effects team of Industrial Light and Magic.
References to the older films: T3 couldn't stand on its own without the first two movies, so the screenwriters and director Jonathan Mostow carefully weave little linking threads from The Terminator and T2: Judgment Day not only with Schwarzenegger's presence but with bits of dialog and exposition, filling in some backstory gaps (as it happens, Kate and John had met before, shortly before the events of the second film), and the slimy psychiatrist Dr. Silberman (Earl Boen) has a short but important cameo.
John Connor: Do you even remember me? Sarah Connor, blowing up Cyberdyne, hasta la vista, baby. Ring any bells?
Terminator: That was a different T-101.
John Connor: What do you guys, come off an assembly line or something?
Terminator: Exactly.
John Connor: Oh man, I'm gonna have to teach you everything all over again.
It doesn't pander to audience expectations: The screenwriters' decision to give T3 a darker, not-so-triumphant ending is, in my view, the shrewdest move made by the creators of the film. In the first two films, the audience got what it basically expected: to see the bad Terminators offed by the heroes and all's well that ends well. Terminator 3 teases the viewer into thinking Ah, this is going to be exactly the same deal! John, Kate, and the good ol' T-101 defeat the T-X Terminatrix and save the world, which is what we, the audience, want. But the subtitle of the film reveals the film's true intention; T3 isn't about the defeat of Skynet, it's about the Rise of the Machines and the setting in stone of John Connor and Kate Brewster's future. While the ending of the film is atypically downbeat (Skynet does take over America's nuclear arsenal and unleashes Armageddon), it was a brilliant doesn't insult the viewer's intelligence conclusion.
While I'm not sure if James Cameron, the Terminator's creator, thought that there would be a Terminator 3, Arnold Schwarzenegger's undeniable popularity and Hollywood's affinity for profitable sequels practically guaranteed there would be a film like 2003's Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines.
T3 takes up the narrative of a twenty-something-year-old John Connor (Nick Stahl) some eight years after the events chronicled in Judgment Day,, but his tale is that of a man headed for a deathward spiral rather than that of a contented savior of mankind. When we first meet John, he is barely recognizable (he abuses drugs and alcohol in order to escape inner demons and to cope with his mother's death) as the future leader of the resistance against Skynet. Rootless and without purpose, young Connor drifts about the city of Los Angeles, unaware that his old nemesis from the future, Skynet, has some more tricks up its virtual sleeves.
As imagined by screenwriters John Brancato and Michael Ferris (who co-authored their original screen story with Ted Sarafian), the destruction of the Cyberdine lab, the death of Dyson and the incineration of the T-101 and all traces of the first Terminator hindered rather than halted the military's work on Skynet, an advanced computer network designed to automate the United States' strategic arsenal in an era of budget cuts and downsizing of conventional forces. Under the leadership of Air Force General Richard Brewster (JAG's Robert Cresswell), the programmers and technicians assigned to the Skynet program have not only built the sophisticated CPUs and software that will place America's nuclear bombers, subs, and ICBMs totally into the automated "hands" of a hyper-intelligent computer, but also created the first generation of hunter-killers and Terminator prototypes.
To make matters worse, the future Skynet has refused to accept defeat at the hands of the Connor family. Having been frustrated in its attempts to prevent John from being born in 1984 and to kill him as a pre-teen in 1997, Skynet dispatches a third Terminator even more advanced than T2's infamous liquid metal T-1000 model: the prototype Terminatrix T-X (Kristanna Loken).
As beautiful as she is deadly, the T-X (in a tip of the hat to the first film) arrives in a chronosphere sans clothing and commandeers a woman's Lexus and her clothes in order to not only hunt down John Connor but all his future lieutenants in the resistance movement, including Kate Brewster (Claire Danes of My So-Called Life), a veterinarian who not only is Gen. Brewster's daughter but is also destined to be John Connor's most trusted aide...and his wife.
But even as the T-X methodically hunts down Connor and Skynet's future enemies, another chronosphere arrives in L.A. and deposits another outdated (and reprogrammed) Cyberdine T-101 Terminator (Schwarzenegger). Its mission: to once again serve as John Connor's protector and ensure his – and Kate's – survival. Now it's a question of which Terminator will win the race against time....and whether or not Skynet can be stopped before the nuclear fires are unleashed.
Although Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines earned good professional reviews when it was released theatrically in 2003 (CNN's Paul Clinton hailed it as "Utterly spectacular. The best action film of the year."), I was skeptical and opted not to watch it at the multiplex. To me, a Terminator film without James Cameron's input either as writer or director was as viable as a Star Wars film without George Lucas' cooperation. I wasn't sure if the writers had done a good job or if the producers had remained thematically faithful to Cameron's original vision.
Now that I own the Warner Bros. Video DVD of Terminator 3, I can say that although I think Rise of the Machines feels a bit superfluous, it is a very watchable action film. Its saving graces are:
Involvement of Terminator series producers and other behind-the-scenes veterans: Okay, so Cameron decided to sit this one out, but original producers Mario Kassar, Andrew Vajna, and Gale Ann Hurd are back, as well as the Terminator-effects creator Stan Winston and the special effects team of Industrial Light and Magic.
References to the older films: T3 couldn't stand on its own without the first two movies, so the screenwriters and director Jonathan Mostow carefully weave little linking threads from The Terminator and T2: Judgment Day not only with Schwarzenegger's presence but with bits of dialog and exposition, filling in some backstory gaps (as it happens, Kate and John had met before, shortly before the events of the second film), and the slimy psychiatrist Dr. Silberman (Earl Boen) has a short but important cameo.
John Connor: Do you even remember me? Sarah Connor, blowing up Cyberdyne, hasta la vista, baby. Ring any bells?
Terminator: That was a different T-101.
John Connor: What do you guys, come off an assembly line or something?
Terminator: Exactly.
John Connor: Oh man, I'm gonna have to teach you everything all over again.
It doesn't pander to audience expectations: The screenwriters' decision to give T3 a darker, not-so-triumphant ending is, in my view, the shrewdest move made by the creators of the film. In the first two films, the audience got what it basically expected: to see the bad Terminators offed by the heroes and all's well that ends well. Terminator 3 teases the viewer into thinking Ah, this is going to be exactly the same deal! John, Kate, and the good ol' T-101 defeat the T-X Terminatrix and save the world, which is what we, the audience, want. But the subtitle of the film reveals the film's true intention; T3 isn't about the defeat of Skynet, it's about the Rise of the Machines and the setting in stone of John Connor and Kate Brewster's future. While the ending of the film is atypically downbeat (Skynet does take over America's nuclear arsenal and unleashes Armageddon), it was a brilliant doesn't insult the viewer's intelligence conclusion.
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