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Addendum Issue 097
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#97 : Saturday 19 July 2003 : http://addendumtextfiles.org
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We went to see T3, by Steak
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Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines opened across Australia the night
before last. So in true science fiction fan fashion Spud and I gave
the car Ham a good kick in the rear differential, pulled its choke
and made our way to the local cess-pit of all satanic influence, Knox
city.
It took me a little while to convince spud that today, we shouldnt
just mallrat but go see this movie. He was all in for it, except he
wanted to see it on Friday. Now I know for a fact that opening night
is the best time to see a movie, don't ask me why, it just is. So I
had to do a little smooth talking to get him fully into the idea, but
once he had been suitably brainwashed, I mean persuaded, to part with
his $13.50 we were happily on our way up the escalator towards the
seemingly infinite corridor of cinemas.
"Lets take the lazy way up today," he said, remembering our
escapades on the staircase the last time we were here
I nodded in agreement, noticing the looks of displeasure from the
patrons in front of us, who had just been called lazy.
I handed my ticket to the ticket lady and she told us that we were in
cinema one. We were to go around and behind her to a little door off
to the side. When I saw the shitty looking door and lack of overstated
DOLBY signs I instantly thought that we had been defaulted into a tiny
little cinema. One that was perhaps added onto the rest of the complex
at the last minute of the building process just to facilitate the
arrival of even more of our money. How wrong I was.
As far as cinemas go this one was fucking massive and by massive I
mean extremely Godzilla size huge. It was easily three or four times
the size of the cinemas we had watched Star Trek: Nemesis and The
Matrix Reloaded in.
Advertisements played, the lights dimmed, more advertisements, then
more light dimming, then finally the trailers, followed (at last) by
the main feature.
Im not really all that sure what to make of the movie. I know for a
fact that it left me disappointed, but at the same time slightly
satisfied. Its hard to explain, I have no doubt that, over time I
will be able to find the proper place for this movie in my mind around
its two older siblings but for now the whole experience seems to be a
little bit lost.
Thats not to say that the film wasnt enjoyable, it was, you just had
to stick your brain into neutral and let it freewheel into
entertaining you, it didnt require a whole lot of thought. Then again
it could have just been the fact that it was a terminator movie. Its
hard to make a horribly bad movie when terminators are involved,
unfortunately this movie ended up coming a lot closer than might have
been necessary.
In my mind there is a high possibility that everyone involved in the
script-writing and green-lighting process was so high on coke that
they thought that having the terminator dead-pan remark on the
blisteringly obvious, not just once but continually throughout the
movie would be really funny. In short the entire dialog seemed very
stilted and non-serious.
The film had a sort of a comic book style to it that didnt really
suit the franchise at all. The first two installments were real
science fiction action movies. Throughout both of them you really
believed the characters were in danger and that the enemy that was
chasing them could strike at any moment.
They were fighting to the absolute bitter end, to the very last round.
I mean at the end of T2, who wasnt expecting Sarah Conner, upon
running out of shells, to actually throw the empty shotgun at the
T1000 to deliver the final push that was needed to send the infernal
machine into the molten depths below? - I defiantly did.
This movie tried far too hard to accomplish this same sense of
suspense and peril. As you might expect, it didnt work. The TX wasnt
nearly menacing enough, she just didnt have the right edge that Arnie
and Patrick had in the previous movies. They tried to make her more
menacing in a number of extremely obvious ways, first they made her
stronger than Arnold, which was in theory meant to make you look twice
at her abilities, but on film just looked stupid. A super model thin
women smashing a super weightlifter around? I dont think I can
suspend my disbelief that much, Im sorry..
They gave her some uber-powerful-gun/hand attachments that could
trigger Hollywood explosive charges and CGI effects on cue, they also
made it so that she could control other machinery, like cars, early
terminators and other useful things like that. This all made it seem
that they were being chased by something out of a Marvel comic book.
They also made her POV blue. The T1000 never had a POV, you got the
impression that he just knew what was going on all the time, there was
no need for this terminator to have a POV, it was just used so that
they could advance the plot easily and without much hassle or thought.
Which brings me to the T800s POV. In the first movie he was given
meaningless but aesthetically pleasing bits of random C code to spew
out at the audience, in the second film they managed to replicate this
pretty well. But in this movie his POV looks like a bad macromedia
flash animation. Flashing up words and phrases like Inappropriate
and Code: terminate to get a cheap laugh and to make sure that the
clueless members of the audience knew what was going on respectively.
I also feel that this review would not be complete without mentioning
the fact that this movie has the worst one liners in cinematic
history. The fact that most of the audience laughed at all of these
sad excuses for sentences makes me weep for the future, it really
does. They ALL should have been cut out, and none of them should have
made it onto the deleted scenes on the DVD. How the hell they made it
into the theatrical cut of the film I will never know. I mean how can
they leave out the head-opening scene in T2 but include the terminator
saying, "talk to the hand" in T3? Terminators just arent meant to say
that, are they?
In conclusion, THEY have again taken one of my favorite all time
movies and almost but not quite ruined it completely. Turning it into
a fan-boy-adolescent-teenage-male-with-the-IQ-of-my-remote-control-
orientated-poor-excuse-for-an-action-flick. I made that phrase up, you
can tell cant you?
In my opinion the two only saving graces of the entire film was Nick
Stahls portrayal of the late twentys John Conner which could have
been better utilized in a better version of this film. That and
Arnolds CGI makeup at the end of the film that finally doesnt look
like its just some piece of plastic stuck on the side of his face.
(Something tells me he really didnt want to spend a collective nine
days in the makeup chair again like he did for T2)
What ever I say youll probably go see it anyway, you might enjoy it,
if you like that kind of thing. But if your looking for a continuation
of the previous two movies then in my view youll leave the cinema
feeling like youve been given your birthday cake, only it tasted like
dog shit.
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