Terminator 3: Rise Of The Machines

Reviewed By Rich Drees

     I have to admit a feeling of trepidation going into see Terminator 3: Rise Of The Machines. The first two Terminator films are well-crafted films that, due to their strongly written characters and innovated special effect work, rise far above their genre origins. Without the participation of the previous two films’ writer/director James Cameron and series’ lead Linda Hamilton, I wondered if this new film could raise itself to the standard set by the previous two. Unfortunately, it doesn’t.

     Terminator 3 opens with a young John Connor (Nick Stahl), the warrior who will lead humanity in a future war against machines, living “off the grid” as he states. Even though the “Judgement Day”, the day that a super intelligent computer called Skynet was to start the war against humans has come and gone without incident thanks to the events of the first two Terminator films, John still has a gut feeling that something may still happen. And happen it does, as a new female Terminator, Skynet’s robotic assassins in the future, is sent back in time to eliminate not John, but those who would grow up to be his lieutenants in the future war against the machines. Soon John is reunited with an old school friend Kate (Claire Danes), whose father is in charge of the top-secret military program that has developed Skynet in the first place. As they race to her father’s military base to stop him from activating the computer they are chased by the female Terminator and protected by a reprogrammed Terminator (Arnold Schwarzenegger) also sent back from the future.

     One of the highlights of the first two Terminator features are the many well-written moments that flesh out the characters, making them more than the typical two-dimensional cardboard cutouts usually found in action pictures. Unfortunately, these moments are for the most part either perfunctory or else completely missing from Terminator 3. As such, we don’t really get any idea why John and Kate will wind up together in the future as revealed to them by the Terminator. As it is, they come off as little more than ciphers who react to the situations around them as the plot dictates them to.

     As the new female Terminator, Kristanna Loken doesn’t exude a real feeling of menace. Instead of maintaining a cold impassive face like Schwarzenegger and T2’s Robert Patrick, she seems to be barely concealing a smile as she hunts our heroes.

     Tonally, Terminator 3 strives to be a lighter film than its predecessors. The first half of the film never seems to pass an opportunity for a joke about the two Terminators’ attempts at assimilating into the present era. There are also numerous variations on Schwarzenegger’s classic “I’ll be back” line from the first film that feel more like winks to the audience rather than actual dialogue.

     What’s truly maddening about T3 is that it’s ending completely undercuts the theme of the previous two films. When taken as a whole, Terminator and T2 stressed that people make their own destiny their lives were not predetermined for one course of action. As Linda Hamilton’s Sarah Conner, mother of John, states at the end of Terminator 2, “There is no fate but what we make for ourselves.” Without revealing specifics, the ending of Terminator 3 pretty much spits in the eye of that sentiment. I don’t mind a downbeat ending. The Statute of Liberty-on-the-beach ending of the original Planet of the Apes is one of my favorite film moments. But in Terminator 3’s case, the ending is nothing but a complete betrayal of the first two films.

     Ultimately, after the meaty repasts of the first two Terminator films, Terminator 3 is nothing more than a light confection of a dessert.