TERMINATOR 3: RISE OF THE MACHINES (2003) • Film Review ✭✭✩✩✩
A now adult John Connor is targeted by a new type of Terminator, with a familiar face sent back to protect him.
Terminator 3: Rise Of The Machines (hereafter T3) is a post-modern remake of Terminator 2, shunted a touch further into the future. Would-be saviour John Connor (Nick Stahl) is now an orphaned following the death of his mother from cancer (i.e Linda Hamilton refused to return), left alone to grapple with the thorny issue that he’s a nobody who’ll only become a somebody if a super-computer is allowed to exterminate humanity to near-extinction. It’s a neat bit of mental anguish for a young guy trying to make his way in the world, but sadly one of only a few intriguing ideas T3 coughs up and does little with. A more interesting film may also have had the lonely John attempting to find his future-father Kyle Reese, too, right…?
For the most part, T3 is just business as usual. A killer robot appears naked in downtown Los Angees; this one a literal ‘supermodel’ T-X (Kristanna Loken), who commandeers a sports car and, in the first of the picture’s many groan-worthy jokes, inflates her boobs to appeal to a male traffic cop. Elsewhere, another benevolent T-800 cyborg (Schwarzenegger) arrives in a ball of energy in the desert outskirts of town, demanding leathers and Elton John-style glasses from a male stripper dancing in a local bar.
A few tweaks are evident in the formula to keep audiences mildly engaged: the T-X’s mission is to assassinate John’s future lieutenant’s, not the prodigious leader himself; this time the T-800 is programmed to protect and take orders from John’s future wife Kate (Claire Danes), a veterinarian who gets caught up in events; and it appears that Judgment Day is imminent and unstoppable because Skynet’s about to go online to defeat a troublesome computer virus.
Jonathan Mostow (U-571) bravely, or foolishly, steps into James Cameron’s shoes as T3’s director, and manages to choreograph a handful of entertaining stunts and fights as the script wobbles along. By 2003, the previous two movies had long since become pop culture icons, so T3 was always going to suffer by comparison. It can’t resist being self-referential and post-modern about its position as a tardy sequel, which means it’s impossible to watch without seeing it as a disposable, big-budget cash-in with an eye on the marketing side of things.
It’s certainly fun seeing Arnie again, wearing his trademark shades and dispensing dour one-liners (including a twist on his catchphrase “I’ll be back”), but it’s also a little humdrum and sad — especially as he’s clearly wearing a padded jacket to bulk out his diminishing muscles.
Nick Stahl replaces Edward Furlong as John Connor, and it’s frustrating to reflect on the fact such a fantastic idea for a character remains so disappointingly portrayed. Furlong was just an irksome brat in T2, Stahl’s feels too gawky, TV’s Thomas Dekker is too whiny, and even a big star like Christian Bale was condemned for playing Connor as a dull grunt in the next movie, Terminator Salvation. Maybe it was always better when the saga’s Christ figure was just an embryo; literally an idea the audience could feed its imagination into.
Model-turned-actress Kristanna Loken opts to imitate Robert Patrick’s iconic performance from T2 as the hybrid T-X (liquid metal coated to an advanced endoskeleton with built-in weaponry). But, you know what, she pulls it off for the most part. Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, and while the T-X is never as cool as the T-1000 (despite fun upgrades like being able to control other pieces of machinery), it’s an enjoyable performance that ranks as one of T3’s few plus points. Oddly, though, T3 doesn’t learn from the original’s mistake and ditches Loken in favour of a visual effect during the final chase — a mistake Cameron himself realised and avoided in T2 by keeping the actors involved until the very end.
Really, the big failure of T3 is in allowing a serious-minded saga to drift into self-referential comedy, then approach a rehashed story with less precision. Perhaps most infuriatingly, there are some very good ideas floating around in the script, that a filmmaker like Cameron may have whipped into shape ahead of shooting. A few even manage to slip through, lending T3 its moments of heft — notably the surprisingly somber denouement. For all its faults, at least it goes out with a literal bang.
Cast & Crew
director: Jonathan Mostow.
writers: John Brancato & Mike Ferris (story by John Brancato, Mike Ferris & Tedi Sarafian, based on characters created by James Cameron & Gale Anne Hurd).
starring: Arnold Schwarzenegger, Nick Stahl, Claire Danes, Kristanna Loken, David Andrews, Mark Famiglietti, Earl Boen, Moira Harris, Chopper Bernet, Christopher Lawford & Carolyn Hennesy.
Originally published at danowen.blogspot.com on June 18, 2009, now with a few amendments and improvements.
