Terminator 3- Rise of the Machines movie review.

I'll cut right to the chase- If your doing a sequel to two successful movies the third must follow the footsteps laid down in the first two. ESPECIALLY if the first two were consistent and events and actions follow a certain logical course.

Good science-fiction follows a certain logic- If events take place for example "in the real world" you should expect that if you go out into your front yard and throw a ball up in the air it *will* come back down. 

As much as I like the Terminator series and Ah-nold T3 rise of the machines is a train wreck.

On to the review.. I'll try to break this down into two sections, one will be technical things wrong, the other will be subjective.

One more note.. I think the movie will do well in the theaters but in years to come I suspect that T3 will sit on the shelf and more people will be viewing T2 when they get a hankering for some Terminator style action. James Cameron's T2 is clearly a piece of artistic filmmaking that has few rivals in terms of pacing, story, actors, score and style.

Technical

1) TX arrives- As explained in the first and I think second movie travel in time is only possible due to the electrical field surrounding living organisms. No problem for Kyle Reese (human, TI) and the Terminator since it is a cyborg surrounded by living tissue but the TX is 100% a machine! 

In T2 the director James Cameron cleverly avoids this dilemma by NOT directly showing the T-1000 arrive, leaving it up to the viewer to imagine how it was done. In T3 you actually see the TX arrive, violating the framework setup by the last two movies. 

2) Time effect changed- "disco ball effect," minor but jarring and un-needed.

3) Nude TX walking toward first victim- If the TX can change her appearance at will, why this scene? It's logical for the T-101 which is a cyborg of course but not for a TX looking to keep a low profile and has liquid metal skin.  I know, I know gratuitous nude shot.

4) TX driving through LA at high speed- The first two terminators all made it clear that it was important to blend in and not attract attention while closing in on their target. The TX races through LA at high speed attracting police notice of course. 

5) Inflating boob shot in car- More geek boy appeal, if the TX is going to kill the cop anyway why bother?

6) Killing first targets- If the TX is a walking arsenal why use a noisy gun? The TX clearly kills an officer later in the movie with "bare hand" which would be much quieter and more efficient if hunting targets on a hit list.  

7) Conner going down on bike- I don't know about where they filmed the dear scene but around here in New England if you so much a rustle a twig them things are GONE. A deer is going to stand there while someone dumps a bike? right....

8) Chase scene with cop cars- Now mind you I'm an auto tech and tend to look at the world in terms of "how do things work" In the movie you can see the TX has the power to corrupt and take over computer systems (so far so good) but the cop car chase scene is a joke! I actually burst out laughing in the theater. First of all how does the TX drive 4-5 police cars at once when there is NO WAY the cars can be steered, braked or accelerated from remote? For a car to even have the capability it would need a fly by wire throttle system, some sort of electrical assist steering and electric ABS assist. Even then it would have to ALL be tied to a central CPU so it could be controlled. To add insult to injury that model Ford cruiser you have to step on the brake pedal to release the shift lever. The second problem is how does the TX *see* to control the vehicles? You could argue that she is using the GPS system to control the cars but even then all the vehicles under control would have to have GPS, the vehicle being chased would have to have GPS (so it could be chased of course by the GPS guided chase cars) and the other vehicles the police cars are avoiding had GPS so they could be avoided! 

9) CG effects during chase- Bad CG effects abounded in the crane sequence, if you were paying attention you would have noticed artifacts several times during the chase. Ever had a jpg picture that had been over compressed and then blown up? I don't expect to see the same thing on a movie screen.

10) Crane wreck and chase- Sorry the whole chase blows chunks. You expect to believe a huge multi-ton crane is going to go flying down city streets with it's boom out and NOT tip over? There is a reason those things are driven at fairly slow speeds. Also the final wreck is a joke- There is no way in hell the manhole cover OR the cables would take that kind of stress without letting loose long before the crane did it's end over end finale. More of Hollywood playing fast and loose with reality.

11) The T-101 discards a damaged power cell- We see in TI and T2 the T-101 is critically damaged in this area not once but twice and THERE IS NO POWER CELLS HERE. All the T-101's are identical, so why does this one have cells in this location? To setup a later scene of course...

12) The T-101 tells John they are going to a safe place and then takes them to a weapons cache where cops show up out of the woodwork. That's a safe place? Hell they are not there 5 minutes and and it's wall to wall cops. Last time I called the cops and told them there was a car wreck in front of my house it took them over 10 minutes to show up and in this scene a whole fully armed barracks is parked outside out of nowhere in under 5.

13) Human casualties- Or lack there of! After the shoot out at the cemetery you see the T-101 check internally if there is any human casualties. No where do we here John Conner tell the T-101 not to kill anyone and even if he did he would have been ignored since he was NOT PROGRAMMED to take orders from John Conner. The order would have had to come from Kate, past or future. It is possible the future Kate did give him the order to avoid killing humans if possible.

14) TX swapping weapons- After "her" plasma cannon takes a dump the TX whips out a flame thrower, can someone explain to me where the hell the large tanks of oxidizer and fuel are hiding in that compact little package? 

15) Conner speaking to T-101- In two scenes (truck and camper) John Conner is having a conversion with the T-101. In one he asks if the terminator remembers all the stuff he taught him even though he knows the T-101 the he interacted with and reprogrammed is DESTROYED. He was there and watched it happen in T2! Then they make a second gaff and have Conner state something along the lines of "What do you guys come off an assembly line or something?" Which he already knows the answer is YES. The third gaff is in regards to the T-101 not taking orders from John but will take orders from Kate because the future Kate re-programmed it to do so and sent it back in time to protect John and Kate. The future Kate would have surely programmed the T-101 to take orders from John since at this point in the timeline John is still alive and her past self has NO CLUE as to what is going on in the war of Man vs Skynet.

16) Secret base security- Everyone here needs to be fired. A heavily armed man, a rough looking bum and the Generals daughter are allowed into the bowels of a secret base where state of the art military hardware is developed and NO ALARMS GO OFF AND NO ONE PAYS THEM ANY MIND. 

Riiiiiiiight.

17) TX activates and reprograms T-1 and has them kill everyone in sight- Last I checked the military stored ammo separate from weapons in an armory but these babies are ready to go. What's up with that? The military LOVES to follow regulation, no way no how that happened. I could see if the units were snatched off a testing ground ready for a test but these were in cold storage in baggies.

18) Plane in hanger- Fully fueled? Do they store planes in hangers fully fueled? Not that I'm aware of.

19) Crystal Peak part I- What is a low grade General doing with access codes to a secret presidential retreat? Hello..

20) Crystal Peak part II- Presidential retreats come in two varieties, the ones that are going to be used and the ones that are in mothball. The ones that might be used have caretaker staff keeping an eye on things and to make sure bad men don't leave surprises. The mothballed one's are locked down and all the power is off. This one here there isn't a soul in sight and all the lights are on! Who are the lights and computers on for if there isn't a caretaker staff? You know some Air Force types would have shown up quick after all the perimeter alarms went off if someone was home.

21) Crystal Peak part III- The T-101 fuel cell goes off with a bang big enough to take down the whole side of the mountain BUT two humans standing a dozen yards away in the same tunnel are unaffected. 

They should have been smashed like bugs! 

22) Skynet- The biggest joke of all, Skynet is software? Two problems with this. One is of course if Skynet is software then what the hell was Dyson working on in the last film? Didn't look like algorithms to me. The Second problem is of course that if Skynet is software and existed in computer systems.. why wipe out mankind with Nukes? That's like putting a gun to your head and removing a tumor by blowing your brains out. Follow the logic-

A) Skynet is software that is on everyone's computers. We can go out on a limb here and suggest the more computers on the network the more aware and smarter Skynet is due to massive parallel processing.  

B) Lot's of nukes going off generates lots of E.M.P. (Electro Magnetic Pulse for you laymen) What does EMP do? Why it wipes out computer systems and any complex electrical devices mostly. 

C) Lot's of nukes going off is going to wipe out the power grid and network infrastructure.

So we have a computer system that is going to wipe out mankind by setting off nukes... Even though mankind can survive without computer systems and networks but Skynet cannot.

Hello? What's wrong with this picture...

Subjective

1) Movie score- Movie score? There was a movie score? 

2) Story- The story was weak from one end to another with the only interesting twist being right at the end. It was action, action, action from one end to another with a thin plot to connect everything together. An action film is fine, but please fix the plot holes before shooting. T2 was also an action film but it doesn't have the glaring mistakes this film suffers from. 

3) Slow motion effects- The two I can recall are when Arnie is in the cemetery whooping ass on the cops and when the T-101 first meets John. In both cases it's pretty poorly done in *my* opinion and added nothing to the picture. When the T-101 was face to face with John it *could* have been excellent if was done different and had the proper score. 

You want to see a great slow motion sequence?  Fire up T2 and fast forward to where Sarah Conner is running for the elevators in the mental hospital and the T-101 steps out and just stands there. The viewers feel the relief that Sarah is going to finally escape her pursuers and it turns to utter dread and fear as she see her worst nightmare realized standing before her. 

4) Ar-nold- Arnold is in great form and it blows my mind that this dude is 54 years old! When you first see him in the beginning your first thought is, my god he hasn't aged a day! As the movie unfolds there is several things the T-101 says and does that are slightly out of character. You get the impression that in this movie they wanted the T-101 to say and do more.. but what comes out of his mouth and his actions are slightly... off. In several scenes you get the impression that Arnold is poking fun at himself. While in TI and T2 this is done in a very unintentional way (In TI you see the T-101 going through a menu of responses in his head when the hotel employee asks if there is a dead cat in the room with him, the deadpan response is amusing) in this movie you get the distinct impression of Arnie winking at the camera. 

5) John Conner- The actor playing John REALLY leaves something to be desired. I don't know if it is his speaking lines or just the way he he played the part but he came across as the worlds biggest WUSS. People may bitch about the actor Eddie Furlow from T2 but what did you expect for a 12 year old, he is going to be a whiny bitch, he's 12 for gosh sakes. One thing that struck me was once the young John Conner met the T-101 and realized his mom was RIGHT his whole viewpoint of the world changed. He KNEW the poop was going to hit the fan and they had to do something about it and went into action. 

This John Conner whines- "why me, why me" and pulls out his hair instead of doing something. If Sarah Conner was still alive she would have stuck her foot up his ass and told him to get going soldier!

6) Kate- Does nothing but scream the first part of the movie, has some moments later on but to far and in between. She is no Linda Hamilton that's for sure. Huge mistake killing off the character of Sarah Conner.

7) The TX- Very cool effects and cool actress for the job. The bathroom fight scene was brutal! Holy cow that was easily the best part of the whole movie!

The "whole fate is what we make it" theme runs through the whole series but gets badly trampled on in this go around. True this is a sci-fi flick but it's rather inconsistent and enough to give you a headache if you think about it. 

In the first movie the T-101 tries to kill Sarah Conner to prevent the humans from winning the war in the future. From the information in this movie we get the impression the computers have already lost "we smashed their grid" and there are pockets of computer resistance hence a T-101 is sent back in time to try and change the past ensuring they win. 

In the second movie the computers make a last ditch effort to kill John Conner by sending a prototype T-1000 and they fail again. 

One *could infer* at this point the future is set and unchangeable since the machines twice have tried to kill the Conner's and failed and the Conner's destroyed Skynet before it was created and the future DID NOT CHANGE. When the Conner's blew up Skynet, in theory the Skynet future never happened and it should have been... erased.

But it's still there, which leads us at least to this ending which states that the efforts to stop the future from happening are in vain and they are going to happen any way.

More later..

Gary