Wed, Jul 02, 2003

: T3: Rise of the Machines

Okay, here goes. First, the Good: 1) The story continues and the trilogy comes to a logical (though not particularly satifying) conclusion; 2) There’s some excellent action and tension, combined with good special effects; 3) The characters are interesting and well-played; 4) The new “Terminatrix” (the enemy female Terminator) works surprisingly well, though there’s no explanation of why the robot was made in female form.

Now, the Bad: 1) The plot’s basically just a rerun of T2; 3) While exciting in places, this movie doesn’t have the no-letup, breakneck pace of the previous films that made them edge-of-your-seaters; 4) Still includes numerous utter idiotic fallacies, such as cyborgs going nude back through time, but once they’ve adopted human clothing, the clothing miraculously repairs itself after they’ve been shot up! In another example, Arnold steals a vehicle by finding the keys hidden above the visor — that was a human trick taught him by John Connor in T2 as an alternative to tearing open the steering column. But of course this is a different cyborg — how could he remember what his predecessor did? Even dumber, the film later points that out in a bit where the 20-something John Connor laments that he’ll have to “retrain” the new Terminator because he doesn’t remember anything. Lame!

But overall this isn’t as disappointing of a sequel as I expected — it’s actually rather fun. I suppose people will be split on it, though. Some will hate the ending, others will agree it makes sense. I personally liked the way they tied all the loose ends. Some have reported the action was awesome, but I thought it only okay (but action doesn’t impress me that much anyway).

Topic: [/movie]

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