Within minutes, he’ll be splattered all over their bedroom, freeing Kate up to hook up with John (whom she remembers as a “delinquent”: “Look at you, sitting there like the bad boy thing still works!”).Īs sweet and smart as Danes plays Kate, this sort of heartfelt relationship stuff is, as always, only a means to get to the machines. But even as Scott happily picks out china patterns, she’s looking bored and fretful. Kate’s first moments on screen set her up for a bruising fall: shopping for her upcoming marriage to Scott (Mark Famiglietti), Kate’s dad cancels a scheduled dinner. Apparently, Miles Dyson (Joe Morton) died for nothing, but Robert suffers as well, condemned to utter the atrocious line: “I’ve opened Pandora’s Box!” Presently a veterinarian (recall Sarah’s affection for her iguana), Kate is not a little hesitant to be a next-generation “mother of the future.” She brings added consequence, in that her dad Robert (David Andrews) is the head supersecret weapons designer in charge of Skynet. The obligatory romance involves John’s former high school classmate, Kate (Claire Danes).
So, while sober generals and eager techs wrestle with a global computer virus that apparently needs Skynet turned on to stop it (uh-oh), restive savior-to-be JC is on the run from monsters in his head.Īnd so, T3 follows its predecessors in using John to explore the tension between destiny and free will. And then he wakes up, and his nation is as dirty and mean as ever, defined by its heedless nationalism, all-purpose capitalism, and rapacious military. This time, that image has John standing on a pile of urban rubble, a tattered U.S. His nightmare visions look a lot like hers, featuring the familiar metallic and red-eyed Terminators marching over human skulls, while also envisioning his eventual triumph. The poor kid is definitely his mother’s son. “Judgment Day.” Still, he’s given to repeating his mom’s mantra (actually, his own, passed on by Reese in 1984) that “The future has not been written.” This even though he wants to believe that, ten years ago, he and his mom (Sarah/Linda Hamilton, now dead of leukemia and fondly remembered) stopped Skynet’s annihilation of the planet, a.k.a. In voiceover, he explains that he’s trying to “live off the grid” (no phone, no address), so he can’t be found.
John Connor (Nick Stahl) is now a 22-year-old loner, self-medicating (Budweiser and downers) when he’s not zooming around on his motorcycle. But other moments reveal an unexpected range of tone, from cleverly affecting to darkly funny to downright apocalyptic. Though officially distanced from Cameron (who’s otherwise engaged these days), John Brancato and Michael Ferris’ screenplay mostly amplifies what’s been done already: more explosions, more car crashes, more burning and shredding of the now wholly outdated T-101 (Arnold Schwarzenegger, whose 55-year-old body remains its own spectacular effect), and more penetrations of and by the slippery-silvery Terminator, here, the T-X (Kristanna Loken).ĭuring these elaborate, fast-cut stunts, T3 is a noisy battering ram of a movie. A noisier, burlier version of T2, overlaid with a soberer vision of the future, T3 is compelling almost in spite of itself. And still, it comes hard.Īnd it does okay. This even though the basic Terminator tale is one of Cameron’s favorites, in which a reluctant but sturdy girl is beset by fate and aided by a good-looking boy.Īll this means that Jonathan ( U-571) Mostow’s gutsy endeavor to crash the franchise, T3: Rise of the Machines, can’t possibly meet expectations.
Yet the series retains a combination of surprise and self-consciousness, owing in part to heady SF-ish conundrums (most famously, John Connor sends his comrade Reese back in time to become his father), but also startling visual and conceptual innovations (Arnold as villain, Arnold as hero, Sarah Connor’s biceps). The Terminator movies repeat by definition - they’re all about time loops, after all. The design hasn’t shape-shifted with each incarnation (like the remarkable Alien films). With a legend built on a mysterious combination of Jim Cameron’s vision and Arnold’s body, the films have earned industry respect as well as raving acolytes. The Terminator franchise is a brawny business.