Terminally speaking: Rise of the Machines

Well sometimes it helps to blog your thoughts out loud. Tonight Joanna dragged me kicking and screaming to "Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines". Okay, so I wasn't kicking and screaming, but I was filled with trepidation. Since I'm damn glad I didn't see any spoilers for Matrix 2 and double damn glad I didn't see any for this movie I wont give any here, but...

I will say that inspite of all the mediocre reviews I'd seen for T3 I have to say I really quite enjoyed it. As sequels go I'd rate it higher than Matrix Reloaded. While T3 has special effects a plenty, and cliches a plenty it just had more plot. I beleive that the people who gave this a "B" probably didn't watch the original two movies, or if they did and just filled them under "Arnie: Cool Action Flicks" and promptly forgot about them or the darker, more sinister story line.

Fortunately for me and Joanna (okay she was kicking and screaming, but I held her down and pinned her eyeballs open) we'd recently watch both T1 and T2, I can say that definitely helps. T3 is just one of those movies, where you really need to know what preceeded. Apart from the humour they didn't try too hard to make it stand alone and most sequels are just plain better to be made and viewed that way. Of course being a big Hollywood movie they do make some efforts to make it palletable to neophytes, however most of the laughs were all in references to the first two movies. And just like the second movie they did manage to introduce quite a few (okay, maybe too many) cliches from the first movie. But as a devotee of the series I've just gotten used to that even though it makes no sense at all in such chronologically fragmented movie.

As a fan of the "thriller" genre I prefer my thrills dead pan. I just do not really like any laughs with my thrills. When people laugh in a good thriller its a different kind of humour, very natural, just like real life and you're still on the edge of your seat. So if it was my one criticism of T2 and T3 it would be the self-referential laughs. If T3 or T2 had been like T1 then I'd be very happy - dead pan action and thrills. I really wish a directors of thrillers would film and produce alternate versions that have no superflous made-for-Hollywood humour, it would do us thriller fans a big favour.

Of course if they do that then it wont be another happy-go-lucky action flick that we can laugh off and say "That'll never happen". No we might actually go home wondering about how dark life can be and how we should try harder to make the world a better place. The unfortunately thing for me is, inspite of all the humour, inspite of it being just a Hollywood movie with an actor I'm all too familiar with, I can look at this movie and believe it really could happen. Its no joke. The only thing it takes is for people to be removed from the loop which wont be due to a sinister Skynet, or some unfortunate military chap plugging in his virus ladden laptop one morning. No, it'll be corporate profiteers secretly pulling the wool over our eyes while a government they have essentially hijacked does their bidding and sets the life=money=war=death train rolling. Wait a minute, didn't that already happen?

There, see I knew I could get politics into an otherwise perfectly mundane movie review :-)

Anyway, for those that haven't seen it, and saw T2 or T2 and T1 I'd recommend T3 as definitely worth a look. Relative to most Hollywood action flicks I'd give it 7.5 out of 10.

My one wish after seeing this movie: please don't make T4, its time to let the machines rest and let the humans stop having to watch over their shoulder for the next Disney Animatronic character chasing down the street. T3 was a perfect ending closing for the series closing all the loops and tying up the loose ends, and its hard to imagine that there is anything more to be said or done that doesn't ruin it all. So Arnie, just give me the word... tell me "I wont be back" and I'll rest easy tonight. After all it isn't every day that an actor gets to be a wrecking ball and a door jam in one movie, what more could he want?