Terminator Franchise: TERMINATOR 3: RISE OF THE MACHINES - Photo credit: theterminatorfans, edition by Amber255 via bitLanders
The Terminator and Terminator 2: Judgment Day, released in 1984 and 1991, became classics of cinema fiction. They were so famous and popular that the return of Hollywood to a world where robots from the future are trying to change the past to guarantee the victory of the machines in the war with humanity seemed inevitable.
And this return really happened. However, without the participation of the creator and director of the cycle, James Cameron. His place was taken by director Jonathan Mostow, and the picture he shot was released in 2003 under the title TERMINATOR 3: RISE OF THE MACHINES.
Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines tells the simple yet compelling story of a very old piece of equipment that refuses to go away. Its name is Arnold Schwarzenegger, and, as famously promised, he's back, and at his anticharismatic best, too.
Credit: boston
James Cameron's participation was no longer discussed. After the Titanic triumph, the director rightly felt himself to be the ruler of the world, and he wanted to develop new exciting projects, and not return to the old ones. In addition, J.Cameron believed that he said in the cycle everything he wanted to say about the killer robots from the future. And he was ready to accept the fact that other people will create further Terminator.
I have never understood those people who strongly criticize this film. Yes, this is not the ingenious 1st and 2nd Terminator, but still, it’s not as bad as many people write about it. If we consider the movie as an independent product, then we can attribute the picture to the category of fairly high quality. But if we talk about the film as the 1st and 2nd parts' sequel, then probably this is not what we could expect. Anyway, if you look from the other side, in the era of 1st and 2nd Terminator, there were very few fantastic films with a few effects, while at the time of 3 part, we have already a lot of such films.
TERMINATOR 3: RISE OF THE MACHINES, trailer - Video credit: youtube
The Plot
Judgment day did not come on August 29, 1997. People continue to live in a peaceful present. Among them lives the failed leader of the Resistance to the failed war John Connor (Nick Stahl).
Frustrated, depressed, lonely, John lives outside of society. He has no address, no telephone, almost no one knows about his existence. And suddenly the nightmare of the last decades repeats - the perfect model of a murderer from the future begins to hunt him again.
Now the robot takes the form of a girl, and her goal is not only to kill John but all his closest allies in the future. Thus, the path of John intersects with Kate Brewster (Claire Danes), his former classmate, who will play a significant role in the future Resistance.
Connor believes that the only one who can help to survive is the Terminator, the mysterious hired murderer. At the same time, they must win against technological advances such as T-X (Kristanna Loken) and pre-empt the threat of the impending Court Day or meet the apocalypse and the collapse of civilization. The Terminator T-850 (Arnold Schwarzenegger), with the appearance of the old bodyguard John, who tells them the truth about the future, again becomes a defense.
Bitlanders AI-Themed Blogging: Terminator 3 - Photo credit: hdwallpapers
Robot T-X
The most experienced Skynet killing cyborg T-X is sent back to the future to complete the unfinished work of his predecessor T-1000. This machine is ruthless and unbreakable, but its human appearance is beautiful.
T-X received a solid skeleton reinforcing structure, the skin of liquid metal, which allows the machine to take different human forms, built into the skeleton of various types of powerful weapons and software that allows you to reconfigure computer networks, robots, and any complex mechanisms with electronic control.
If the humanoid terminators of earlier generations were created by Skynet for war with humans, then the T-X was also designed to destroy or restore vehicles captured and reprogrammed by the Resistance. This made her a particularly dangerous opponent for the T-850, the improved T-800 model sent to the past to protect John Connor and his future wife, Kate Brewster.
Science fiction film: Terminator 3 - Photo credit: imdb
Kristanna Loken, who played the role of a killer robot, has become world-famous thanks to the movie TERMINATOR 3: RISE OF THE MACHINES. To prepare for the role, the actress practiced martial arts (she gained about 7 kg of muscles) and worked with a professional meme to convincingly convey the mechanicalness of her character.
Kristanna Loken - played cyborg T-X that controlled other machines, and did it good. Beautiful with an excellent figure and smart cyborg game. She showed that girls terminators are also available and can be blood-cooled cyborgs.
Robot Terminator T-850
Arnold Schwarzenegger was magnificent as always. His angry look, his dialogues, and of course, the shooting and fighting with him were great. It was his last role before he became Governor of California, and in my opinion, he was awesome.
Having brought himself into amazing physical form, he again showed the viewer on the cinema screen that he was a POWER. But at that time, Schwarzenegger was 56 years old. A living example for everyone how to look at 56 years old.
The film about humanoid cyborgs: Terminator 3 - Photo credit: imdb
What I particularly like in his playing in these three different films is that he played essentially three different Terminators. They are only similar in appearance. But in the first part, he was the main antagonist and seemed like the perfect killer. In the second, he became the protagonist and became more humane. The third Terminator is also different from its predecessors. Although it carries in the memory some data about these versions, the robot itself admits that is completely different.
It honestly recognizes itself as outdated, worries about the success of its mission, and even has a certain sense of humor. In general, watching the evolution of the Terminator T-800 model over 3 films was very interesting.
Many fans criticize the third part for too much humor. Like, such humorous Terminator is impossible. A sense of humor and irony are integral parts of a truly developed and effective intellect, and any attempt to deny these important qualities is the essence of limited thinking and excessive pathos. Moreover, all the humor in the tape is quite proper, as it is presented by absurd situations, and not by the phrases said at random.
Science fiction film: Terminator 3 - Photo credit:imdb
Other Characters
The roles of John Connor was performed by actor Nick Stahl. The main character lack charisma? In fact, it should be so! If judged sensibly, with a mother with such a character, who survived not the simplest events and dragged through them her only son, who throughout his childhood had never seen his own father, he could only be the one who was shown to the viewer. We can explain the reasons for the apathy of John, who believes that the world will collapse but does not know how to help people survive after that.
The role of John Connor was logical to entrust Edward Furlong, who played the teenage John in Terminator 2. However, at the time of filming, E. Furlong was well-known in Hollywood as an alcoholic and drug addict, and no one decided to entrust him with the role of such importance.
Instead of E. Furlong, Jonathan Mostow hired Nick Stahl. By an indicative coincidence, Began also had problems with alcohol and drugs but not as serious as E. Furlong. At least at that time. J. Mostow liked the fact that it seemed as if Stahl had the weight of the whole world on his shoulders. That is what the director wanted to see in John Connor, a homeless tramp who knows that he was destined to save humanity.
Terminator 3 review - Photo credit: avforums
If in the two previous Terminators, the main character of the film was Sarah Connor, the mother of John Connor, then in the third part, the adult John has his future wife Kate Brewster, a veterinary clinic employee and the daughter of the general, responsible for the Skynet project of our time.
According to the scenario, John and Kate knew each other, when they were little, and they met again at the beginning of Terminator 3 when John came to Kate's clinic to get medicines. However, Kate can be called a new version of Sarah from the first Terminator. This is also a purely peaceful woman, who is forced by circumstances to become a soldier of a future war.
The heroine of the first two parts of Sarah, John's mother, died sometime, somewhere, somehow. How many touching scenes and tears from the audience could be obtained if her death were part of the film if we saw her, but at the beginning of the film, we are just informed that Sarah is not here. In the film, there are few touching scenes; the play of actors could save the situation, but somehow they didn’t convey that most incipient love between them to the viewer.
The film about humanoid cyborgs: Terminator 3 - Photo credit: imdb
Humanity
First of all, from the beginning, this film lacked ordinary humanity. Anyone who is not a fan of science fiction in general and robotics in particular, could not understand at all what is there to admire?
Well, yes, they fight, they shoot, there are robots from the future, but all this has already happened a thousand times in other films. Of course, it was. And the film really casts boredom because it is initially too pathetic. Gloomy faces, the doom literally in everything, a terrible and hopelessly uniform color spectrum with a predominance of icy blue.
And in the background of all this, adults with the most serious type are engaged in complete nonsense - they save humanity from the fairest and inevitable finale - self-destruction. Really, nothing special, you can not argue with that, as with the fact that in the first two parts of this film, there is not one and not two robots. Sometimes it seems that the robots there are almost all the main characters: in the first series they lacked a sense of humor and irony, and in the second, besides all this, they also lacked caution.
TERMINATOR 3: RISE OF THE MACHINES, Fight Scene - Video credit: youtube
And only in the third part, we see more or less real, living people, not alien to the sense of humor and self-irony, subject to fear, cautious, able not only to run, drive cars, beat faces, shoot and destroy but also to think, suffer and even be in love.
It is for this reason to those lucky ones, who have not yet had time to see any of the Terminator series, I would recommend starting the acquaintance with this epic from the third part. Yes, the sequence of presentation, in this case, will suffer somewhat, but with a generally positive impression from the harmoniously presented third story, it will be easier to wade through the deliberate pathos of the first two.
I can talk endlessly about such a movie as Terminator and about any part of it. There, as in a good-quality literary novel, several inexhaustible and complex topics are touched at once.
Terminator Franchise: TERMINATOR 3: RISE OF THE MACHINES - Photo credit: twitter
Here and the topic of interaction between androids (human-like robots) and people, changing many aspects of the human psyche, and the inevitable self-destruction not only of civilization but of the human race in general, embedded in human nature itself, and the topic of the eternal inner struggle of human will against faith in an irresistible fate.
All these topics, of course, are by no means entertaining, far from everyday life, philosophical. They are usually called global. And because the pathos of this tape is quite understandable and even forgivable, but the beauty of the third part of this film is that the authors managed to find the most ideal ratio. They were able to find a balance between dull routine and star wars, between real and fictional, between the truly scary and ridiculous, between humanity and technocracy.
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Tomorrow Will Never Die?
Tomorrow will never die? It's a too arrogant statement. According to the Terminator's scenario, humanity itself digs its own grave, developing a technocracy at an advanced pace and volume. Surrounding ourselves with thinking automation and entrusting everything to it, from the smallest life to global national security, do we risk losing control over it on one cloudless day?
John Connor : Skynet IS the virus. It's the reason everything's falling apart!
Terminator : Skynet has become self aware. In one hour it will initiate a massive nuclear attack on its enemy.
Robert Brewster : What enemy?
John Connor : Us! Humans!
Credit: imdb
And what would do the inanimate machine if its own creator would be in its power? Yes, the same thing that would do a person who considers himself a God - it is able to dictate its laws instead of the existing ones and destroy the disobedient ones.
And the machines rose from the ashes, and their war against humanity went on for decades, and yet the machines could not manage to behead Resistance. And it was hindered by the insider among strangers - Terminator of T-101 model, reprogrammed from bad to good.
Terminator Franchise: TERMINATOR 3: RISE OF THE MACHINES - Photo credit: youtube
On A Final Note
In my opinion, this film shows the possible options for how human technology will develop. Where robots do almost everything instead of people.
I think I’m not exaggerating at all if I say that of all the successful blockbusters ever released, eventually becoming cult and transformed into cinema series, the Terminator is the most successful in many ways.
Bullets whistle, lasers buzz, cartridges do not end, bombs explode, walls break through, robots fight with the characteristic sound of the cast-iron pans, cyborg-shooters fly, girls manage helicopters, and Schwarzenegger goes all such important in a leather jacket and leather pants and saves the humanity that created it, to the last breath of his iron chest, to the last red light in his iron eye.
Terminator 3 review - Photo credit: twitter
I always treated the third part rather calmly. Yes, she did not cause me such delight as the second part, but there was not any particular dislike. I perceived the RISE OF THE MACHINES as an ordinary thriller, where there is a bit of drama, funny moments, where there are minuses and advantages. And now I yet perceive it, as well as the necessary part, as a connection between past and future.
Do we were born to see how the fairy tale became true?
John Connor : Judgment Day. The end of the world. It's today, three hours from now.
Terminator : Two hours and fifty-three minutes.
Credit: imdb
My rating: 7.0/10
Rotten Tomatoes: 69100
Metacritic: 66/100
Critics average: 46/100
IMDb: 6.3/10
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