It’s a controversial opinion, so I’ll go ahead and state it up front: Terminator 3: Rise Of The Machines is in a lot of completely unironic ways my favorite Terminator film. I admire the low-budget grit and iconic presence of the original Terminator and the ground-breaking special effects and action sequences in Terminator 2, but there’s a self-importance to those films that I find off-putting. I think there are interesting philosophical ideas in both those movies that can be engaged with, but I’ve always found the melding of the examination of paradoxes and free will and human self-determination with a story about time-travelling genocidal robot assassins to be an almost textbook exercise in bathos.
I realize that this makes me sound like a bit of an old man, but hopefully by now you know that I’m as big a sci-fi nerd as anyone else. I think that SF and speculative fiction cinema, when done well, can be more observant regarding culture and modern-day society and more engagingly philosophical than many a self-professed “artistic” film, while also retaining the ability to entertain a wide array of audiences. In just the past decade, look to District 9, Children Of Men, or Minority Report as examples of films that seek to make statements about the way we live while couching their messages in genre entertainment, with films like The Matrix mixing even more outlandish philosophical arguments with cutting-edge gunplay.
It’s difficult to place James Cameron at the upper echelon of this populist-philosophical spectrum, though. I like Cameron’s films, almost without exception, and he’s undeniably one of the most proficient and technically capable directors around, able to roadmap special effects techniques years in advance and using them to aid in storytelling. When he’s backed up with solid acting, his human relationships can be touching, or even compelling (I’m thinking chiefly of Ed Harris and Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio in The Abyss here). But there’s always a bit of strain behind the presentation of his ideas, a bit of inelegance, as if we were watching a very bright high school-er struggle to make A Statement without the language needed to properly frame an argument. There’s a bit too much of the black and white in his films, pure good vs. implacable evil (witness Avatar), something that makes them enjoyable on a surface level but resistant to deeper interpretation.
There is a kernal of something interesting in the Terminator films; mankind has struggled with the notion of destiny and free will probably since the moment our brains were capable of conceiving a deity. Is there a God? If so, is he omnipotent? If so, doesn’t he know precisely what will happen in our lives? If so, are we even capable of making real choices? Do our actions matter at all? If God can see everything, are we pre-destined for Heaven or Hell? Cameron’s slightly brilliant idea was to reframe these ideas within the context of a war with killer robots, Skynet effectively being a vengeful God (even if it was a God we created for ourselves), come to wipe the Earth clean, not with a flood but with nuclear bombs and skeletal hunter-killers.
Of course, the major difference between Cameron’s universe and classical theodical discourse is that, in the end, mankind can fight back against the robots, can somehow escape their destiny, to not wind up on the losing end of a genocide. As Sarah Connor sums it up: “The future's not set. There's no fate but what we make for ourselves.” It is a message of hopefulness, of determination, of the peculiar persistance of mankind to survive in the face of almost overwhelming odds. It’s simplistic, sure, but inspiring in a completely mild way.
So, of course, Terminator 3 decided to basically say “Nope! Sorry! Everyone’s gonna die no matter what you pesky humans do.” The path T3 took to the big screen was a byzantine one, with the rights to the franchise passing through multiple hands and studios; James Cameron had apparently long before announced the film, but as he long ago had sold the rights to the story for the famous sum of a single dollar (in exchange for being allowed to direct the first film), he refused to come back to the franchise, and thus we were left with Terminator 3: Rise Of The Machines, directed by Jonathan Mostow.
I feel bad for admitting this, but one of the reasons I enjoy T3 so much is that it allows me to enjoy a bit of schadenfreude: I can’t imagine what James Cameron must’ve thought as he watched the film for the first time. Its ending is an almost perfect middle finger to the philosophy that Cameron espoused in his films: the struggle of John Connor is pointless, in the end, because Judgment Day is inevitable. This is, of course, a complete reversal of everything that Cameron had written and theorized in his original film and its sequel. I bear Cameron no ill will, but T3 might be the single most expensive film ever made that points to the ideas of a single man and says “You’re wrong!” And there is something to be enjoyed there, unless, I suppose, you believe sincerely in Cameron’s philosophy.
To me, though, again, Cameron’s ideals of fighting fate has always been a bit of a simplistic one, especially in comparison to the philosophers that have chased that particular rabbit around the track for two millennia. It’s the kind of thing you’d see plastered on a bumper sticker on a Volkswagen Bug, or on a placard at an anti-Skynet protest in Berkeley, so the idea of this 180-degree shift in tone struck me as being particularly hilarious in terms of repudiating the entire philosophy of the films that came before it. That would change were I in Cameron’s shoes, of course; I would be livid to the point of rage. (Reportedly Cameron said he thought the movie was “great,” but I can only imagine that that word was uttered through clenched teeth.)
I take no special pleasure in needling Cameron; I just find the entire situation to be fascinating. In the end, though, Terminator 3 might’ve been necessary for the long-term health of the franchise; a slavish devotion to the notion of judgment day delays would’ve seen John Connor fighting against ever more powerful Terminators in each movie, finding the specific piece of technology that Skynet needs to come into existance, blowing it up, then fading away off the grid and lying low until the whole cycle starts again. You could make a basic kind of cyclical series on that idea, with Connor as some kind of low-tech James Bond or a recurring messiah figure, but I can’t imagine that it’d be very exciting after a while. T3’s ending was fantastically bold for a $200 million film: how many summer action blockbusters conclude with the extermination of 99% of the human race?
What’s more, T3’s tone felt much more applicable to the material, for me, than did Terminator or T2. Again, time-travelling genocidal robot assassins. That is a concept that is fucking ridiculous on the face of it, and while T2 had a bit of understated humor to it, T3 surprised me by wringing a surprising amount of laughs out of the audience, as well as living up to the action legacy of the series with some genuinely impressive setpieces. I like Nick Stahl better than any of the other on-screen John Connors, Claire Danes did a great job considering she got the role after the film started filming, and Arnold showed an appreciable sense of humor in poking fun at himself and the role he made famous in Terminator and T2. I mean, have you seen this goddamn deleted scene?
Don’t get me wrong; I can see why people would dislike Terminator 3. For me, I’ve never held the previous films in such high regard that T3’s somewhat sacrilegious take on its source material was all that offensive; instead, I just found it to be somewhat amusing, and as such I could appreciate T3 as a big, dumb popcorn movie. Maybe I’d like the previous films a little bit more if they had loosened up in the same way. (And if Ed Furlong could somehow be edited out of T2.)
I’m crazy, aren’t I? I’m sure we have plenty of Terminator die-hards in the Screened audience, so I’m curious to see what you make of all this. Is Terminator 3 the worst in the Terminator franchise? The best? A horrible insult to what Cameron created, or a poke at the self-seriousness of his ideas? Let us know in the comments!
It is distinctly because T3 is a big middle finger to the films that came before it is why I don't like it. I don't like sequels that betray their origins in this way. That and T3 is just not a well put together film in every other aspect.
Also I know it has already been posted but it seems appropriate. James Cameron isn't a fan of the Alien vs. Predator franchise:
The only thing I liked about T3 was the ending. But I would postulate that "The future is not set" still holds after the movie - Connor knows more now that in the previous timeline, and that he can send stuff back in time and try to change things. Or just do a bad action movie (T4)
Nice thesaurus. I'm pretty sure no one has a clue what that means.
Also Terminator 2 is one of the best action movies ever, it had a philosophy that was as compelling as the explosions and tension occurring on screen. It's a monument of a film that proves that action films can achieve more than the smut that's rolled out today such as Terminator 3 or Transformers.
Rorie just likes seeing Kristanna Loken's ass. T3 abandoned the franchise's amazing storybase and for that I rarely remember it exists.
I generally really enjoy all of the Terminator (the 4 films and the tv show). Some parts of each one feel a little off or don't quite work for me but I enjoy them overall. I used to bad mouth T3 like everybody else but then I actually sat and watched it again and I like it. I love the idea that try as we might some things are set in stone.
Sort of reminds me of Doctor Who now that I think about it. There are some moments in time that are fixed, you cannot change them, they will happen no matter what.
Holy shit that deleted scene is incredible.
@Artie: @Artie said:
Well except for fans of Avenue Q!
Terminator Salvation is the worst of the franchise easily, I remember being pretty surprised at the ending of T3 because they just killed fucking everyone and i thought that was kinda ballsy and that deleted scene is amazing
also i like the way you left Salvation of the filed under list
T3 was okay at best. T2 is a masterpiece, and probably the single best action movie of all time.
I believe I'm amongst a growing number of movie viewers who have set the precise number of films in a series to less than what was produced. You belove what you belove.
For me, the Terminator movies are the 1st and 2nd, bookend. As a movie universe, it presented the open road and the fate we make, and I choose to believe that judgement day was overted, time could be and was altered. The 3rd movie was unwelcomed because it dared say otherwise, but not with the same chops as the one before it. There are a number of theories on time travel and what could possibly happen, so I'm not saying the movie was wrong in its concepts, it just felt wrong in how it was made - from the actors present and missing, to the putting on a show for the laughs, the continued one for one sending of protector/killer. Maybe it reminded me of movies where at the end, when you think the protagonists have won, as the credits are about to roll, your hear the sinister music, or see the creature has survived or been replaced by another, and it's not over, it's a herald for the money grab to come . . . in the sequel . . . but in this case the sequel itself was that roll credits jump scare.
On a similar note, a lot of people treat the Star Wars trilogy as just that, the original trilogy from Chapters 4 thru 6, there are no prequels to buy/add to the collection . . except for maybe books. Same for the Alien movies. I may own the quadrilogy, but I only love the first two, the last two I have because I used to be a completist.
Back to judgement day, since it seemingly keeps getting pushed back due to time jumpers interference, there'll probably be a time when Judgement Day doesn't occur until John Connor dies of old age peacefully in his sleep, a crazy old man mumbling about killer robots (probably Rosie his robot maid) and his mommy/daddy issues. Skynet wins, . . until the Enterprise blasts it core processor or Prime sticks in the cube!
Also, schadenfreude is a pretty common German borrowed word like zeitgeist or realpolitik.
@Xaviersx said:
Couldn't agree more. The ending to T2 has one of the most emotional movie-deaths ever with a machine killing itself to save humanity....but then T3 comes along and it's like "Hey, I'm still alive!", making the Terminator's sacrifice pointless.
EDIT: OMG that deleted scene is like something out of Robocop 2. They could've made something interesting here with Schwarzenegger playing dual roles and meeting his "maker"...sort of an homage to Peter Sellers and Dr. Strangelove with the nuclear holocaust theme. But damn that accent is ridiculous!
I admit that I hated it for the humor and camp and horribly written dialogue, but I loved the notion of Judgement Day being inevitable. It feels to me like the first 2 films preach metaphysical Libertarianism (absolute free will) but couldn't be possible without Determinism (all actions are fated) because if the future was only caused by our actions it would be unwritten, and there wouldn't be a Terminator coming back in time.
But I also hate the philosophy of Compatibilism (that free will and destiny can both exist) which the first 2 movies seem to me to advocate. The best example of why I think Compatibilism is bullshit is arguments like "God knows what you're going to do, and has an unalterable divine plan (which is mentioned every time someone dies young or bad things happen to good people), but you have free will. Therefore if you sin you still go to hell to be punished, even though your sinning was part of God's divine plan." It's the bullshit philosophy of trying to have your cake and eat it too. Anyone who can do the mental gymnastics necessary to make that argument can't be argued with using logic; you're just desperately trying to justify on the infallibility of conflicting dogmatic statements. To me, either there's free-will and people can be punished for their actions, or there is destiny; we all play our roles as written and there's no need for divine punishment, becuase you don't make your choices.
With that in mind, T3 (for its many, many faults) plays out like myths of King Oedipus. John Connor's hubris drives him to deny his destiny, thereby causing it (his own downfall or the rest of humanity's downfall as the case may be). Granted, I dislike Oediups Rex, but that's just because I think gods' punishing a mortal for trying to escape an undesirable destiny is Almighty Dickery, but that's why I don't worship Zeus.
RotM prevents a paradox (obvious paradoxes are a pet peeve of mine) and feels more like an ending of a chapter (or the whole story) than T2: Judgment Day did. For all the praise it received, and as memorable as Arnold lowering himself into the molten metal was, that ending would be completely unsatisfying for the series. The audience was left with an open can of worms; if Skynet can send more machines back in time, why not kill him as a baby why not kill his mother as a baby? why not send multiple Terminators back in time? etc. Like all paradoxes, it gets worse if you think about it, I mean if they never sent back the first Terminator, John wouldn't be born because Kyle wouldn't have gone back to father him, and Cyberdine wouldn't have gotten the CPU and arm in referenced in T2 to create Skynet. It's not worth it to make a sequel that ends with more questions raised. T3's cementing of Determinism in the universe of the move proves that those paradoxes are void because they had to happen to start the cycle.
(EDIT: I swear @Xaviersx: , you hadn't posted when i started writing this, but this paragraph is kinda my rebuttal)
Think about another trilogy of a very good movie, followed by a great movie, followed by a good movie. No, not Godfather, Godfather 3 sucked. I'm talking about Star Wars. And don't be fooled by the extra movies that have come out after the 3rd for both these series, like Douglas Adams' Hitchhiker's Guide series it's "An Increasingly Inaccurately Named Trilogy." Anyway… Think about if Star Wars ended after Empire. Yeah, it's the best movie in the trilogy, but it ends with Vader alive, Luke finding out about his father, and Han frozen in carbonite; would you be happy if that was it? Fuck no! I also stand by my opinion that Jedi is a good film (discounting everything that happens on Endor… fuck those space teddy bears) and that you need Jedi otherwise the series sucks because it builds you up and abandons you. T3 is exactly the same. The details aren't as important as the endpoint. The movie needs to exist and it needs to end with Judgement Day. Without it, you're left with a pile of paradoxes and unanswered questions. (On a side note, I have a feeling that this is what's going to happen with Nolan's Batman trilogy based on all the leaked stuff I've seen so far.)