Caught a screening of this last night. Not great, but certainly not as awful as I was expecting it to be. A few highlights:
WAY too much “winking at the audience.” The filmmakers try so hard to convince us that they have Respect For The Material that it becomes farcical early on.
The Terminatrix is a zip. Zero. Zilch. Nada. No sense of menace or threat from her. Robert Patrick did more with a twitch of his head in T2 than this woman does with her entire body throughout the film.
The Guy Who Plays John Connor Whose Name I Can’t Remember did a very good job, I thought. He was far better than Furlong ever would have been, and he comes off as a believable son of Kyle Reese. Kudos to this guy. Good performance in a very tough role.
Claire Danes didn’t make my eyes and ears bleed, which is a first.
The action sequences involving vehicles are amazing. Some great stunt work went into this film, and CG is minimal for the most part. Refreshing for a modern summer blockbuster.
Ahnold is still buff as ever, but he sure is starting to look like “yesterday’s model.” In this movie, that’s fitting, of course, but I’ll be interested to see how much further he pushes the action hero thing.
The invalidation of the premise of the previous two movies (the future is set, and cannot be changed…that was the premise, whether Cameron realizes it or not) was a mistake. Not having Judgment Day occur on August 29th, 1997 throws a whole lotta continuity out the window. “No fate but what we make for ourselves” is bullshit.
Luckily, John (and the film) realizes that later in T3, and the ending somewhat redeems the screwy continuity.
However, the twist at the end, while clever, makes the known end of the Future War impossible. If you see the film, think about it, and it’ll hit you eventually.
I came away with a moderately positive response, but it still feels like someone made a film out of Terminator fanfiction. This is compounded by the fact that Mostow’s directing is not in any way similar to Cameron’s, so T3 doesn’t really even look like it belongs in the same series as its predecessors.
Oh, and the lack of an opening sequence featuring the classic Terminator theme loses massive points in my book. Plain title cards and silence to begin a Terminator film? Sacrilege.
Not terrible, and the obvious setup for T4 shows promise, but overall I’d say it doesn’t add to or enhance the existing Terminator story enough to justify its existence as anything more than another trip to the old cash cow udders.
Saw it. Liked it. Didn’t love it. Weak, surprisingly downbeat ending, but sets up a potentially far more interesting next movie. Cameron’s absence is all too apparent. Some impressive action scenes and fights. T-X is tres hot. Some cheese. Some laughs. The b-movie comments flying around are correct. Lack of familiar theme music in all but end credits was a downer. Doesn’t even try to address time-paradox issues left by T2, and flies in the face of that film’s primary message. All in all, a good summer action movie in its own right, but can hardly be considered a worthy trilogy-capper.
And Aliens 4 was a clever parody of the Alien series. That was really the only option after two classics that could hardly be topped and a failed third attempt to revitalise the subject matter. I definitely prefer 4 to 3.
I loved the darkness and desolation of 3. I have actually watched it more time than the other two, although I thought both were great. 4 felt like a big cash-in. OTOH, I am a freak.
Ah, Alien 3, where the decision to trash Aliens was made. What is the deal with people coming into a franchise and pissing all over what made it good in the first place? I understand wanting to put your stamp on something but shit, don’t feel like that entitles you to kill off main characters from a previous movie, especially through dialogue.
I thought Alien 3 was a decent stand alone movie in it’s own right, but it didn’t do justice to it’s predecessor. Getting rid of newt and hicks was a cop-out, and the bit about an alien egg/facehugger getting on board, infecting newt, then switching to ripley… it’s just too contrived.
Alien 4 was okay, until about the last 30 minutes, where it should just die. The cloning premise was iffy, but was acted… relatively well. Winona was weak throughout the whole thing. I think it was a bad decision to kill off Michael Wincott’s character so early, because he was one of the better characters in the movie. The ending just raped the series’ continuity.
I thought T3 was a neat movie. It was great watching the new take on each of the old famous scenes that were redone.
I bet it’s going to be sampled at least twice this year between Bill Leeb and GMS.
It’s also nice to see CG being used to create REALLY violent fight scenes. That whole action causing an equal and opposite reaction part of physics seems to be left in the books, but it’s still fun watching the violence.
What I want from a Terminator film is to forget the whole “present day” setting and call it T4: Future War or something. Tell us the story of how John Connor and Kyle Reese managed to fight their way into Skynet and send Kyle back. I was always much more interested in the future segments in the movies anyway.
Terminator4 has alot to live up to. There’s something missing in #3 that one has to put alot of faith into the sequel to build on the characters of JohnConnor and PunkyBrewsky (sp)…in particular, the theme of “unlikely heroes” needs major development, because it was really difficult to will suspension of disbelief about these two jokers leading the human race against the machines.
Anyone else see this “leadership” theme sadly lacking? (there were a few good point in the film that played touchy feely with leadership function)[ul]both characters had spunky, “take initiative” roles, of course. but, i’ll avoid giving out spoilers, yes?[/ul]Other than that, i thought the plot was kinda neat. not too swisscheese and not too much cheese of any variety, but then again, i didn’t have complaints about Matrix2 the way some people bitched about Keanu’s butt, etc.
:blink: what you folks think? good action flick, but sadly lacking in character development? hope the next movie’s theme is on leadership function?
I liked T3, but, once it was over, I felt that it was made only to set up T4. And, to me, T4 might be interesting, but it won’t be great. How can you incorporate Ahnold as the star into T4?
However, I never realized that T3 was this great because of its stars’ careers. Seriously, the reviewer provides a plot summary for the movie and a career summary for the two terminators. I don’t get it. How does that make this a 3 1/2 star movie? Is this supposed to be a review?
“And Aliens 4 was a clever parody of the Alien series. That was really the only option after two classics that could hardly be topped and a failed third attempt to revitalise the subject matter. I definitely prefer 4 to 3.”
Both which suck compared to the first two.
I though T3 was your standard slick action flick showing what $150 million gets you in stunts, special effects and such. Its basically a rehash of T2. The “funny” lines that Arnold gives are too blatent.
I’m assuming the 4th will take place in the future finally showing the man vs machine war that people have always talked about, which is what this movie should have been.
"How can you incorporate Ahnold as the star into T4? "
Arnold works well in the second (and best) Terminator as a good robot with a higher capacity for love than pretty much everyone else in John Connor’s life. Cameron did this so well that it brought a tear to many people’s eyes (including myself) when Arnold was killed off at the end. This element is quite lacking in T3, and it would be totally gone in a T4 about the Future War. It just would not be the same to see Arnold running around and offing human rebels without affect or remorse. I’m not saying that T4: Future War will by necessity be bad, but I don’t see how it could be good if Ahnold became the bad guy again.
I’m surprised nobody mentioned the appearance of the original, human-built Terminators. I thought that was pretty cool.
Overall, I actually like the movie, though not as much as either of the first two. The T-X just didn’t have the cool factor that the T-1000 had, even if she could kick his ass.
Those were cool, but it was very obvious to me that they were real life kit robots, so they moved like a college robotics class project. Which, I guess, is what they are supposed to do. And they’re still better than CGI.
I rather liked T3. It’s a total popcorn flick, without a lot of deeper meaning and with basically one big action scene taking you to the next one.
But it’s not half as dumb as I feared. Even the scene where Ahnuld is struggling with his infected programming wasn’t as nauseating as I figured it would be from the trailer.
The action stuff is great. CG is actually quite prevalent, but it blends in very well with real stunts/smashing/pyrotechnics. Really great car chase with the crane, and a Terminator-on-Terminator hand fight that kicks the crap out of anything in T2.
It’s decidely more jovial than the first two. It’s not really serious, and goes out of its way to make a few corny jokes that made me snicker in spite of myself.
A few moments of cheese to be sure. Particularly in the first 15 minutes where characters have retarded improbable conversations that only exist to serve as an unneeded explanation for the audience. (Brewster’s phone conversation with her dad comes to mind)
A couple nice twists though, and I for one loved the ending. I love that they don’t succeed in the typical movie sense. It ends with John giving up and accepting the “fate” he doesn’t want. Cool.
Oh, and I was surprised how good Arnold still looks. Yeah he’s getting up there, but there are enough close-ups in the trailers that it’s all you see. You don’t see him warp in from the future all buff and shit, or see him fighting the TX and all. It still works, but not for much longer.
Just saw it, and I was underwhelmed. Definately missing the Cameron and the Hamilton factor in this one. T2 certainly had heart (and chicks with guns!), this was just one standard Hollywood summer blockbuster. Totally forgettable once you leave the theater.
And I spent the first 10 minutes or so trying to deal with the size of Claire Dane’s head. It’s like freakishly huge compared to the rest of her body.
Oh well, hope 28 Days Later is better. Gonna see that in an hour. It’s all-day movie day for me! And later tonight, Ozon’s 8 Women!
