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July 10, 2003
Review: (Movie) Terminator 3
Sadly, I am neither a real reviewer nor a GOP operative and thus had to see the movie after it came out, just like any other prol. The movie had booms in all the rights spots, but something was missing...
No, it wasn't plot; there actually was one of those. The writers actually seemed to go out of their way to provide a good reason why each of the inevitable gun battles had to happen right where it did. This contrasts nicely with Lucas' Phantom Menace, where the locations served as something to make new toys from instead of any actual story function...
What was missing was confidence. Not from the actors (who were all spot on), but rather from the writers. It was like they didn't really know what made a good action movie and decided to just stick with the formula, but bigger. "Arnold says 'I'll be back', right? Well, let's make him say it twice in this movie!" It was when they decided to veer away from that formula that the movie had its best moments...
And great moments this movie had. The look on John Conner's face when he sees Arnold is the perfect blend of relief (he is about to be rescued) and terror (unless the bad guys sent 2 terminators this time). The acting was, as I said, note perfect all the way around. Arnold lamenting that the other terminator is "stronger, faster and smarter than I am" rang true. The new terminator seems to be the ultimate in killing hardware. How do you stop such a thing? The answer, of course, is to wait for a Deus Ex Machina...
That may have been the only major failing of the script itself:
(*spoiler* From here on out, don't read if you don't want to know in advance...)
When Arnold is given the choice of serving the machine or the humans he chooses to serve the humans. We are never told why. Far more compelling would have been to have Arnold embrace his machine heritage, or at least give some reason for denying his biology. Instead we are left to imagine that we are worth it just because, er, because...
More interesting, however, is the post 9/11 sentiments involved with the movie. The first movie fit well into the zeitgeist: Nuclear war was inevitable and we were all going to die. I remember being a child in the 1980s and knowing that if I didn't die in the nuclear exchange, I would have to be a soldier in that war. Those were apocalyptic times, and thank the gods Gorbachev decided not to take us over the edge. As John Conner said in the second movie: "I thought the Russians were our friends now"...
Because by 1993 the apocalypse had been averted, the threat had ended, and with it, history. Right at that moment, when we elected a president who told us not to stop thinking about tomorrow (and we knew that there would be one), the second Terminator came out. Good news! There didn't have to be a war. "there is no fate but what we make"...
But a decade later, 9/11 happened and we know, as the terminator said in the 3rd movie "war is inevitable, the only question is when". Judgment Day is back on; history has restarted itself in a big way. Unstoppable Armageddon is coming soon, to a culture near you...
This movie ranks 4 and a half h-bombs out of 5 h-bombs. Um, H-bombs of happiness, because 1 H-bomb will ruin your whole day, and this move made mine.
Posted by Andrew at July 10, 2003 02:29 PM
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