General Chat / Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines

I donno. Midnight told me you're the same guys. You're just both silly billies so I believed him. God I hate peer pressure...

Alright then. Pick on the nOObie lol. I get it.

If we pick on n00bies...We have a hell of a lot of n00bies here.

Another perfectly good topic gone to waste. Guys, nobody cares.

I agree, lets talk about the movie...

BTW, how TX's entrance scene go?

Another perfectly good topic gone to waste. Guys, nobody cares.

YOU JUST PUT IT TO WASTE, zFOOL.

I never go to see movies in theatres. I have no idea why, I just don't.

I see movies of interest mainly, Although I hear the Hulk's movie plot sucks whilst the Computer generated images rock.Some upcoming movies also look good, but Terminater looks good.I don't get the whole plot where they keep going with the John Conner thing though.

Just saw T3. It has great action scenes in it but at the same time it represents everything I hate about modern movies. If T2 and terminator only matter to you as action movies, than T3 matches up pretty well. There's one chase scene in particular that's very groundbreaking for action movies just by the sheer impossibility of producing such a scene. Still, I think the movie comes up far short of the first two in terms of story and theme. It really has no soul. The only reason for the movie to exist is to further the franchise as it basically ignores all of the themes that made the first two movies interesting and adds nothing important to the story. It fills in some information but really, it was nothing that matters since we already know the ending and we already know what happens later. Therefore, what is the point? T2 was a great Cold War movie with some interesting time travel paradoxes and a disfuntional family unit at the center. T3 is a big dumb action movie which mostly focuses the all too predictable Y2K theme that computers and technology can turn against us. Yeah, haven't heard that one before. On one level, the movie was enjoyable as the action was good and the dialogue was mostly excuseable. But in the way that the movie pokes fun at the franchise while adding nothing new to the series but some action set pieces goes to show that T3 exists only as the next movie in a franchise. It refrences the past for all of it's ideas without adding anything to it. This to me is just atrocious as the ideas are everything. What made terminator a classic? Watch it again and notice how everything in the sequels from the future world to the time travel paradoxes is introduced there. This is a smart action movie (forgiving of course the horrible 80s vibe throughout). T2 introduces even more themes - pre-destination or personal choice, broken families, and one of the best realized villains of all time. It's unfortunate that in the year 2003 a whole twelve years after the most ground-breaking action film of all time producers can't come up with any ideas to wrap their action around. I guess there is one surprise in the story but it doesn't come as a surprise at all. In fact I think it's a step back from the message conveyed by the first two films. You'll have to forgive me for my cynicism as post-atomic bomb cinema is a special interest to me and the Terminator movies fit perfectly into that category. Apparently the computer age has become so frightening that we've reverted back to outright fatalism. Or maybe Terminator 3 is too lazy to take the series in any meanigful direction and instead settles for themes that were outdated 20 years ago. The first two terminator movies were about the ideas with the action serving as the primary attraction but the story and the themes driving the movie along. If you expect anything out of T3 besides more Arnold one-liners and action sequences you'll be sorely disappointed. Hollywood seriously needs James Cameron to make a triumphant return, and I don't mean True Lies 2.

I think most people will like T3 more than Matrix Reloaded. To those people I would like to say: Go to hell. For all it's many many flaws, at least Matrix Reloaded had a soul and some actual themes behind it.

Saw it today. One big action scene. That's basically it. Hopefully they won't wait so long to do the next one, since it's obvious by the ending of T3 that there will be another. It wasn't that good, but it wasn't bad either. Popcorn was good

Ed, I just thought I'd mention that I thought that the Matrix: Reloaded was far better. I may be biased because I've seen the Matrix many times, but I've only seen the first two Terminators in bits and pieces.

-Westy

Just saw T3. It has great action scenes in it but at the same time it represents everything I hate about modern movies. If T2 and terminator only matter to you as action movies, than T3 matches up pretty well. There's one chase scene in particular that's very groundbreaking for action movies just by the sheer impossibility of producing such a scene. Still, I think the movie comes up far short of the first two in terms of story and theme. It really has no soul. The only reason for the movie to exist is to further the franchise as it basically ignores all of the themes that made the first two movies interesting and adds nothing important to the story. It fills in some information but really, it was nothing that matters since we already know the ending and we already know what happens later. Therefore, what is the point? T2 was a great Cold War movie with some interesting time travel paradoxes and a disfuntional family unit at the center. T3 is a big dumb action movie which mostly focuses the all too predictable Y2K theme that computers and technology can turn against us. Yeah, haven't heard that one before. On one level, the movie was enjoyable as the action was good and the dialogue was mostly excuseable. But in the way that the movie pokes fun at the franchise while adding nothing new to the series but some action set pieces goes to show that T3 exists only as the next movie in a franchise. It refrences the past for all of it's ideas without adding anything to it. This to me is just atrocious as the ideas are everything. What made terminator a classic? Watch it again and notice how everything in the sequels from the future world to the time travel paradoxes is introduced there. This is a smart action movie (forgiving of course the horrible 80s vibe throughout). T2 introduces even more themes - pre-destination or personal choice, broken families, and one of the best realized villains of all time.  It's unfortunate that in the year 2003 a whole twelve years after the most ground-breaking action film of all time producers can't come up with any ideas to wrap their action around. I guess there is one surprise in the story but it doesn't come as a surprise at all. In fact I think it's a step back from the message conveyed by the first two films. You'll have to forgive me for my cynicism as post-atomic bomb cinema is a special interest to me and the Terminator movies fit perfectly into that category. Apparently the computer age has become so frightening that we've reverted back to outright fatalism. Or maybe Terminator 3 is too lazy to take the series in any meanigful direction and instead settles for themes that were outdated 20 years ago. The first two terminator movies were about the ideas with the action serving as the primary attraction but the story and the themes driving the movie along. If you expect anything out of T3 besides more Arnold one-liners and action sequences you'll be sorely disappointed. Hollywood seriously needs James Cameron to make a triumphant return, and I don't mean True Lies 2.

I think most people will like T3 more than Matrix Reloaded. To those people I would like to say: Go to hell. For all it's many many flaws, at least Matrix Reloaded had a soul and some actual themes behind it.

Yeah, Reloaded had themes, they're impossible to miss as every character has atleast 1 monologue to their credit to spout off a Philosophy 101 essay about fate and free will. As for the soul, I just don't see it. T-3 had much more soul, but that's my opinion. Every character in reloaded felt like nothing but a plot device so the Wachowskis could preach to us, and many characters simply had no purpose at all (Persephone) than to lead to some extravagant wirefu. Case in point, the Merovignian wasn't needed, everything he took all that time to say could have been covered in 30 seconds. That's the thing. In Reloaded, the story was made to fit the action, not the other way around. In addition to that, the overabundance of CG did alot to hurt the film. There were things done that felt as if they were just there to show off the CG technology. The Burly Brawl is the biggest offender of this. It had no purpose other than to be a cool fight scene (which it really wasn't as watching an obvious CG Neo fight in slow motion isn't interesting). What came of that fight, Neo flew away. Absolutely nothing of importance. It just happened.

I'll just say this... James Cameron himself loved the film, and he's not one to mince words. He blasted Alien 3 when it took the series in the wrong direction. I'd trust the finest action filmmaker to ever live against you.

Back to T-3. I loved it... I expected nothing after the terribly shitty first trailer... but what I got was a very good action film with balls. Before you saw it, no one would have said that it was going to end the way it did. The action was great, and it felt like a great continuation to the series after what was a contradictory ending for Terminator 2. Stopping Judgment Day at the end of the 2nd movie went against everything else that the films were trying to accomplish. The performances were also fine, nothing great, but more than adequete for what the film was. Finally, I loved the heart and soul that went into so many of the effects for this movie. Unlike what I was arguing about for Reloaded, CG was used when it was needed (seamlessly I'd add) and not used when things could be done in reality. Such as the T-1's and T-2's (the flying ones) in the Military Base. Those are actual robots created by Stan Winston. It made the film that much more substantial.

That brings me to the low points. There aren't many... first of all, it's too short. It definately ended atleast 20 minutes before it should have. There was more to tell of that story than they gave us. Second of all, and this might piss someone off, but I had problems with the fact that the T-X was a woman. That fact served no purpose to the story, and it felt like it was just done to be politically correct. Loken, who did a fine job regardless, is not intimidating like "Ahnuld" was in the first one, or Patrick was as the T-1000 in the second one. Women just aren't scary.

In my opinion (while we're making comparisons), I found this film to be much better than Reloaded (**1/2/**** ) and almost equal to the original Matrix (***1/2/**** ), which I consider better just because of the effect it had on film, despite its shortcomings.

Finalizing the comparison, T-3 felt like the next logical step in the series, Reloaded did not.

Also, I consider prefer T-3 to the original Terminator, but definately not up to the excellence that is Judgment Day, not even close. The story told in T-1 is definately very good, but I had problems with the atmosphere (same 80's punk crap that I had a problem with in Blade Runner),and I had serious problems with Linda Hamilton who was absolutely terrible as Sarah Connor in the first movie. Of the 3, my least favorite to re-watch is definately the original.

1. Terminator 2: Judgment Day ****/****
2. Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines ***1/2/****
3. The Terminator ***/****

That also puts T-3 pretty high on my Best list so far this year. No doubt it won't stay there forever, but it'll definately make my final Top 20 for 2003.

1. Finding Nemo ****
2. X2: X-Men United ****
3. Winged Migration ***½
4. Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines ***½
5. Phone Booth ***½
6. Gods and Generals ***
7. The Hulk ***
8. Daredevil ***
9. The Matrix Reloaded **½
10. The Recruit **½
11. Anger Management **½
12. Caesar (TV) **
13. Tears of the Sun *
14. 44 Minutes (TV) *
15.
16.
17.
18.
19.
20.

I have a very hard time taking James Cameron seriously as a great action director ever since Titanic.

I have a very hard time taking James Cameron seriously as a great action director ever since Titanic.

Since Titanic isn't an action movie, I don't see why. Regardless, the sinking is still one of the most impressive things ever filmed despite the rest of the film.

I admit that T3 is a better ACTION movie than Matrix Reloaded. The stunts were better and the CGI was much better because it was hardly ever distracting or calling attention to itself. (There were a few moments where it did but never as bad as the Agent Smiths fight in Reloaded). However, other than that the movie was useless...

Here's what I mean by soul. Every idea in T3 came from the first two movies. The TX is the only new idea and that was not even a good idea. Is there any logical reason for a terminator to be female? No. Basically everything about the TX was designed around cool action sequences not concepts which fit the terminator universe. Then there's the storyline...um...I mean one chase sequences after another. As far as I was concerned the story didn't even start until they got to the bunker because everything before that can be summed up in 5 words: Get away from the TX. Basically this movie just shows us everything T2 told us would happen. So they spend 170 million dollars to show us what we already know. Terminator is supposed to be about time travel. Where are the paradoxes? Where are the plot twists? Where is the future? The first two movies had way more footage of the war in the future and they cost a fraction of what this movie cost. The reason Terminator and T2 are remembered is not the action, it is the concepts. Science fiction used to be about concepts. What does the future look like, how could time travel work, what if robots looked like us, etc. James Cameron was a visionary. He invented all of the concepts we know and love in the Terminator series. The people who made T3 are adept at blowing things up but never stop to add any ideas into the movie. That is why it does not have a soul. None of the themes in the movie are relevent today (at least not anymore that they were in 1991), none of the production design is particularly imaginative, and none of the characters are interesting. Consider this- without T1 and T2 do you care about John Conner or the terminator based on this movie? I sure wouldn't. Stopping Judgement Day was the only way for T2 to end. You know the world is going to end and you know why, of course you're going to try to stop it. I'm supposed to enjoy the plot twist in T3 I suppose when they essentially reverse the main theme of T2: you can change the future. I always take some kind of perverse pleasure in seeing cities annihilated (post-apocalyptic movies are my favorite genre) but what are we supposed to take out of this? Total destruction is inevitable, you can't change your destiny. If they do make a T4 it better be about the future survivors sending another terminator back because a whole movie set in the future would completely eliminate the time travel aspect which is the most interesting part of the whole story. Well in the first two it was anyway. T3 is a stupid movie which has nothing but spectacle. No concepts, no themes, no story, no soul. It's like a budweiser ad. Expensive and lavishly produced but at the end all you take away from it is buy more beer or in this case, see T4 when we make it so we can take more of your money.

So that's one side of the coin. Now why does Matrix Reloaded, the movie everybody loves to hate, have a soul? Well first of all the Matrix series is much more relevent today than Terminator. The Terminator was invented in the midst of Reagan-era America when atomic war remained a very real possibility. False reality is one of the oldest concepts there are but the idea that computers are really running us is relevent in our modern computerized society. The Matrix steals ideas from a variety of sources but it also has plenty of it's own. In fact, Reloaded is exactly the opposite of T3 in that it has more depth of concepts than the original film did. Humans capacity for failure and desire for free will are essentially organic but using some form of chaos theory the machines have calculated a probability that accounts for them. It's easy to critisize Reloaded because as in action movie it isn't very good. The big action sequences are seperated by long stretches of dialogue and they aren't incorporated very well into the story. What I like the most about Reloaded is that it takes the concepts in the first movie and expands upon them taking them into new directions and changing our perception of how the matrix works and what the role of The One actually is. Reloaded is about the concepts not the action and that is probably why everyone was so disappointed. The fact that there's so much philosophizing in Reloaded goes to show that the Wachowskis are not catering to the lowest common denominator. They have to have known that the scenes with the Oracle and the Merovingian and the Architect were going to lose a lot of people but they put them in there anyway. Reloaded is about continuing the vision of the first Matrix movie. It exists to expand upon the concepts. In other words, it has a soul. The soul comes from the vision of the creative team. Like I said before I appreciate ideas because without them all you have is a string of action sequences. That's what T3 has and people love it.

Let me say again that I think T3 was a good action movie. However, a science fiction movie without any concepts in it is meaningless to me. T3 is a movie that exists only as the next movie in a franchise. It adds nothing to the franchise but a bigger paycheck. Reloaded engages with the universe created in the first movie and twists it in new directions. That is what a sequel should do. The people making it actually care about the ideas not just the money.

I guess we'll just have to agree that we have different definitions of what soul is in film.

Stop being analytical. Eat some popcorn and stare at the movie screen like an idiot 'til your retinas melt. Trust me, it's funner that way. Much funner. Funner.

No doubt... July in particular, is the month every year where you just leave your brain at the door. T-3 is the most fun I've had in theaters this year. Not the best, but the most fun. My guess is that'll get topped sometime in the next few weeks by either Pirates of the Carribbean (Arrr!) and maybe again with Bad Boys II...

I'm a sucker for Michael Bay's particular brand of shiny, blow all kinds of shit film as long as it's not trying to set a world record for most nationalities insulted in a 5 minute span (Pearl Harbor currently holds that position).

I never really though about writing out my feelings about this, because I thought it would take longer than it really did. here's the indisputible fact that T3 does expand on the Terminator mythos. First, it involves something I've heard for so long, but never agreed with...

How did T2 tie up the plot nicely? (answer: it doesn't... a 3rd film really was needed because without it, there's a major plot hole in the series) I hear it all the time, but I can never understand this point. It left the audience in the same situation they were at in the beginning. Waiting for Judgement Day.

Had the characters succeeded at preventing Judgement Day then I could understand the reasoning. However if that had happened then John Connor would have disappeared, as there would have been no reason for Reese to travel back in time. Since the Terminator films have always been about the hopelessness of trying to beat fate, and the inevitability of things happening the same way they happened before, in a time loop, then I've always considered a sequel necessary. In fact I've always wanted 4 films, with the last one ending with John sending Reese back in time, since that loop has been what the first 2 films were building up to.

I thought it was going to take more time to say that.

The main theme of T2 is that you can change your destiny, you can change the future. It's even written on Sarah Conner's tomb stone in T3. You're saying that T3 expands Terminator by letting us know Judgement Day does happen or John Conner would cease to exist? Wrap your mind around this: John Conner's father is Reese (Michael Biehn rules by the way) who was sent from the future by himself to stop an evil terminator but also to be his father. In the process of Reese and Sarah Conner fighting the terminator, some robot pieces are left behind and a corporation uses them to invent new microchips which are used to create Skynet. When Skynet is activated it launches all the nukes causing Judgement Day. If this does not happen there's no future world and no terminators. So the Terminators are invented because one of them falls into the hands of scientists in the past. But if there are no Terminators in the future than they can't go back in time and if one doesn't go back in time, they can't be created. Hmm, paradox number one. Reese is sent back because a terminator has been sent back to kill John Conner. When Reese is sent back he becomes John's father. If you know anything about DNA than you know that a son of Sarah Conner fathered by Reese and one fathered by somebody else would be completely different people. Reese is sent to the past by his son but if his son only exists because he went into the past than we have paradox number 2. So at the end of T2 Sarah, John, and the reprogrammed terminator are succesful in breaking into the lab and destroying the remains of the terminator. To avoid the same problem, the reprogrammed terminator destroys himself after they defeat the T1000. The terminator series is built around UNSOLVABLE time travel paradoxes. The most important thing about time travel movies is that they do not have to make linear sense. They aren't supposed to. Sure changing the past would theoretically alter the future but we aren't necissarily seeing the sum total of all events. We are seeing one possible timeline and even if the future is changed, there was one alternate timeline when the previous future did exist. I'm sure that was just more confusing but that's how time travel works. Nobody knows any of this, it's all theoretical. T2 does not tie up the plot nicely, that's exactly the point! I didn't want to see judgement day, the first two were better movies because of what they did not show. That's what I was saying before. All T3 did was SHOW us scenes that were implied by the first two. Sure it's fun for fans of any series to actually see what was referred to. Like the Clone Wars in Star Wars. When you start showing people the Clone Wars or Judgement Day as an excuse to make more movies, that's when I say you have sold out.