erminator 3 was a fairly lame movie with a lot of explosions. That's nothing new or unusual for summer popcorn action flicks; it's just that this one was the sequel to one of the best action movies ever, so many viewers, myself included, had higher hopes going in. Were those hopes inflated or dashed? Read on to find out.

The original review was written in July 2003, but I'm inserting my categorized scoring system in July 2004, when I'm finally getting around to archiving this review in the reviews section. I have not seen it since the first time, since it wasn't any good and I haven't had any desire to watch it again, despite having the opportunity to buy the DVD for $7, or check it out for free.

Terminator 3
Script/Story: 5
Acting/Casting: 3
Action: 7
Comedy: 7*
Eye Candy: 7
Fun Factor: 5
Replayability: 3
Overall: 3.5

* There is only one scene that's played for comedy, but it works pretty well, hence the good score. Just don't be deceived into thinking this is one of those action movies with a lot of jokes.

July 23, 2003

I saw T3 about a week ago, with Malaya, on a very hot Monday afternoon.  We most wanted to see Pirates of the Caribbean that day, but when we got to the theatre Pirates was 30 minutes underway, while T3 was starting in 2 minutes, and LXG (League of Extraordinary Gentlemen) was starting in 12 minutes.  All three were on our "to see" list, so since the choice was between T3 and LXG, and neither of us had a preference, we flipped a coin at the box office.  Literally, I pulled out a nickel and said, "heads we see T3" and flipped and caught it, and there it was.  Thomas Jefferson's head, staring up at me.  Or possibly Aaron Burr.  Or Lincoln.  Like I know who's on the fricking nickel.

Our course thusly determined, we bought tickets at the semi-reasonable matinee price ($5), and dashed into the theater, knowing the movie was about to start.  Malaya, proving her gender, had to go pee, so she dashed towards the ladies room while I went over to the right towards the theater.

We were seeing the film at the old theater in Moraga, one of the triumverate of small bourgeois (or "bougie" as Malaya likes to abbreviate it) towns in this area. Lafayette, Moraga, and Orinda are their names, or to use the word locals use to refer to all of them, "Lamorinda." The Moraga theater is tiny, or so you'd think, and is old, with the big neon box office sign and all.  However they are pretty good at scoring all of the big summer movies; currently they're showing LXG, T3, Pirates, and Bad Boys 2 just opened.  Matrix 2 was showing there previously, and was replaced by Bad Boys 2.  Not bad for a tiny hick town.  Of course it's a tiny hick town with an average housing price of like $450k, populated entirely by rich business professionals who live there or in the other surrounding hick towns since they are picturesque and safe and community-styled, yet still within an easy commute of SF or Oakland or even the Silicon Valley.

You're probably thinking that none of this has anything to do with anything, in my typical undisciplined "going off on a huge tangent" way. And usually you'd be right... but not today.

This is relevant today since T3 was showing in a medium-sized theater upstairs, and since the theater is old and not their main one, it was black as pitch when I walked into it.  I don't mean it was dark, I mean your closet at midnight, under a quilt.  No floor lighting whatsoever, no wall lighting, nothing.  I could vaguely see that there were seats there, and could see the screen, but of course the only thing on the screen during the first 5 minutes of T3 is blackness and silver text and occasional thermonuclear explosion.  None of which provide sufficient illumination to pick your nose, much less walk down into a seat.

I waited by the entrance for Malaya, and when she came in a moment later, I had to physically reach out and take her arm so she would stop and wait, since there was no way her un-dark adjusted eyes could have picked out anything in there.  We stood waiting for several minutes, hoping for some sort of daylight scene, but settled for twilight with explosions, and ventured down the side aisle towards open seats in the middle of the theatre.

Malaya was in the lead, at least for about five steps, until she fell over backwards as an unseen step down was encountered. Fortunately she was moving slowly with her hand on the side rail, and just stumbled and half sat down, but I could easily see someone pitching head over heels with a big box of nachos and a drink, and falling down about eight steps.  We descended the next few carefully, and basically felt our way over to some seats, having trouble moving even when we were feeling the row in front of us, since the theater was very steeply downhill, so the next row only came up to about our knees.

Seriously, it was dangerous moving in there in the pitch blackness.  I've never seen a movie theatre that dark, one with zero lighting at all other than the screen, and we spent some time laughing and joking about it afterwards, wondering if some employee there turned off all the lights by accident, or in an effort to save a couple of bucks, or if it's just such an old theatre that they can get away with not meeting the current safety requirements.  I lean towards human error myself.

Unfortunately for T3, the most interesting thing in the entire movie was our near-deadly entrance. I didn't dislike it, but Malaya was in the process of actively hating it, and her ongoing reaction provided me with both a distraction and inspiration.  I must admit that her main point about it has taken resonance within me though.  She said that the whole movie was "booty," and that it could easily have been a 5 or 10 minute flashback at the start of T4, which, if they ever actually make it, will be what we've all been wanting since T2; a movie set in the future world, post apocalyptic, where the machines try to bring about the extinction of all humans in the death camps, and nearly succeed before John Conner appears and leads the humans to ultimate victory. Or at least leads them (us) towards ultimate victory, pausing at the end to repeatedly send Terminators back in time to try and save his younger self from preemptive termination. And please, no more aging Arnie-bots.

I'm not going to get into the entire plot of T3 here, mostly for spoiler reasons, but also since I don't really give a damn.  There are some clever twists and revelations, at least if you buy into things, but I didn't feel myself real involved in them while watching it. Probably since most of them are entirely irrelevant and self-serving, since the entire movie could easily have been a 10 minute flashback intro to T4.  (Well, I guess it would have actually been a flashback intro to T3, since T3 should have been what T4 probably will be.)

I liked some of the action scenes, but none of them really felt that exciting, though I thought some were clever.  The Arnold model Terminator is pretty cool and very smart and ruthless, doing his best to battle the vastly-superior Terminatrix model with the insufficient technology and weaponry he has at hand.  There are some scenes that should have been quite cool; chase scenes, a crypt defiling scene, an ending battle scene, and the final ruthless plot twist, but for whatever reason, Malaya-inspired or not, I viewed them all with such a cynical and jaded eye that nothing really surprised me.

I bitched about it pre-movie, and my opinion was not changed at all by actually seeing the full work.  Claire Danes looks about 45 in this film, and could more realistically play John Conner's mother than his love interest.  I guess she's 30 or so, maybe younger, but damn the years have not been kind.  I don't require that they cast a supermodel for the hero's love interest in every action movie, but she never seemed gorgeous or hot or sexy, nor did she seem like a future warrior for the human race. There's one point in the movie where they try to show that she can be tough and a fighter and all of that, but her big action is to seize a machine gun and shoot something before it kills them.  Better than nothing, but at the time it happens you're wondering why John isn't doing it himself, rather than just lying there.

That was another thing that bothered me, that John Conner was 1) stupidly still in the nuke-bait, Terminator-friendly, LA area, and 2) that he was a big pussy.  Yeah he can do some technical stuff like wiring bombs, but he never shows any real technical ability or marksmanship or survival skills, other than moderate driving ability. A few times there is human to human conflict, and you're always afraid he's going to get his ass kicked by any random person on the street since he's just a big puny white boy.  For God's sake, he's beaten up and locked in a dog cage by an unarmed and surprised female veterinarian in the first 15 minutes of the movie.

True, he thinks that the future has been changed by the actions he and mom and the Terminator undertook in T2, but he's also staying out of official records and sort of half expecting a Terminator to come after him at any moment.  So why half-prepare, while not completely preparing?  Mom's been dead for years, and she's still far more prepared for war than he is, as events in the film demonstrate. 

I'll have to see it again on DVD at some point, probably w/o Malaya watching, and I can see how it all works for me then.  I imagine I'll enjoy the stunt work more, but the plot less, since I sort of feel like without the surprises and revelations, it would fall very flat, and the surprises are only surprises the first time.

June 23, 2003

The upcoming Terminator 3 movie might be good or it might not.  Early reviews have been somewhat mixed, and it looks way too much like Terminator 2.5, with more John Conner running around LA, Arnie as a helpful Terminator protecting him, and a new super-powerful Terminator coming after him.

(Incidentally, the plot of T2 was that the T-1000, the liquid metal guy, was the last chance for the machines to stop John Conner in the past, since the humans had won in the present. It was sent back just before the human resistance smashed the final machine strongholds.  Nice job on the R&D to crank out a whole new super prototype liquid metal Terminator, during a war, eh?  So now it's T3, and the machines somehow found the time to send back another Terminator, and they also had time to R&D it with an entirely new technology, one that's vastly superior.  So how did they have time to invent this new one if the humans were seconds from smashing them in T2's version of the future world?  Shouldn't they be putting some of this kind of time into the production of war machines in the future and just winning the human war then, instead of dealing in all this silly time traveling crap which probably can't work anyway, since it's all a paradox?

Also, why don't they just set off a dirty bomb around their stronghold, or over the entire earth?  Humans would all die to radiation, while the robots wouldn't even notice the enriched uranium dust over everything. Don't tell me they don't have nuclear capabilities, given the technology they have demonstrated thus far.)

Anyway, in addition to the John Conner, helpful Arnie, and evil Terminator, we've got a babe in this one.  Technically we had a babe in the last one, Sarah Conner/Linda Hamilton, John's mom, but she was more like a co-star, and an action character, doing lots of fighting and cool asylum escaping and such.  In T3 the "babe" is Claire Danes, and she appears to just be the typical female romantic interest/baggage when it comes time to fight.  Fifty bucks says that she, at least once, trips/sprains her ankle during a chase scene.

What's funny about the whole thing is that I hadn't paid any attention to the cast of the new movie.  I don't really care about the actors in most productions, since I'm more into the story and direction and fight scenes and such.  I'm such a guy at times.  So I'd seen all of the T3 trailers, and been wavering on "Should I see that recycled crap or not?" but when talking to Malaya, she brought up the whole, "I hate Claire Danes." issue.

I had no idea she was in the movie at all, and don't really know anything about her.  I remember hearing her name on that trendy moody teen angst show My So-Called Life, years ago, the one that was on ABC (or something) and then after it failed to get any ratings despite all of the critics spooging over it, that it was on Mtv for a while longer.  And that was maybe 10 years ago, and she was playing a high school student, and looked the age.  Unlike most shows about High School where the actors look (and are) about 27.

I just checked IMDB, and Claire was born in April 1979.  Which would make her about eight years younger than me.  So she's 21 this year.  Again.

Anyway, if she's in her early 20's, how do you explain this? Who is this woman?  Is she wearing Gandalf's nose prosthesis, or is that her real honker? Could she more easily pass as John's mom than John's romantic interest, or am I the only one who thinks she looks about 36, and like she's been beaten with an ugly stick?

The funny part is that I hadn't read anything in plot synopses about the movie that said John had a girlfriend.  There's no hint of romance in the trailer, just her running with him a few times.  It looks to me like she's a government agent, and I figured she was just some FBI type person, who falls in with his crazy ravings, and quickly comes to realize they are true, and there really are evil robots from the future trying to kill him and start World War III.  I would never have guessed that it was Claire Danes, and it didn't occur to me to think that she might be John's romantic interest, since she looks old enough to be his mother, and ugly enough to have a career as a female boxer.

When Malaya told me who the actress was, and laughed hysterically at my confusion at the concept that she might be his romantic interest, I realized that I just had to blog about it.

You'll also note that I call the John Conner character "John Conner" every time.  I have no idea who the actor playing him is, nor do I care.  I don't much care for his wimpy voice in the T3 trailer narration, but I suppose I can ignore that if the movie has a sufficient number of explosions, and the not-exactly hot but frequently naked/leather-clad new Terminatoress will spice up the "easy on the eyes" aspect of the film.

Malaya and I always see commercials or trailers for this, and then take turns trying to convince each other that "we really should see that movie".  We both loved T2, but the T3 trailers just do not look very good, and we both suspect it'll be pretty crappy.  But we sort of want to see it since maybe it will be good, and I at least want to reward the movie for kicking James "I'm the King of the Assholes" Cameron's ass out the door when he made ridiculous career demands in his post-Titanic days.

And speaking of James Cameron, did he die or what?  He made several great actions films, and then the ultimate Romance Novel movie, (A film I have never seen and that Malaya hates... you see why I love her now?  How could I not love a woman who makes gagging noises when she discusses Titanic?) and since then he's done... um... I have no idea.  He and Leo seem to have followed the same career trajectory since their biggest movie, though I don't think Cameron can count on Tom Hanks and Spielberg to get him a career-resuscitating hit.

In fact looking at IMDB... yeah, he pretty much did die.  Nothing since Titanic but some minor credits on Dark Angel, a TV show that is long gone, and some character credit on T3, since he invented some of the plot concepts years ago.  Of course if I made a movie that earned me enough money to buy a baseball team, I'd probably take six or eight years off too, I must admit.

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