Terminator 3...actually pretty good?!

[Gaith]

Not portraying a script idea that was not established in any way in the first three films (including Cameron's two) is not "bungling" anything.

Well, that's just, like, your opinio- hold up, I've got a phone call. Hello? Oh, hi, Jimbo, what's up? Tell Locutus they bungled the future war thing? You got it, homie. Yeah, see you tomorrow.





In all seriousness, though, as Cracked has recently pointed out, in a way it's sort of impossible not to bungle the whole future war thing, as the question of where the machines come from has no good answer.

Also, a lot of the power of T1-3's future war imagery is that they only showed night scenes, which was great for atmosphere, but obviously not sustainable for a full-on future war movie.

In short, given those two significant inherent handicaps to a post-JD movie, one had better have a damn great, compelling story to tell to try it at all - and even before the "Salvation" aspect was (wisely) removed, T4 never had that. A fail all around.

 

[Dick Whitman]

Well I thought was ok for what it was. But I agree the idea of even doing Future War films is limited. It worked as a vague backstory for the original premise and not much else. In detail it's just another post apocalyptic stereotype. At best a single film covering the whole span of the war and the significant events might work.

 

[JarodRussell]

I wished Cameron had actually filmed the future war scenes planned for T2. The final battle against Skynet, the deactivation of Skynet, and then the time travel of Kyle Reese and the T-800.

 

[Gaith]

Well I thought was ok for what it was. But I agree the idea of even doing Future War films is limited. It worked as a vague backstory for the original premise and not much else. In detail it's just another post apocalyptic stereotype. At best a single film covering the whole span of the war and the significant events might work.

Yeah, one great thing about T1-3 is you can stop watching before either sequel, and it makes total sense. Just like T1? You get a closed time loop. Want to join the human resistance? Reclaim a sense of hope with T2. Think Cyberdyne's chip left over from the factory in T1 wasn't the original Skynet, and that the root cause of it all is till out there? Discover its natural/non-accelerated progression in T3. All three options work beautifully.

What does T4 add to all this? Not a damn thing.

 

[Flying Spaghetti Monster]

I hated that T:S doesn't use purple lasers. Sound picky? Yeah. I still hate it.

 

[Locutus of Bored]

Not portraying a script idea that was not established in any way in the first three films (including Cameron's two) is not "bungling" anything.

Well, that's just, like, your opinio- hold up, I've got a phone call. Hello? Oh, hi, Jimbo, what's up? Tell Locutus they bungled the future war thing? You got it, homie. Yeah, see you tomorrow.

You're absolutely right. You are most assuredly entitled to your illogical opinion that completely disregards what was shown in all three preceding films and in the TV series which was airing over a year before Salvation came out.

What are the three Tech-Com soldier's names we know from Terminator? They're names like Reese, Connor, and Perry (Reese's previous commander). The text on their command datalink is in English. They all speak English with American accents. If Cameron was so determined to depict the Resistance in LA as being primarily made up of South Americans, why wouldn't he throw in some Spanish or Portuguese or some South American accents? Because it was a dropped element from the script that never made it to film, which is precisely why it's not a "bungle" three films and a TV show later when they don't depict something that never happened.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P7nq-r7QWW0

In T3, the leaders of Connor's Resistance cell are a bunch of kids growing up around LA like him, which the T-X is sent to assassinate. His second in command and wife (also in T4) is from SoCal. Where are all the South Americans?

In The Sarah Connor Chronicles, we learn about a bunch of new Resistance soldiers, most of whom are from the US with the exception of an Australian who was sent here and decided to stay and help. Where are all the South Americans?

There very well could be a bunch of South Americans running around in the background not saying a word and being excluded from command positions by their Norteamericano leaders who have it in for them for some reason, but if it's never established onscreen and if after a certain point drastically changing everything would stand out from the previous films, it becomes rather silly to ONLY criticize the film you dislike the most for not following some minor bit of unused trivia from the original script. And believe me, you can have perfectly valid reasons for disliking T4 the most; this just isn't one of them, because it doesn't make any sense.

In all seriousness, though, as Cracked has recently pointed out, in a way it's sort of impossible not to bungle the whole future war thing, as the question of where the machines come from has no good answer.

In the T3 deleted scenes they were starting mass production on prototype humanoid Terminators, so I would imagine SkyNet would use a combination of human slave labor and humanoid Terminators to start construction of factory facilities for more HKs and Terminators. In the TV show we also saw that SkyNet had been sending back Terminators to secure hidden bunkers where it was stockpiling raw materials for post-war Terminator production, so presumably it did the same with construction facilities. Once everything becomes a self-fulfilling loop SkyNet need only send back Terminators and human collaborators from the future to get the ball rolling on taking over the past, which is what we see in TSCC.

 

[CorporalCaptain]

T1 >= T2 > T3 > T4.

 

[JarodRussell]

That's where the field of skulls comes from. Disposed slaves. In front of the Skynet core complex.

 

[Base_Delta_Zero]

I enjoyed all of the Terminator iterations. For stories that altered the future timeline significantly each run through, I thought they did a pretty decent job keeping the relative momentum of events consistent. Having Judgment Day be inevitable seems a must for a post-apocalyptic nightmare, anyway. The alternate ending to T2 was lame. The series is actually my favorite, since it dealt with so many different aspects of Skynet's timeline shenanigans...and for Summer Glau and Lena Headey.

Even the few books out there are decent. I seem to recall one talks about Skynet becoming a quantum computer that saw its processing power diminishing as alternate versions of itself fell to humanity, and it was scrambling with ever more desperate gambits to shift the odds back in its favor. Or maybe that was a comic or I just pulled that out of my ass, but it sounded cool. :P

Now, if only we could get a decent game based on the IP. We already have branching path games. We have shoot the robot games. We have survival horror games. No one can come up with an Alpha Protocol/Deus Ex/Resident Evil composite for Terminator?

 

[Ian Keldon]

I enjoyed all four Terminator movies to varying degrees.

Ditto and add Sarah Conner Chronicles

 

[Ian Keldon]

That was always my biggest problem with that sequence, it should be really gruesome, I mean it's the end of the world after all. Instead we get to watch it from a distance, takes the bite out of it a tad.

I think it makes the scene more poignant, as it leaves the horrific details to the viewer's imagination.

I understood the movie just fine, but it was poorly constructed and had no narrative focus.

There were two main narratives running parallel:

First was the Marcus storyline, as the soulless killer in spirit became the soulless killer in body before redeeming his humanity (implicit in the movie title, even)

The second was showing the rise of John Connor from Resistance grunt to "man with the plan". Connor's storyline mirrors elements of Marcus' in that the Resistance has become as cold and inhuman as it's foe in it's tactics. John represents the fading human spirit, still cherished in many hearts, but run over by the cold equations of reality until finally he (and symbolically we) shout "ENOUGH! We are human beings, not machines...and it's time we remembered that!"

And the notion that humans could build a heavily-fortified base not that far from LA that the machines knew about, but couldn't quite smash? Robs them of all their power. The human resistance movement should be a one-shot, desperate LotR-style invasion, not a protracted conflict with established human bases.

T4: full of fail.

Even in the first film, the war was said to have been a rather protracted struggle (as implicit in the timeline).

As others have noted, T4 is early in the war, wherein we see the Resistance still well-supplied with hardware, allowing it to stand toe-to-toe with Skynet. You'll also note that the humans are still using conventional arms, whereas the larger Terminators are using early energy weapons. That is part of what starts to shift the balance of power.

What does T4 add to all this? Not a damn thing.

T4 is the "bridge" between the viewer and the world of Judgement day. It's not designed to "add to" (advance) the storyline, it's a transitional film showing a key piece of the Terminator timeline (the rise of Connor to becoming the Resistance Leader).

 

[MacLeod]

T3 is a servicable film. It's not a masterpeice of cinema, nor is it dire.

 

[sojourner]

Come to think of it, T4 has been out a while now, shouldn't have gone into high rotation on cable channels like USA and TNT by now?

 

[FalTorPan]

I liked Terminator 3. It wasn't as good as The Terminator or Terminator 2, but it was enjoyable.

 

[Owain Taggart]

T4 is the "bridge" between the viewer and the world of Judgement day. It's not designed to "add to" (advance) the storyline, it's a transitional film showing a key piece of the Terminator timeline (the rise of Connor to becoming the Resistance Leader).

Exactly. It may not add anything to the timeline, but what it shows is significant as being what was constantly talked about. It's what John Connor was told he would become, that he would have a role in the war. It's like if they were to make a movie out of Dr Who's Timewar.

 

[CorporalCaptain]

If T4 was a bridge, it was a bridge too far.

---

T3 had its moments, but it squandered some crucial opportunities. The worst offense was turning everyone responsible for Skynet into buffoons. Also, the inside of the base being that soft a target was unrealistic. Turning everyone responsible for Skynet into helpless cannon fodder basically made everything to do with the activation of Skynet totally boring, and therefore completely unnecessary as a part of a movie. I find it implausible that there were no contingencies for the robotic gun platforms being taken over by an adversary controller.

 

[Locutus of Bored]

T3 had its moments, but it squandered some crucial opportunities. The worst offense was turning everyone responsible for Skynet into buffoons. Also, the inside of the base being that soft a target was unrealistic.

Relating to that, one of the stupidest parts of the movie is that Ahnuld's Terminator (fugitive, armed, in biker gear), Connor (fugitive, armed, looking like a drugged-out homeless person), and the base commander's daughter Kate (a kidnapping victim) seemingly walk onto the base and into the classified SkyNet control center with guns drawn without:

a) Having to fire a shot or being shot at.
b) Setting off any alarms or having the guards alert anyone.
c) Having to notify her father that she's there.
d) Having to be escorted to a safe (non-classified) area.

They just stroll right into the control center (with machine guns and pistols drawn) where a computer program is at that very moment being given complete control of all US military forces and nuclear weapons as easily as if they were walking into a grocery store.

It takes me out of the movie for a moment every time. I get that the Terminator could have fought his way in there... but there would have been shooting and alarms and evacuation of personnel. I get that MAYBE Kate was well known on base and might have convinced the guards (who probably didn't know she was kidnapped or you'd think they'd tell her dad) to let her in... but not the two shaky looking guys with guns and not unescorted into a classified area controlling the ultimate doomsday device.

 

[CorporalCaptain]

Roger.

 

[Flying Spaghetti Monster]

two moments that bugged me happened at the Crystal Peak. Kate and John arrive and are trying to get through the door. The T-X lands her vehicle to pursue them, and...

waitaminute...

Did I say lands? I meant crashes. For no reason. It would be analogous to a Terminator crashing a car or motorcycle on purpose any time it wanted to park.

Ok, so, following that.. soon Arnold arrives by landing in the same hanger, and then he... waitaminute. Did I say lands? He also crashes his vehicle for no good reason, and you realize that Mostow had no idea what to do with either of these characters.

I also hated the opening of the film. He uses the Terminator Arrival Trope (naked until we find clothes) that's used in the other films, but he doesn't keep the style of these scenes consistent with how Cameron does it. If I recall correctly, once a person or machine arrives from the future, there are no cutaways to other stories until that person acquires the clothes/weapons. If Mostow is going to imitate the style of the other two films he should actually study them.

 

[Showdown]

I, too, enjoyed all 4 four Terminator movies. The first two films are way better than the later two. My favorites goes 2, 1, 4, then 3. Arnold makes a great hero and villian. My favorite villian from the series is the T-1000.

I think the T-1000 and T-X are both prototypes. To be more specific, the "liquid metal" is the prototype. The T-1000 is just the liquid metal, and the T-X is endoskeleton + liquid metal. While the T-1000 can turn into objects other than humans, like the floor; the T-X can only change to different people. She does, however, have advance weapons built into her. They were made around the same time and sent to two different time periods, along side a bunch of terminators.