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I thought we'd learned our lesson about franchises all those years ago with
Friday 13th & A
Nightmare on Elm Street. What with the long-awaited Freddy vs. Jason film a reality & this being
the summer fo sequels, I guess not.
First of all I want to make my excuses for going to see Terminator 3.
Ordinarily, I wouldna touched it with a barge pole however I fell under the spell
of several well-heeled critics on a selection of high-brow art & culture programmes who recommended
it ("you think it's gonna be awful but its actually quite good"). I think I should qualify this:
it's not.
Pretty much everything I said about sequels in the Matrix Reloaded review applies here.
T3 is a classic example of the law of diminishing cinematic returns - and I don't mean the
financial side. T3 (yawn, once again) faces the age old question that plagued Matrix Reloaded,
Raiders of the Lost Ark, Highlander, etc: how the hell do we top that? The answer (again): you don't.
Unless of course you're a multi-million dollar business without a clue about anything beyond dollar
value who make art-by-committee for relatively quick & easy financial recuperation.
T2 - effectively the Matrix of its time - posed a whole different dilemma for the franchise owners.
As the biggest, best, longest, loudest, glossiest & most SFX boundary-breaking,
epic, blockbuster of its time, it's not that they shouldn't try to follow but that they cannot.
Up until Resevoir Dogs, it was the both the yardstick & the template for every action movie that
followed. The only reason Resevoir Dogs changed that, I proffer, is because, until The Matrix came
along (and bullet time), filmmakers gave up believing they could top it. The only
way it could've been bettered was if Cameron had somehow incorporated the entire Matrix concept &
shown it solely in IMAX!
As a well-disguised blatant corporate cash-in, T3 sits uncomfortably in the franchise. From b-movie
to blockbuster to just plain mediocre. Without lynchpins Cameron & Linda Hamilton the whole concept
crumbles. Mostow makes a valiant attempt to hold the thing together with some impressive if unconvincing
set pieces but his direction lacks Cameron's gloss & the story delivers virtually zero in terms of
fan's expectation. Admittedly, T2 had a hint of Highlander syndrome about it: you know in the original
where we told you we sent back one terminator & one human and then blew up Skynet? Well, we lied and sent
back two more. We accepted it because T2 was so impressive. Nevermind the fact that the T2000 was
some kind of techno-generational leap forward in the matter of plot seconds but as the sequel leapfrogged
realtime by a decade we accepted the implausability & were richly rewarded for our self-deception.
T3 doesn't even bother entering the debate about a how a third, even more technologically advanced
assassin could be sent back after the previous four, the latter two seemingly sent back AFTER they blew
up bloody Skynet (also, if the concluding speech in T3 about Skynet having no physical base is true
then how the hell did they blow it up anyway?).
The Terminatrix' feminine persona (Hollywood's idea of equality?) is one of a number of cute twists incorporated
by the makers to distract from their inevitable failure to fill T2's shoes. Naked Arnie at
a hen night? Terminatrix with blow up breasts? Arnie as ultimate nemesis? TX with built-in weapons?
Pure filler. Nick Stahl is completely unconvincing as the hero. Are we to believe this is the
evolutionary step between Ed Furlong's subversive juvenile survivalist & the battle scarred John Connor?
Stahl's Connor is a introspective pansy, the only thing rugged about him is his make-up. Clare Danes is
completely irrelevant, fed-exed in to fill Hamilton's shoes or complement Stahl's damsel in distress,
I'm not certain which. By the way, Mom died without handing over the onscreen batton, of leukaemia.
Is this some kind of sick irony or just bad taste on the part of the producers? At least she battled,
brave soul. If they wanted to make interesting plot progressions/additions, surely they would've
been better off elluding to a young Reece or something?
T3's SFX are clumsy at best, the Terminator's incompetent at worst. In one scene, the new, vastly
improved Terminatrix can't even spot Danes hiding behind a trolley for christ's sake!? Arnie has
given up any pretense at being a cold logical machine and bullied his embarrassing one-liner/comedic
set pieces into the action. Would a Terminator from the future be able to distinguish between
sunglass styles? Or gender dress sense for that matter? Who really cares?
Perhaps the most disturbing thing is not the film itself but the way respected reviewers have succumbed to
making pleasantries about a film that is obviously disappointing, dreadful & desperately underachieving.
Are we beginning to witness the kind of obsequious ass-kissing to advertising & corporate demand in the UK
that has decimated US journalism & neutralized the kind of advocacy we expect from our cultural critics?
Terminator 3 is what you probably expect. It kills 2 hours but ultimately leaves you wishing &
wandering what James Cameron would've done.
Unless they effect some kind of radical Hallowe'en 3 - Hallowe'en 4 style shake up
I think I'll pass on the next installment. Oh, didn't I mention they've obviously refranchised the
series? Not even the end of the world couldn't stop that...
RATING: (c)Limer 2003
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Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines (Cinema: August 2003)
