Terminator 3...actually pretty good?!

[Aldo]

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.

That is one of the films big failings:

In T2, Cameron took his time to build up the suspense, it takes at least a good 40 minutes (I think, I only watch the extended cut anymore) for both Terminator's to finally meet.

And what I love even more about that, is that Cameron plays it so we are not sure who is the good Terminator and who is the evil Terminator. OK, OK, so it wasn't a huge secret before the movie came out, thanks to the marketing and such. It is played up that way, and I love that.

 

[Flying Spaghetti Monster]

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.

That is one of the films big failings:

In T2, Cameron took his time to build up the suspense, it takes at least a good 40 minutes (I think, I only watch the extended cut anymore) for both Terminator's to finally meet.

And what I love even more about that, is that Cameron plays it so we are not sure who is the good Terminator and who is the evil Terminator. OK, OK, so it wasn't a huge secret before the movie came out, thanks to the marketing and such. It is played up that way, and I love that.

Agreed, and also the cutaways to other scenes shows me the while Mostow is trying to make a Terminator film, he doesn't quite understand what a Terminator film is. You can have all the ingredients and still fail as a chef.

 

[Mach5]

Spoiler: TERMINATOR 2

The future's not set. There's no fate but what we make for ourselves.

Spoiler: TERMINATOR 3

Holy crap, there is fate after all! We don't control jack shit! Aw hell, might as well get with the program then.

God I hope they don't market these movies as a "quadrilogy"...

 

[Gaith]

Mach5, again, T-850's comment that "there is insufficient time" to prevent Judgment Day makes T3 somewhat ambiguous on the whole Fate shebang. It's sort of like an arthouse picture that way.

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.

One could just as easily argue that it thematically reinforces how outdated T-850 has become: unlike all the prior arrivals, he lands way out in the desert, a remnant of the past, near an unevolved reptile. The fact that we have to cut away for scenes elsewhere before he finds some duds is brilliantly emblematic of his deficiencies, and adds to the picture's overall tension.

 

[Flying Spaghetti Monster]

Mach5, again, T-850's comment that "there is insufficient time" to prevent Judgment Day makes T3 somewhat ambiguous on the whole Fate shebang. It's sort of like an arthouse picture that way.

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.

One could just as easily argue that it thematically reinforces how outdated T-850 has become: unlike all the prior arrivals, he lands way out in the desert, a remnant of the past, near an unevolved reptile. The fact that we have to cut away for scenes elsewhere before he finds some duds is brilliantly emblematic of his deficiencies, and adds to the picture's overall tension.

I can see that.. but I just think that most people don't realize just how stylistically different cutting to other stories is.. Cameron was able to really build these characters little by little with their arrivals in the past.. plus, it gave the films a stylistic stamp that was consistent. It would be like having three Star Wars films with no cuts that take place further in the future and then the fourth film has a card in the film that says "ten years later." It's acceptable but doesn't fit into the template of its own franchise.

 

[Gaith]

One really must say at least this much about T3 - it inspired one of Anthony Lane's wriest and most affectionately condescending New Yorker reviews ever:

Their reunion is pure coincidence, although, as the Terminator points out, everything that happens here is predestined, or, to use the theological term, subject to script development.

... On the track of John and Kate is the T-X, a blond female cyborg so metallically single-minded, and so impervious to blandishment and punishment alike, that, from where I was sitting, she looked to be our best hope of getting a woman into the Oval Office.

... We are told, in the new film, that machines will become “self-aware,” but if you think they’re about to sign up for group therapy or inspect their bald patches in the mirror, forget it.

... As for the human characters, all that is required of them is that they shrug off mortal diffidence and take up arms. One could argue that they are simply obeying Aristotle, who proposed that character is revealed through conduct, and who would almost certainly have urged Antigone and Creon to solve their differences with a pump-action shotgun.
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He even ends up, in commenting on Schwarzenegger, seeming to agree with me that Arnold's return to his signature role pretty much makes the whole movie worthwhile in of itself:

Almost twenty years on, [Arnold] still enunciates like a man who bought a “Teach Yourself English” kit for home use and then lost half the tapes, yet that shortcoming allows him to find slivers of pathos in his deadpan calm. His precursor is the Boris Karloff of “Frankenstein”; both actors, in their towering, stiff-limbed demeanor, are smart enough to see that a monster with full access to regular feelings is no fun at all, but that a monster grasping at emotional fruits that hang beyond his reach will be guaranteed a rueful, clownish grandeur.

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Can anything in (non-)Salvation boast that? Lane sure didn't think so.

I can see that.. but I just think that most people don't realize just how stylistically different cutting to other stories is.. Cameron was able to really build these characters little by little with their arrivals in the past.. plus, it gave the films a stylistic stamp that was consistent. It would be like having three Star Wars films with no cuts that take place further in the future and then the fourth film has a card in the film that says "ten years later." It's acceptable but doesn't fit into the template of its own franchise.

I agree that T3 has a totally different feel and tone from the first two, much like X-Men: The Last Stand, but I nevertheless think it succeeds on its own terms, whereas TLS is merely a muddled pile of fail.