THIS REVIEW CONTAINS SPOILERS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I too felt like it was a "pointless" movie. Aaanuld sure looked like he was just phoning it in. It takes an intense, big ego'd director like Cameron to get a big ego'd actor like Arnold to perform, and Mastow wasn't the one to do it.
My biggest gripe was "the character chemistry." Where was it?? Nick Stahl was dull and, I agree, whimpy (perhaps it was the direction). Clare Dains didn't know whether or not to look like a shrinking and shrieking damsel-in-distress or a pissed off action babe/heroine from one action piece to another.
Robert Patrick as the T-1000 seemed more clever as well as menacing than the updated T-X model. Lokken looked more like a Malibu Barbi doll with a ray gun than a cold, calculating killer (look kids! wind her up and see the amazing karate-chop action!). Obviously the studio wanted some pre-requisite female T&A and this was the only way they knew how to throw it in.
The action sucked all of the emotion out of it and left it an empty shell of a script. Lots of "blowing shit up," but the human drama and any compelling reason to watch (as in why was this thing made in the first place besides, obviously, to milk the franchise?) was sorely lacking.
In T2 I actually was upset that Arnold had to fry himself, and thought it was a touching moment when he hinted he'd cry along with John (and finally understood the emotion), though he wasn't able to. As a cyborg, Arnold had been more of a father-figure to John than any other guy Sarah had ever been around after Reice (and that was not lost on Sarah as she made the statement in the narrative). In T3 they just gloss over John's attachment to him with a couple small quips.
The whole point of T2, IMHO, was stated in this line: "if a
machine could learn the value of human life, maybe we can too" or something to that effect (I don't have the DVD on to double check). It was an uplifting message mixed with an ambiguous ending (
you had to figure out if they had really stopped Judgment Day or not). I felt that the writers of T3 didn't actually
get the human element that was embedded in Cameron's Terminator films, and only saw them as one long explosion and/or crash and/or machine gun fight after another.
The humor was weak as well. One thing I enjoyed was the sly throw-away, lines in The Terminator. One of the many small chuckle-inducing moments for me was this exchange:
Paul Winfield [looking like he hasn't slept in months and straitening his rumpled and coffee stained tie to go do a spur of the moment press conference]: "How do I look?"
Lance Henricksen [looking like he hasn't slept in years]: "Like
shit, boss."
Paul Winfield [arching his eyebrows]: "Yo' mama!"
And another was when Sarah was frantically trying to call the police station (they knew at the time there was a killer after her) to let them know someone was following her and the automated answering service clicked in and told her that if it was a real emergency to "call back later" because all the lines were full.
Just little stuff sprinkled in like that that elevated a generic B-movie script to something a bit more.
I loved the parts in T2 where John, as a smart-ass little kid, was trying to get the terminator to be a little more "human" and "not such a dork all the time." Priceless!
One thing that had me scratching my head was the cold, killer instinct in the Arnold terminator model of T2 was "sort-of" squelched by John's insistance that he can't go around killing people. In a nifty little scene he has the terminator put up his hand and swear that he will not kill anyone (as if that would make a difference). Arnold then proceeds to knee-cap a guard and, giving John a patented Aanuld squint, states: "he'll live." Clearly these "TLC" moments as well as switching the CPU to a "learn" state (in the extended cut of T2) has an effect of softening up the killer instincts, and defending John and Sarah without killing any humans whatsoever (a bit of an anti-bloodshed stance on the part of Cameron?).
However, in T3 they inexplicably have Arnold (the same exact model as before) switch from a cold hearted bad ass to one who again doesn't kill any people (like cops) who are shooting at him and John (view finder reading after a machine gun barrage-- human casualties: 0000). It doesn't make much sense unless there were cut scenes that help explain his 180 degree switch in behavior and attitude.
And what's with all the CGI? It looked completely unrealistic. If I were Stan Winston I'd be pissed because it looks like most of his stunning physical prosthetics and animatronics were replaced by so-so computer graphics. Stan Winston Studio's prop effects were pretty cool in T2, I thought. Even their live action endoskeleton puppets.
The Hunter Killers in T2 were 50 times more believeable as models than CGI drawings and that was over ten years ago! Look at many of the cost-cutting model effects (handled by the L.A. Effects Group and Stan Winston Studios) in Cameron's Aliens done in 1986, and they still look damn cool and hold their own against costlier computer mock ups used today)!
As a cut 'n' paste action film, I'd give T3
out of
But as a Terminator film:
Dan
