The actual plot revolves around Arnie who faces off against a brand new Terminator (called a Terminatrix and is one hell of a super babe!). John Conner is thrown back into the mix too. He’s a little bit older and a lost soul, running around the place with just a shirt on his back.
Apparently, Eddie Furlong ( the original John) didn’t get the John Connor gig for T3, because he was, um, a real life lost soul! The poor bugger might just’ve been adopting the method or something.
Anyhow, loads and loads of stuff kicks off, with loads and loads of scrapping and loads and loads of chasing about. Anyone would think the world’s actually about to end!
Phew! I wouldn’t like to have been the director of this baby, or been in Arnie’s shoes when it came to making T3. You could hear the sound of knives sharpening as people got ready to denounce the film as a big pile of sh*t on the Terminator universe.
When it was announced they were making a third film, I thought, ’’Oh Jesus, here we go!’’ I was especially dubious considering James Cameron would have nothing to do with this third instalment. And it was obviously nothing more than an exercise in squeezing some more milk out of the cash cow. And to be honest, the film is just that.
But...
The film is DECENTLY good!
Fair enough, it borrows essentially the same storyline from Terminator 2: a super-duper Terminator is sent back to kill John Connor (plus a few others this time), but the resistance in the future programs another older Terminator to protect him. And that, when you boil it down, is it.
This isn’t really such a bad thing, because Terminator 2 was basically a remake of the first Terminator anyway, but on a higher budget.
What this third film has is a knowing, ironic feel to it. You’ll notice similar bits from the first two films, but usually with an extra twist that will make you smile in recognition. It’s a little less po-faced than Terminator 2 as well. The impending apocalypse is still a prominent part of the story, and it’s even been brought forward to the very day the two Terminators arrive from the future, making the global devastation a more immediate threat. Yet for some reason, the whole premise of total annihilation at the hands of machines is taken a little less seriously. But it doesn’t affect the film adversely. If anything, it improves it.
Where the film scores highly, is believable performances by Nick Stahl and Claire Danes and an amusing turn by Arnie, who is always on hand to blow things up and deliver lines with such deadpan hilarity that you can’t help but laugh. One of my favourites is, ’’Your levity is good. It relieves tension and the fear of death.’’ and ’’TALK TO THE HAND’’.
And what are the action scenes like? Well, some of them are amazing. The chase on the highway is incredible, even better than Matrix Reloaded, which now seems nothing more than a few tame kung-fu fights on tops of lorries and a CGI explosion. Joel Silver said that for Matrix Reloaded, the bar had been raised so high, there was no bar! He’s not wrong, because Arnie has shoved that bar right up his big fat a*s!
The fight scenes too, have a real feel of weight behind them that seems to be missing from a lot of action movies that rely too heavily on CGI these days. When punches connect, you feel it. When Arnie rips a urinal from a toilet wall and twats the TX over the head with it, you go, ’’Oww!’’ People get bruised and smacked up and kicked to hell and back, and although there is inevitably CGI work, it’s mostly handled with restraint and gives the action scenes a meaner, harder edge.
Arnie actualy did body building and training to come to the same level of fitness and body muscles as he was at when shooting for T2. you gotta hand to the guy, Hats off Guv’!
So, is Arnie back? Against all the odds, the big fella is. The film may not be quite as good as the first two, but Terminator 3 delivers the action goods, no doubt about it.