TORONTO (djc) – There are some movies that are review-proof: people will see them, no matter what film critics say. In the sequel realm, The Matrix Reloaded comes to mind, as well as The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers — although Tolkien readers know what’s coming.
Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines is no exception, because fans of the thrilling Terminator 2 will revisit familiar territory and endure bigger explosions sans the cinematic sizzle.
The two principals are back: 18-year-old John Connor (Nick Stahl) is scruffy-faced and living without a home or a purpose, his beer-swilling thoughts returning to the seminal point when he stopped Judgement Day with the T-1000. Arnold Schwarzenegger reprises the Terminator role, droning out robotic syllables as another replica of the lava-dipped predecessor — credit assembly line manufacturing, similar to making Hollywood blockbusters.
The plot follows the same formula as T2: killer Terminator (who can now control other machines) travels from the future to kill John Connor and his future lieutenants, and Arnold is again protecting the frightened humans – heavily armed right up to his sunglasses. Call it make-up magic, but Arnold is moulded for the role as perfectly as the 1991 sequel, although the director uses a cheesy scene to unite the bulky guardian with his beloved leather duds.
Not to praise the original double-whammy to exhaustion, but hand it to James Cameron for directing two eye-popping entrancing action movies; his hand at fleshing out characters, and melting CGI with live humans, is so artistic you forget you’re watching a summer seat-filler.
But this time Jonathan Mostow blunts the Terminator magic. The three-time director introduces the leggy Terminatrix, a gorgeous blonde whose hot morphing hands shoot fireballs at incoming enemies. Her mission to kill Connor borders on the been-there-done-that, and she conveys a less impressive evil but a more dazzling array of weapons. Mostow seems to have wanted more enticing females in his blow-em-up blockbuster, casting a cold-and-beautiful Kristanna Locken as Terminatrix, and Claire Danes as the wide-eyed love interest.
The big explosions are back, but expect fewer alluring angles and visuals than those of T2. Mostow relies on hackneyed slasher-flick clichés, and his penchant to play on the T-1000’s emotional emptiness is eye-rolling lame.
But the graphic array from Industrial Lights & Magic is reason enough to shell out for a Tuesday night cheapie: liquid metal takes centre stage again, melting and reforming in more jaw-dropping ways than seemed imaginable. The trickery wears thin, though, because the story line flip-flops like a fish out of water, veering from save-us-from-robots to let’s-save-the-world.
It’s almost an attack on our intelligence when movie studios repackage a successful flick as highly-anticipated hype. T2 should have rested, and died peacefully — it almost seems cruel to haul politically-focused Arnold into the skin-breaking heat of studio car explosions and ear-damaging gun shots. Yet he dead-panned the robotic blandness with as much gravitas as Stahl’s muted seriousness. And Danes managed to perfect hysterical girlishness behind pinched cheeks reminiscent of the petulence in Go.
I wanted Terminator 3 to be memorable, desperately. Sadly, the only memories will be the “I’ll be back” jokes, the extremely high body count and the squeamish return of the mental-ward doctor. The rest — pointless car squashings, poor pacing, wannabe suspense — is a disgrace to the epics that left their footprints on action-movie history.
