Review of T3: Rise of the Machines 731
Let me first draw your attention to CNN's review. The CNN reviewer tells you this "darker and slicker" sequel is "worth the wait," gives you the long-form plot setup, shows you the sexy look of the "babe-a-licious" babe, and promises you "emotional weight" with "wit" and a "stunning and thought-provoking" climax. What he doesn't mention is that CNN and the movie's producer/distributor are both owned by AOL Time Warner.
It's been ten years since I watched the first Terminator and maybe I'm remembering it better than it was. But it had an emotional depth, a heart that neither of its sequels matched. T3 is slicker, yes, but darker!? It's light fluff. The nightmare of nuclear destruction in the original was rendered without CG effects, but I'll remember the skeleton clutching the chain-link fence long after I've forgotten this week's pixel-perfect explosions. And the "storm is coming" ending of the original was genuinely thought-provoking, with a chilling resolve that just embarrasses this week's Hollywood ending. Claire Danes is no Linda Hamilton.
The effects are what you'd expect from a modern zillion-dollar action movie, but not groundbreaking the way that T2's were at the time.
I found nothing about it witty. I chuckled through the chase scenes -- it's mostly chase scenes -- because they were so over-the-top and the plot holes were so glaring. Apart from that, there was only one funny line. (I assume everyone else is as bored as I am with the "dry cool wit like that" dialogue.)
Best unintentionally funny line: "I've got enough C-4 to blow up ten supercomputers!"
Best unintentionally funny visual: tie between fumble for the car keys, and offscreen killing sprays blood across photo.
Dumbest joke: gratuitous mocking of effeminate guy.
Best absurd effect: missile blows apart the wall in a small office ten feet from our heroes, they avoid injury by diving to floor. Duck and cover!
Best plot hole: Terminatrix's chronic failure to remember that she can run fast.
Heavy on the exposition, light on brains and heart, forgettable. See it if you really jones for big trucks smashing stuff. If you just have to see a movie, see "28 Days Later" instead. Rated R, not recommended for anyone whose mental age matches their valid ID.
There should not have been a T2 or T3... (Score:5, Interesting)
- The Terminator was sent into the past just before the big mainframe was to be destroyed by the rebels. John Connor had just about won the war.
- The materials from the Terminator sent into the past created Skynet. This plot line was addressed in T2.
- A la Hawkins, the Terminator could never succeed. If it did, it would cease to exist. Skynet would not have been created, and thus, it could never have existed. Ergo, no Terminator.
T2 took some of this plot, but conveniently forgot that the humans were about to win, and created the second movie.Problem: it's a time causality loop. You cannot stop it! Why? Because if you do stop the war, you stop the Terminators, and you then never get them sent into the past. Without them in the past, you cannot have Skynet. Get it?!!?!
T3 is thus the real stumper to me. By this time, all info about the cyborg chips was to be destroyed (remember going back to the office building and performing a bit of good "Office Space"-ish reconstruction). AAMOF, with the destruction of the Terminator in T2, there are to be no systems left. Recall Linda's final dialog . . . (paraphrase)I look to the future with hope...
And now, there's to be a T4 in discussions? Why would the Terminator be molded after an old man? Arnold looks great, but he's not the glistening Austrian god he was in T1. Oh well, I hear money calling...
Re:There should not have been a T2 or T3... (Score:2, Interesting)
I agree with you about the time causality loop... It was the return of the Terminator to the past that triggered the alternate timelines, as the possible future interactions of Connor and others were altered, resulting in different incarnations of SkyNet. However, regardless of whether the Terminators went into the past, the creation of sentient AI was inevitable, as was Judgement Day, the opening salvo of the war between humans and machines.
And as for Terminator being molded after an old man, it does serve one purpose: T-101 was a state of the art killing machine in T1. By T3, it is obselete, having been eclipsed by both T1000 and T-X.
Re:A correction: The Hand Remains (Score:5, Interesting)
Each time the machines send back a terminator they create a small paradox, IE things stop happening the way that they happened the previous time.
The first skynet could have been created in a different manner the first time, but by sending back the first terminator also facilitated his existance at an earlier date.
When they destroyed the hands and such of the first terminator in Terminator 2, they merely destroyed the timeline that involved skynet coming to exist in 1997.
In fact, they boldly say that is the case in the movie, when he is talking about the chick and how he met her, and he said "if you had never been sent back that time, I would have hooked up with her then"
The original part of the series "could" happen, simply because UNTIL the first terminator was sent back, things DID happen where skynet was created, and almost created its own causal loop in creating john connor, who might not even have had the same father in the original timeline (ie some guy other than the future guy).
Then when he came back he becames the father, thus destroying some of the time line, etc..
it gets complicated but if you think of time is completely mutable from any instant to the intstants ahead of it, then the plot can work out just fine.
Re:Hopes it worth it.. (Score:3, Interesting)
T2 Redux (Score:3, Interesting)
****SPOILERS****
One is that Skynet is not the product of any one human or unique technology (eg, the computer engineer Miles Dyson, or the chip from the first terminator which was destroyed in T2, or even Kate Brewster's father in T3), but rather it is the result of the evolution of AI. Skynet is the product of unavoidable historical forces set in motion long ago by the Industrial Revolution, or perhaps even longer ago when man first learned how to make and use tools. Admittedly this is an old and recurring theme in many sci-fi movies, from 2001: A Space Odessy to Matrix/Reloaded, yet I am always interested in seeing different takes on it.
Further, it is interesting that Skynet is not hardware, it is self-aware software that uses the entire Internet as its corporal host, so to speak. I doubt the script writer was the first to come up with that idea, I'm sure its been floating around AI circles for some time now, but it was nevertheless a new concept for me to ponder. Talk about distributed computing... Are we all doomed to domination by a massive network of PS3's running Linux and infected by a self-aware nanovirus?
There is no continuity needed. (Score:5, Interesting)
T2: Despite Skynet beeing built earlier, humans still win in the future. Another Terminator is sent back (T-1000). Rebels from future manage once again to save their leader AND this time Sarah and John manage to destroy everything related to this new revolutionary CPU. This only delays the coming of Skynet, again, timeline is changed.
T3: There is no new CPU, but, there is near infinite computing power in the Internet. Skynet is born.
Skynet is inevitable, whatever takes form in a super CPU from the future or on the vast porcessing power of the Internet, it's inevitable.
IMHO, T3 plugged the hole of the paradox in T2. Ok story, nice movie, nothing to write home about.
Not so fast... (Score:5, Interesting)
Personally I liked T3. As shown, the continuity between the other two films wasn't bulletproof and you ALWAYS have to give the writers the benefit of the doubt on time travel stories because they always tend to be paradoxical on some level. T3 is for old school action fans who can appreciate REAL stuntwork and REAL explosions as opposed to the 3D Studio MAX fests that we see all the time now. This is how action was before people started trying to base their freaking worldviews on it and I, for one, welcome it.
I also liked the ending...
spoilers - though they'e probably been said 100 times before this post
A lot of people seem the miss the fact that the major Terminator theme is one of fate and destiny. The question is whether these can actually be changed. The ending of the 3rd film finishes an arc that gives their idea. Apparently the reason that Connor didn't disappear at the end of the second film was because the WAR STILL HAPPENS.
The first film was about preserving the humans' chance against the machines by making sure that John Connor is born. The second one was about keeping the war from ever happening. The third is the same but the reality of the situation becomes apparent, like the Terminator said, "Judgement Day is Inevitable."
I think it's cool that they took the darker path. While people say that it begs for a sequel, I think that it is the perfect ending to the story. John Connor is a classic literary JC character, which means that he CAN'T avoid his destiny. A destiny that becomes even more fitting to his type of character as you learn in T3.
I just saw it last night.... (Score:2, Interesting)
Free will vs Determinism (Score:5, Interesting)
There are two arguments for time travel which strangely enough mirror the Matrix Reloaded's arguments about free will versus determinism:
The first theory is based on determinism: for time travel to remain consistent the past cannot be altered. In other words, the time traveller from the future always existed within the past so whatever changes he attempts to make cannot and *do not* occur in such a way to alter a future timeline. In other words the entire past is set in stone for the present to exist, and as the present is the future's past, the events of tomorrow are similarly predetermined to ensure continuity of the timeline. There is no free will, and the grandfather paradox does not occur: it will be impossible to murder your grandparents and any changes to the timeline you made in the past *always* happened in the past relative to your present.
The second theory is free will and relies on parallel universes. In this case the grandfather paradox is also fixed because each time traveller ends up in a similar but not equal universe to the one they left. If they change the timeline it does not effect the timeline of the universe they left, only the one they arrived in. Alas, this also means the chances of returning to the exact universe you left are remotely slim. You can never go home again.
Finally, a time traveller travels along a closed time-like curve that is created when the first time machine is created. In other words they would not be able to travel back to a point previous to the first time machine existing, and would only be able to travel along the 4th dimension on the fixed xyz co-ordinate of the time machine in question. This essentially invalidates all the Terminator films anyway as there is no evidence of time travel equipment present in the 1984 film.
Ronald Mallett is currently working on a light-based time machine (using the concepts of spacetime frame dragging) so we'll know what is right (if anything) when he turns it on.
Re:Ruined (Score:5, Interesting)
I mean, there is nudity in reality, so why shun it from a movie? A bit of realism in movies doesn't hurt, it's not like you'd want to remove the blood and noise from Saving Private Ryan and show it to your children.
I always find it hilarious when movies obviously avoid nudity at all cost, which is no problem for a movie that was meant to be hilarious in the first place, but would really destroy the experience of most movies for me.
As far as I know, most nude-scenes are cut out anyway for the US-versions.
Actually, in europe, we regard violence in movies as more harmful to young people than nudity, so even without a single nude scene, it wouldn't ever be rated what we call equivalent to PG.
Remove the violence, leave the nudes, and it would be a perfect PG over here. (this may not apply to all of Europe, but at least significant parts)
You have your opinion about nudes, however many (or most?) people don't mind, and movies are not produced for you alone. Live with it.
Re:Ruined (Score:5, Interesting)
The straight male desire assumption (when it shouldn't be necessary in works with more universal appeal - erotica/porn is another question) is more offensive to me than depictions of sex or incidental nudity.
Re:Not so fast... (Score:5, Interesting)
I just wanted to take this moment to clear up something about time travel. Many contemporary scientists have weighed in on the subject of time travel and continuous-arc timelines, and many believe it just wouldn't happen.
Existence is just a set of infinite points of time; it is the human in us that says that if the son of X goes back in time and he kills X, then the son must "disappear." In contemporary theory, this is not so.
The son goes back in time, from a point which he exists. Since he did exist in that time, if he moves to a different "reference point", he still exists. If he kill his father, before he was born, he would not be born in the modified chain of events, but the son would still exist from that point.
I don't know if I'm quite explaining this right, but that would explain why Reis (Reese?) would still exist after John Connor melted the evidence, and it would still explain why John Connor himself existed after the act. Just because our minds correlate all these facts together to evaluate "passage of time," it does not mean that these things had a specific linkage that would be disrupted through the affect of a particular cause.
Hope I'm making sense here...
Re:Free will vs Determinism (Score:5, Interesting)
From an external viewpoint, it would seem that free will must not exist, because the timeline is completely determined. But we exist as creatures in time, not external to it. At any moment, we are free to make our own choices. Just because these choices have already happened from another viewpoint does not mean that we did not have free will at the time of the choice.
Re:Terminatrix was surpisingly cool (Score:2, Interesting)
Now don't get me wrong, I'd like to find out what happens as much as the next guy, but I don't really think that T4 would fit with the other movies. Terminator movies, as much as they're about the plot, they're more about great invulnerable-robot-laying-waste-to-stuff action.
Something post-apocalyptic, as T4 would have to be, couldn't have any of that. IMHO, it'd be just another post-apocalyptic movie without capturing any of the real charm that Terminator movies have.
Agreed about the Terminatrix being cool, though. I liked how they didn't overplay the sexiness angle. I mean, sure, the T-X is a babe, but she's still a Terminator.
Re:There is no continuity needed. (Score:3, Interesting)
Not quite true.
At the end of T2: the T1000, the original T101's chip and arm and the second T101 were all melted in the steel.
The second T101's arm, however, was left in the machinery where it lost it (remember, the T1000 jams it into some gears, then leaves the T101 stuck there while he goes off to kill John -- the T101 severs it to get loose).
You should have mentioned the humor (spoilers) (Score:3, Interesting)
And the intentional humor more than made up for it. There were a couple failed tries ("She'll be back" was too obvious to be funny, for instance), but most of it came off well. Redoing the "naked Arnold walks into a bar to steal clothes" scene, but then tongue in cheek replacing the bar with a male strip club, was hilarious. The Terminator's exchanges with Kate managed to be witty without breaking character, as were the first few Terminatrix scenes.
Slashdot's "review" (Score:3, Interesting)
Bottom-line: The movie is the first true ass-kicking movie of the summer. Everyone thought it would suck without Cameron, Hamilton, and so forth. It turned out to be very good, and it's exciting to see Arnold in a movie role that's perfect for him...it feels like 10 years haven't passed at all.
The car chase beats Matrix Reloaded's. My jaw was on the floor. And the fight scenes are refreshingly gravity-based. No wire-fu.
You'll love it. Go see it.
Re:Ruined (Score:5, Interesting)
Oddly enough, I'm more patient with Tomb Raider per se because I think the cheesecake factor is part of its raison d'etre, rather than being a gratuitous add-on.
I haven't seen T3, so I'm making a bit of a prediction: that the nudity of the Terminatrix was filmed in a far, far different way than the nudity of male terminators was. If you take a lot of these movies and invert the genders - not just for the story line, but for the way they're filmed, the way that the figure of the woman as an object of desire is portrayed in a way that most males would never accept a man being portrayed - you'd see what I mean.
The odd thing about a lot of Japanese anime and game culture is that they sometimes play with this sort of asymmetry of desire with gender-flipping plots and ambiguous characters, as if the artists are chafing at the market constraints and subtly undermining them. Think of "Bridget" from Guilty Gear XX, or Ranma...
Re:T2 Redux -- MPAA uses T3 to take a swipe at P2P (Score:4, Interesting)
[ Warning: extreme spoilage ahead! ]
The beginning of the film informs the viewer that a virus is rapidly spreading through the civilian and government Internet, disabling major infrastructure and causing general chaos. Furthermore, by evolving and adapting in ways never seen before by the military analysts, the virus is evading detection/disinfection, and as such is slated to infect the overwhelming majority of the internet in short order. The only seeming recourse available to the US military is to deploy an untested new artificial intelligence system called "SkyNet" that would take over control of nearly all computers in the world, and by some untold virtue of its (artificial) brilliance, expunge all of the world's infected computers of the virus.
However, the military big cheese (Robert Brewster) running the SkyNet project is very reluctant to deploy it, as he reveals in a prognosticative conversation with the Commander in Chief. The President suggests that launching SkyNet would wrest control of the US military's computers from the virus and give it back to the military. However, Brewster counters that launching SkyNet would give control of the military's computers to SkyNet -- instead of to humans. Nonetheless, when pressed he concedes that SkyNet will still be under human control.
Unsurprisingly, (consistent with the previously-released but chronologically-subsequent films,) when SkyNet is deployed it becomes sentient, decides that humans are its enemy, seizes control of itself from its operators, and begins the preparations for launching a massive nuclear missile attack against the major population-centers of the world. Our brave protagonists race to the supposed location of the mainframe that runs SkyNet, (deep within a desert bunker,) to destroy it before it can launch the missles. However...
[ EXTREME CRAPPY PLOT-TWIST SPOILAGE WARNING! ]
However, leaving the theater, I began to consider that perhaps the film's examination of the "Pandora's Box of defense technology" theme had a more specific message: if left unchecked, decentralized peer-to-peer networks would eventually cause the downfall of civilization as we know it. Their means of conveying this message seems to be a subtle strategy of suggestion, similar to the advertising practice of "product placement", (in which marketers attempt to improve the brand of a product by paying to have it appear in a positive light in a film.) As such, it seems reasonable that the metaphorical implication of the SkyNet plot-twist is an attempt by the MPAA and friends to cast a negative "branding" light onto decentralized peer-to-peer file sharing networks (like Kazaa) by associating them with the similarly-decentralized SkyNet network that in the film destroys the world -- and is the physical manifestation of the evils of hubris that the film thematically admonishes.
While the public debate on the efficacy of product placement is similar in nature to debates on the potency of all forms of advertising, (e.g. subliminal advertising,) marketing companies have no doubts that subtle branding has dramatic effects of the behavior of consumers; note the recent explosion of the "viral marketing" strategy in which agencies attempt to brand a product thro
Looking for an Essay (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Help please... (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:What OS is the T3 running (Score:1, Interesting)
Probably running on a 65816. The old terminators use a 6502. You know microsoft doesn't touch that kinda stuff.
Oh come on! (Score:3, Interesting)
And did I mention that Linda Hamilton's speech about the wonders of childbirth was possibly the most disgusting thing committed to celluloid in the last ten years? I think "T2" probably did as much for a shortage of kids becoming scientists as anything else.
Look, I agree that Linda's ranting in T2 about how scientists are evil and so forth was insulting but I think it was pretty clear from the movie that she was just talking crazy. Even young John Conner realizes that she's teetering on shaky ground with the nonsense she spews.
The reasons why kids don't want to become scientists is a topic well outside the scope of movie reviews of T2 and T3. Here are a couple potential reasons that are much more likely than Linda Hamilton's speech in T2:
Well, I could go on and on. But I think you're way off the mark by blaming the current scientific woes on a blurb in one movie.
GMD
Assumption = Ass u mption (Score:1, Interesting)
Well then you would be wrong.
There's almost no nudity. The only people who think there is "nudity" are uptight people who think their own bodies are "dirty" and "sinful".
The truth is, when you see a great body