[EDITOR’S NOTE: In 2003, long before MovieManifesto.com existed, I spent my summer as a 20-year-old college kid writing as many movie reviews as I could. My goal was to compile them all into a website, possibly hosted by Tripod or Geocities, which would surely impress all of the women in my dorm. That never happened—neither the compiling nor the impressing—but the reviews still exist. So, now that I am a wildly successful critic actually have a website, I’ll be publishing those reviews on the respective date of each movie’s 20th anniversary. Against my better judgment, these pieces remain unedited from their original form. I apologize for the quality of the writing; I am less remorseful about the character of my 20-year-old opinions.]
The most important quality found in Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines is, coincidentally, also characteristic of the terrifying androids of the movie’s creation, and it is not intelligence but self-awareness. The first two Terminator films were astonishing in their innovation, offering spectacular action sequences while simultaneously employing dizzying storylines that toyed with the high-brow concepts of time-travel and artificial intelligence. James Cameron’s pictures radiated a daring but thoughtful ingenuity largely absent from today’s science-fiction genre (though not entirely so – see The Matrix). Now, rather than attempting to equal the historic heights of the franchise’s previous features, Terminator 3 has the humility not to try. Recognizing (for the most part) that it lacks the tools required for greatness, T3 settles for simply being enjoyable, and while it is surely deficient in the subtlety of Cameron’s works, it more than qualifies as absorbing entertainment.
A brief history (those who have not seen the first two films would be wise to stop reading): In 1984, a then-unknown Cameron made The Terminator, in which a cyborg (Arnold Schwarzenegger) is sent back through time to murder Sarah Connor (Linda Hamilton) before she has given birth to her son, John, who would later grow to lead humankind in a resistance against the machines. Seven years later, Cameron unveiled the much-heralded T2: Judgment Day; here a terminator targeted John in his teenage years. The brilliance of T2 was its inversion of Schwarzenegger’s character – this time he was sent back to save John, while the sleeker T-1000 (Robert Patrick) was dispatched to execute him.
Now, if ever a film’s ending decried the potential creation of another sequel, it was that of T2. But action movies make money, and so even without the services of Cameron (who also co-wrote the first two pictures), Warner Bros. snatched up production rights, resigned Schwarzenegger, plunked down $170 million, and gave relative rookie Jonathan Mostow a chance to direct. What he’s come up with is by no means original – T3 is essentially a mindless rehash of the far superior T2 – but he understands his audience, and he supplies enough explosions to override the film’s mundane structure.
Over the last decade, John Connor (Nick Stahl) has spent his life on the run, refusing to allow any record of his existence to appear in print for fear it would result in a renewed attack from the future. Judgment Day has passed, but he’s still paranoid, and there’s a terrific moment in which he drops a beer bottle off a bridge and the camera pans down to display a bed of skulls along the river’s floor. After a motorcycle accident, he breaks into a veterinary clinic and encounters Kate Brewster (Claire Danes), who believes he’s a drug addict and swiftly locks him in the kennel.
Meanwhile, two robots (or cybernetic organisms, as they prefer) have indeed returned. The first is Schwarzenegger as our good ol’ Terminator who, so revolutionary 20 years ago, is now an obsolete design but still knows how to punch through a windshield (thinking about it, Arnold’s pretty much playing himself, minus the political baggage). True to form, he’s sent back once again to protect John, while another arrives intent on destroying him; this time it’s in the form of a female, T-X (Kristanna Loken).
And oh is she a bad-ass. One of the best facets of the Terminator movies is that in all three cases, the villains are far more powerful than the heroes, thus heightening the adversity and creating additional suspense. T-X is no exception. She’s fairly similar to the T-1000 from T2, and she has all his goodies, most notably the ability to transform into anything she touches. But she’s an upgrade – not only can she manipulate other machines, but she herself is a veritable arms catalog, able to convert various body parts into bazookas or chainsaws as she sees fit (the flamethrower was my personal favorite). Plus she has that utter dearth of morality in her corner: she can shoot a defenseless teenager six times in the head without blinking, nary a wisp of hair out of place.
Ah yes, the plot. It’s tremendously complicated, really: T-X blows up a great many things attempting to kill John, while Terminator blows up a great many things in an effort to save him. Along for the ride is that poor lass Kate, who we can’t help but feel pitifully sorry for as she gradually realizes the big guy driving the truck is a talking metallic beast. Director Mostow displays a sure hand early on, and the film’s best sequence is its first major set piece in which, in pursuit of John’s pickup, T-X helms a massive wide-load truck while Terminator latches onto its crane only to be hurtled through a glass building. It isn’t quite as smooth or elaborate as the freeway chase in Matrix Reloaded, but it’s still fast-paced and riveting.
T3 stumbles around its halfway point, as it gets a little too ambitious and tries tackling the heady issues addressed in the franchise’s prior features, and it is here that Cameron’s absence is palpable. He had a remarkable gift for forcing us to unreservedly suspend our disbelief, a talent screenwriters John Brancato and Michael Ferris do not share. There’s some scattered mumbo-jumbo about whether Judgment Day was in fact prevented or merely postponed, and then there’s a frantic dash to a nearby computer-intelligence facility, where Kate’s father just happens to be the boss. Right.
Granted, the movie had to try to go somewhere, but it just doesn’t sit right for two reasons: First, we’ve seen this all before in T2, and second, this time around, the would-be traumatic events seem so disconnected from the lives of the characters that we aren’t compelled to care. Indeed, the first Terminator remains the only of the three to adequately possess an emotional context. T3 has some idle talk of a possible romance, but it feels sloppy and tacked-on.
It doesn’t help that the dialogue is subpar. There are those obligatory scenes of exposition, and here the discourse feels especially stale. But the script is also severely lacking in humor, and Schwarzenegger’s one-liners don’t have their usual pop. The majority of the dialogue-laden scenes have a lethargic, filler quality, as though their central purpose is just to take up space until the next action scene comes along.
Strangely enough, however, the acting is close to perfect. Terminator remains Schwarzenegger’s best role to date, and he slips back into that exoskeleton with marvelous ease, clipped delivery and robotic motion still flawlessly intact. Nick Stahl was a superb casting choice, and he plays John with a dynamic sense of realism, as though he truly grasps his character’s deep-seated frustrations; Stahl remains one of America’s best unheralded young actors, and here’s hoping this turn thrusts him into the limelight. Claire Danes shows poise and intelligence as Kate, who otherwise could easily have become an irritation. And Mostow even throws in a hilarious cameo from Earl Boen as Dr. Silberman, the unctuous psychologist from the first two films.
The show-stealer, however, is Kristanna Loken, who as T-X is the most sublimely repugnant villain since Linda Fiorentino in The Last Seduction. Alluring eyes unblinking, her exquisitely beautiful face dazzles in every frame, and her minimalist approach (due to her character’s android-like economy of speech) lends her swift movements a kind of rapturous efficiency. She has the capacity for passion, however, such as a gloriously slimy moment when, after discovering John’s existence by licking a sample of his blood, she savors the taste, her face contorting into an orgiastic spasm. What a woman.
But T3 is, first and foremost, an action movie, and the visuals must take center stage. The special effects are, for the most part, serviceable. There aren’t many eye-popping moments (such as Robert Patrick oozing his liquid-metal form between steel bars in T2), but that’s mainly because we’ve come to demand more from filmmakers in this era of technological wonderment. That said, T3 is still a great-looking film, and the meticulous composition of the effects proves more than satisfactory. Also of note is Jeff Mann’s production design, which has a tremendously modern feel; the locations look as though they were lifted directly out of a video-game, and I mean that in the best way.
Generally, T3 understands its limitations. It is not as complete a picture as its predecessors, but it is nearly as enjoyable, and it doesn’t bog down viewers with an overbearing atmosphere. There are a few exceptions, particularly a blasphemous late scene in which Terminator struggles against his programming (the equivalent of Hannibal Lecter developing a conscience) – it’s shamelessly manipulative, almost comical even, and it’s the only time Schwarzenegger falters. But that faux pas is redeemed by a surprisingly introspective finale, and in the meantime, there’s enough juice here to keep us mollified … at least until the next Terminator movie comes along.
Jeremy Beck is the editor-in-chief of MovieManifesto. He watches more movies and television than he probably should.