Release Date: July 2, 2003
Starring: Arnold Schwarzenegger, Nick Stahl, Claire Danes, Kristanna Loken, David Andrews
Directed by: Jonathan Mostow
Written by: John D. Brancato, Michael Ferris
Distributed by: Warner Brothers
MPAA Rating: R (strong sci-fi violence and action, language, brief nudity)
With Terminator 2: Judgment Day, James Cameron created the ultimate big-budget sequel as well as a fitting close to the two-part story of a killing machine sent from the future to assassinate humanity’s only hope for survival in a nuclear war that hadn't even happened. In T2, the heroes won, every scrap of futuristic technology was destroyed, and the lesson was learned that nothing in our future has been predetermined. The daunting task Terminator 3 has, then, is to deliver a mindblowing action movie without James Cameron and to explain why a third film in the series is necessary, aside from the obvious money-making reasons. As any critic or film connoisseur will tell you, money ought never to be the only justification for making a movie, especially a sequel, so it’s impressive that director Jonathan Mostow and his screenwriters are able to provide a bold and inventive way to continue the Terminator franchise with this installment.
James Cameron’s Judgment Day left the story virtually impossible for anyone -- perhaps even himself -- to expand on, but writers John Brancato and Michael Ferris (the pair who wrote David Fincher’s The Game) met the creative challenges of Terminator 3 head on. Their task, estentially, was to make sure the movie didn't feel like a cop out, or rather a film that doesn’t skip over important plot details to tell a mindless story filled with meaningless characters and explosions. Basically, they had to avoid telling audiences to simply forget what happened at the end of Terminator 2. Which they did, and the result is Rise of the Machines, a story set ten years after T2 that both explains the reason for this sequel and reveals an entertaining new story using the original good Terminator vs. bad Terminator forumla.
John Connor (now played by Nick Stahl) is in his early twenties and has been living in exile with a fear that he and his mother may not have saved the future as they thought at the end of T2. Images of a world overrun by homicidal machines still haunt his dreams and the burden of having to lead humanity into battle against them continues to be weigh heavily on his mind. What he doesn’t know is that an elite Terminator, named T-X (Kristanna Loken), has just been sent to the present day to terminate all of his future lieutenants because the machines have been unable to find Connor himself (Connor explains that he lives "off the grid" -- no phones, credit cards, bank accounts, or any other computer record that might be used to trace him).
Kate Brewster (Claire Danes) is one of those targets, and luckily for both her and Connor, a T-800 model Terminator (Arnold Schwarzenegger) has also arrived from the future, programmed to ensure their safety. The T-800 explains what Connor’s instinct had been telling him -- that Judgment Day was merely postponed, not prevented. The three fight to survive against the supremely advanced T-X, and they also race to prevent Judgment Day once and for all.
Thanks to this clever story, Terminator 3 is a pleasant surprise and a worthy addition to the series. Both of James Cameron’s Terminator films are still superior, but returning producer Mario Kassar and star Arnold Schwarzenegger ensure that this sequel does justice to its predecessors. Both men may have been responsible for some of the movie's more unnecessary things -- like a scene where Arnold puts on star-shaped glamour sunglasses instead of his trademark shades, the new catchphrase “Talk to the hand,” and a brief cameo from Terminator and Terminator 2 costar Earl Boen -- but director Jonathan Mostow and his writers were probably having a little too much fun themselves.
This would also explain why the villain, T-X, is not only the most advanced Terminator the series has ever seen (unlike Terminator 2’s T-1000, this sexy villain can transform its arms into complex weapons and it can control any piece of machinery by remote), but it’s also the first time a woman has played one of the killing machines. This, too, is clearly only for the extra box office draw and doesn’t serve a narrative purpose. Kristanna Loken, the beautiful model-turned-actress, blends into the movie well, though, so we can forgive the character’s unnecessary and needlessly elaborate mechanical design.
She, like Robert Patrick, who played the T-1000 in Terminator 2, is also a fitting counterpart to the burly Arnold Schwarzenegger. The 56-year-old actor proves here that he can still play the role that made him a superstar in 1984. And thanks to help of an impressive make-up job, his maintained muscular physique, and a well-timed sense of humor, it’s easy to forget he’s probably too old to be an action star. He doesn’t quite have the chemistry with Nick Stahl that he did with Edward Furlong in T2, but both Schwarzenegger and Stahl accept these more full-grown roles and do their part to make the story work.
If a Terminator 4 comes around, though, that production might need more than a group of capable actors and a team of brilliant writers and producers. Nothing can really top what James Cameron did with Terminator 2 (though some of T3’s action scenes come close, especially the early street chase involving a huge crane and dozens of helpless, parked cars), but director Mostow and writers Brancato and Ferris set a bar of their own that probably won’t be reached again if this franchise does continue. Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines is a worthwhile action movie and not a shameless cop-out, but anything that might continue the story after this most likely will be.
-- Andy Zientek (zfilm@earthlink.net)