Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines
You may have gathered from my reviews here and on Flixster, that I've been burning through the Rifftrax catalogue pretty devotedly. Well ain't you perceptive!
'Terminator 3' is widely regarded as a wholly inferior follow up to a very enjoyable action series, it is however much worse than this. It tends to be viewed with a type of "Oh yes, it's lousy, but It's still part of the Terminator series." sort of attitude. I don't buy this for a minute. When a franchised movie takes every opportunity to piss all over the narrative craft of the previous entries, I don't see a damn reason to consider it canonical just because some jackass bought up the rights. I declare this film cut off from those that preceded it; a third tier imitator, and I'll expound on my reasons for doing so.
One of the most enjoyable aspects of the original
films is that they contained real, well drawn, and honestly endearing
characters. A nice trick, and a much appreciated bit of extra thought put into
what could have turned out to be just another series of mindless exploitation
flicks. Here, there's no character interplay, no meaning, no heart. These
players are so wholly detached from the established figures they are supposedly
portraying, that whenever personal history is brought up, it's as if there is an
audible hollow clanking. Every scene alluding to the previous films has this
weird 3rd person quality to it. (For some reason, I kept picturing those
brilliantly stilted Chris Farley interview sketches from SNL. "Remember,
that one time, when our characters had impact and resonance? That was
awesome!") We are told what these people are supposed to be feeling, but we
certainly don't see a damn shade of it on the celluloid.
(Yeah, I know, they make film from polyester now, but does that sound romantic
at all?)
Much of this stems from the messy casting. When half the actors disappear between sequels, you know things are bad. When all but one actor is absent (Oh, let's not embarrass Earl Boen by acknowledging that he was in this.) hold on to your ass, this is going to hurt. Nick Stahl is completely unbelievable as an adult John Connor. I suppose he was trying to act all damaged and paranoid, but the supposed leader of post-apocalyptic humanity just comes off as an incompetent wuss. Claire Danes is not good on any level. I couldn't tell you if this is typical of her work (I have an aversion to mainstream cinema.) but oh lordy. Here half of what she says comes across as forced and artificial, and if you're for chemistry between her and Stahl, oy gevalt. The only sparks here are from pyrotechnics.
Even poor Arnold himself is in lousy form. While he
was certainly never a master thespian, he comes across unconvincing even for a
robot. Though he's found great success as a pretend conservative pol, I hope
someday that he'll have the chance to do a guest shot in something, just so that
this mess won't actually be his last film. He's not awful, just remarkably
rusty. (Are we starting to see a theme here of misdirection?)
Now, I don't want you to get the impression that I'm some sort of Kristanna
Loken apologist. I realize that the woman is a star because she's a blond,
leggy, bisexual, and not a whit of talent has much of anything to do with
anything. However, I do have this weird niggling suspicion that even she might
be able to act-at least passably-if she ever worked with a director who knew his
ass from his elbow. Here she is instructed to walk around and be pretty, that's
about it. Oddly enough, her performance fails as her character is much too
human. T-X shows surprise, registers shock facially, and occasionally roars with
anger. Why would a robot, made by and for other robots, have such a weird little
feature? Frankly, there aren't any really exemplary actors here, but I refuse to
believe that anyone present is this bland. I'm laying the majority of blame for
this loaf of nonsense right at the feet of director Jonathan Mostow.
Action scenes and languid and poorly framed, and color is all but absent from his dim, muddy view of this world. My derision even for his incompetence however is far out shadowed by that which I hold for the film's scriptwriters. (I wish I could pin a name on my hate, but IMDB lists half a dozen screenwriters for this film. Always a sign of a cohesive artistic vision.)
A straight sequel to 'Judgment Day' was a bad idea to
begin with. The story is finished; Skynet is stillborn as the technology to
create it was utterly destroyed. But of course, simple logic has never found
much purchase in the minds of Hollywood producers. (I realize that money must be
made, and ever premise must be pounded into the ground, then defecated upon, but
why not just bypass all this malarkey and just film the freaking robot wars?) Since a philosophically coherent continuation of the series was thus
impossible, the writers chose the most noxious possibility before them, and
flipped the original series message of "No Fate" on its head.
Apparently, the entire apocalypse was not contingent on any mechanism that set
it into motion, but on the dumb chance of Conner meeting Claire Danes' father.
(Note to screenwriters, it's insulting when you pull crap out of your ass that
doesn't make any sense. It's much more insulting when you expect us to buy it
just because your characters all accept it without question. Have John say
"Of course, it all makes sense now!" as many times as you damn well
please. It don't make it so. ) Circumstances, actions, and facts are all
irrelevant it would seem. Reality and all the laws that bind it together are
apparently secondary to bumping into someone in an elevator.
(Then again, I'm arguing cosmic philosophy with people who think that if you
have a wireless modem in you're head, you can somehow control heavy machinery.)
The thesis of this film would then seem to be that it doesn't matter what we do, or how hard we struggle, fate is clockwork, lockstep mechanism that can circumvent even the basic fabric of reality. In it's own odd little way, 'T2' while blazing a trail of bloody corpses, can actually be viewed as an optimistic picture. 'Rise of the Machines' can thus be seen as nothing more or less than a cynical little turd pie; an indifferent, accidental peon to the Calvinistic concept of joyless, crushing, immovable predestination enforced by the confused, capricious will of a mad gnostic deity.
You know what, no. I'm taking this junky little action film way too seriously at this point; review over.
3.0
June 5, 2007