Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines

2003 was the year when the powers-that-be decided that all you idiots out there who missed all the depth in the previous Terminator films were more important than me. I’m not going to beat around the bush here: fuck the powers-that-be and fuck you idiots for being idiots. If you guys weren’t so moronic, this film’s executives wouldn’t have been able to wave their cigars in your general direction, giving them ample justification for the destruction of this franchise. On the other hand, if you guys were just a touch more moronic, then you wouldn’t be able to figure out how to breathe and the problem would solve itself. For once, I’m undecided.

Okay, time to put our cards on the table. John Connor, future saviour of mankind has turned from rebellious punk kid with a can-do attitude into a blithering, neurotic blouse-wearer who apparently now passes his time by loafing off on building sites, throwing away good beer and falling off a motorcycle. To be blunt, his own mother was less of a woman than he is. Presumably he spent a good deal of the time between T2 and T3 on an exchange in France studying methods of making himself fail even more at life. Gratifyingly, his time spent with the cheese-eating surrender monkeys seems to have paid off handsomely.

The saviour of mankind, seen here getting his ass handed to him by a deer.

Having established one leading character as being an utter waste of space, the director plunges merrily onward in pursuit of another character who can not only steal screentime, but also generate massive amounts of apathy in every viewer. Enter the new protagonist, the T-X, who appears after some lovely new SFX which look almost nothing like the time-travelling effects from T1 or T2. No matter, continuity’s the least of our worries with this film. The T-X emerges from her new SFX in what appears to be the shop window of some sort of ladies’ clothes shop. Disregarding her location, the T-X saunters blithely elsewhere to obtain some clothes. I can’t decide if this is due to the idiocy of this film or the accuracy of the T-X’s female programming.

The T-X, swiftly snubbing the clothes store she teleports into.

Having found a hapless victim, the T-X engages in some cheery banter before killing her. That done, she pauses to do her hair before vrooming off down the street in her new convertible. Again, rank stupidity or careful female conditioning? Your guess is as good as mine. I begin to suspect the latter when the T-X threads her way effortlessly through traffic at high speeds, impeccably overtaking several vehicles and negotiating a junction without any visible strain. The merciless killing machine immediately attracts the attention of a police car due to her madcap antics though, and is waved to the side of the road. Unable to curb her inherent instinct to kill anything and anyone that happens to impede her mission, the T-X callously and brutally…enlarges her breasts. Let’s just take a glance back to T1 for a moment here to re-familiarise ourselves with the terminators…

Kyle Reese: “Listen. And understand. That terminator is out there. It can't be bargained with. It can't be reasoned with. It doesn't feel pity, or remorse, or fear. And it absolutely will not stop, ever, until you are dead.”

Kyle Reese: “You still don't get it, do you? He'll find her. That's what he does. That's all he does! You can't stop him. He'll wade through you, reach down her throat, and pull her fucking heart out.”

Excellent, sounds like there’s no problem with the T-X’s behaviour at all then. For those of you keeping count, that’s two inane characters. Onward and upward!

And so enters the man everyone associates with the Terminator franchise. In previous Terminator films, the T-800 began by demanding clothes, butchering anyone who got in his way and emerged looking like the most iconic thing in film next to Darth Vader. Not so in T3. Here, he asks nicely for a stripper’s apparel, takes part in some hilarious youth-culture references and strolls out after zero asskickery. Maybe, just maybe, we could forgive those flaws if it were not for his next action, which single-handedly transformed the T-800 and the entire Terminator franchise.

This character which had been a symbol of unstoppable brutality and evil, which destroyed anything in its path without remorse and which inspired abject fear in all those who understood it, undoes it all at a stroke – by putting on a pair of star-shaped, red-tinted, glittery sunglasses.

Three out of three! This film pulls no punches with the idiot gloves.

The T-800, undoing at a stroke his entire pre-existing image.

Through some inexplicable good fortune, John Connor ends up in Kate Brewster’s animal clinic. Through even more good fortune, the two are previous acquaintances. The T-X arrives at said clinic just as Kate Brewster is finished recognising John Connor, having not set eyes on the guy for 12 years. To complete this epic streak of good fortune, what time does the T-X go to the clinic at but 4.30am, expecting to find Kate Brewster hard at work. In an animal clinic. At 4.30am.

Yeah, that works.

After one of the most uninspired shootouts in the history of everything, ever, John Connor clanks off down the road in the world’s most useless truck. The T-X, rapidly turning into the robotic equivalent of a Swiss Army knife, performs some jiggery-pokery on one police car, which has the effect of a swathe of emergency services vehicles being under her control. Off they go down the road after Connor, with the T-X trundling along behind them in that most ideal of pursuit vehicles, a giant crane.

An irate American, roundly abusing John Connor for listening to a female.

Once the chase, about which nothing spectacular can be noted other than it’s amazing worth as a cure for insomnia, is concluded, it’s time for a road trip to the middle of nowhere. Amid such idiotic revelations as Kate Brewster being an integral part of the resistance and the T-800 being powered by a power cell which has all the appearances of a nuclear bomb when ruptured, the filmmaker’s pause only to find a great height before taking time to liberally urinate all over the premise of the first two films and the mantra which is constantly repeated – “The future is not set.” Apparently Judgement Day could only be postponed, not stopped. Good job making the first two films redundant, guys.

The trio keeping a low profile.

Just in case any of you thought that the guys behind T3 might have a modicum of integrity, they soon turn their carnivorous gaze to the only person who had enough sense to steer well clear of this shambles of a film - Linda Hamilton’s Sarah Connor. Having been told by Hamilton to take a running jump when the script was proffered, they decided to write out her character by arranging her death as a result of leukaemia in 1997. In an extraordinarily frank admission of guilt, the film characters raid her tomb for weapons. I don’t think I need to point out the parallels. Grave-robbing? Resurrecting excellent franchises in order to butcher them for a quick buck?

Apparently unconvinced that the audience would have grasped the concept of the guys behind T3 being shameless bastards, the director proceeds to shoehorn in an unnecessary cameo from Dr. Silberman, with a sub-par amalgamation of two scenes from T2 following hot on its heels.

Once every month, young ladies sprout flamethrowers from their arms.

After the action sequence is done and dusted, off we go for more boring exposition, none of which we frankly care about. This leads to a decision not to hide in a bunker for the rest of the film but instead go to save Kate’s father. Not for the first time, this film leaves me in a quandary – would watching John Connor sitting in a nuclear bunker be more exciting than the remainder of this film? It’s too close to call.

A quick visit to the military base where Kate’s Suddenly Super Important Father is based calms the nerves somewhat. While the U.S. military for once isn’t having friendly fire incidents or bombing foreign embassies by accident, it’s reassuring to note that they’re still making enormous cock-up’s with alarming frequency. This time, they’re losing control of their entire defence network and tossing control over to SkyNet, thus sowing the seeds of mankind’s destruction. It’s good of them to streamline the process for us all; convincing 3 billion people to end themselves simultaneously would be damn tough work.

Skynet begins world domination by drawing sinister coloured lines across the globe.

After some terminator-on-terminator action at the base, the T-X manages to best the T-800 and subsequently reprograms it to kill Connor and Brewster, thus setting the scene for a potentially touching Connor/T-800 bonding. I say potentially because the only thing that could be construed as touching in this film is when I smack my forehead with frustration while watching it. Connor and Brewster fly off to a military bunker to try to stop Skynet, with the T-X not far behind them, having somehow made a helicopter keep pace with an aeroplane. Keen to demonstrate his phallic superiority over the T-X, the T-800 steals an even bigger chopper and crashes his way back into the action. No doubt because Arnie didn’t want to be written out 20 minutes before the end of the film, leaving his acting career as a bad guy. Naturally, the T-800 manages to save Connor and Brewster by sacrificing himself to kill vengeful T-X. Unnecessary as it is at this stage to point it out, the sacrifice of the T-800 in T3 compared to the same in T2 is about as far apart on the emotional spectrum as it’s possible to be without actually being on different spectra. Don’t try to think about it too much or you’ll end up like me, with an enormous fucking headache.

By the end of the film, Connor has realised not only that Judgement Day could not be stopped, only postponed, but that he’s been outsmarted by a machine. A machine played by Arnie, no less. The sinking feeling he has when he slowly comes around to the realisation that Skynet can’t be stopped runs roughly parallel to the viewer’s own sense of despair as he realises that he’s wasted 109 minutes of his life.

T-800’s glowing eye fades away, aptly mirroring the fate of the Terminator series.

Addendum:

It was after only 28 minutes of this film that I realised not only is the director trying to massacre this franchise with all the subtlety of a charging rhinoceros, his mind is also unburdened of any form of original thought whatsoever. At 28 minutes, I had already lost count of the number of scenes in T3 which were ripped almost entirely from T1 or T2. But wait, I hear you cry, T2 contained several homages to T1! Well thanks for pointing that out to me Sherlock, but next time, let me finish my point. Yes, T2 did nod respectfully to T1 from time to time, but T3 nods so often it’s at serious risk of whiplash. T3 is the film equivalent of a student taking a lecturer’s notes, selecting every third sentence, translating those sentences from English to Mandarin to Swahili and then back to English using an internet translator and then handing it back to the lecturer.

Alien Vs. Predator

So, the premise of Alien Vs. Predator: take two of the 70’s and 80’s greatest film franchises, add them together and profit. Great idea, right? Not really. The resulting shitfest must have had fecalphiliacs all over the world rubbing their hands in glee. Basically, this film is the worst film ever made without Nicholas Cage sticking his oar in.

Let’s start with the heroine of the film. Yes, that’s right, heroine. Alien’s Ripley arguably began this whole girl-power trend so presumably the makers of AvP decided they should prance happily down the same road. They just forgot one thing – Sigourney Weaver and her Ripley character don’t suck.

Useless.

Oh yeah, and the guys behind AvP must have decided that having a female lead wasn’t pandering enough to the PC brigade, so in their infinite wisdom they made her black too. Actually, while we’re performing this in-depth character analysis, she’s a mountaineer or something too, so it looks like she’s a man-hating dyke. Those guys sure did cover all the bases with this one.

Mexicans, running. Away from cops or towards something free, no doubt.

Once she’s (yes, I keep avoiding her name because I don’t know it. Nor do I care, frankly.) met with the Weyland rep at the start of the film, we cut to some place in Mexico with hordes of Mexicans sprinting someplace, which gives the impression that one of them had spotted a free Green Card. Turns out it’s just some unlikely looking archaeologist and his sidekick wasting time and money digging up guys who died about 4 kajillion years ago. Or should I say trying to dig up guys who died about 4 kajillion years ago, because these guys are failures.


The next 10 (scratch that, 20) minutes are spent being utterly boring and irrelevant and can be summarised thusly: Weyland is a reckless maverick, Heroine is a constantly bitching harpy and the military personnel are all gung-ho and bound for a swift death. Similarly, I can’t even remember the names of any of the experts, so when they die, expect nobody watching to care less. Good job on building up our attachment to the characters, guys.

Deserves to die. Luckily, he does.

Eventually, the predators arrive, which is about the time you’d expect the film to stop sucking ass and start picking up. You’d be wrong. The inexplicably-placed, highly-trained sentries outside the site start brandishing pistols and submachine guns at the slightest sound. It’s okay though, because these weapons have green laser sights, because red lasers are so passé. Anyway, they all die in incredibly boring and bloodless ways, proving once and for all that Arnie really is a demigod compared to the average military grunt in films.

Back inside we go. Once all the experts have finished making all their improbably swift diagnoses of the temple and everything that used to happen there, thus giving us idiotic viewers an insight into the fevered workings of the scriptwriters’ imaginations, the team follow the time-honoured tradition of making a mistake which seals their messy fate.

Hey guys, let’s meddle with something we know nothing about!

And so the deaths begin. Military personnel fail to distinguish between a predator and a stone statue, start hyperventilating when walls move and are on the verge of tears after falling 10 feet. As with the sentries on the surface, all the deaths miraculously occur just as the camera angle changes, or just out of shot. I love your thinking, Mr. Director, nobody watching an Aliens or Predator film wants to see blood and gore! A sci-fi action/horror film with absolutely zero offensive material – what a wonderful concept!

A predator doing what we’d all really like to do after watching this worthless film.

After the predator despatches a few humans, an alien arrives and sneakily shafts one of the predators, which has the effect of causing the other predator to drop what he’s doing and engage in fisticuffs with the alien. Unfortunately, what that predator had been doing was curb-stomping some of the shitty actors, which means Heroine, Weyland and Hispanic Guy have a while longer to assault the screen with their presence. Thanks a lot, Mr. Alien.

I think the ensuing Alien-Predator fight is nicely done, but I can’t really comment authoritatively because the only times I could follow what was actually happening were when a) nothing was happening or b) when slow-motion was used. That said, the amount of audacity needed by the director to use slow-motion in a film that’s already…(checks runtime)…101 minutes too long is frankly breathtaking.

The most spectacular part of AvP.
Thanks for making it a 5 second flashback.

Some more boring stuff happens after the alien wins the fight, then we see the remaining predator actually killing a facehugger and a fully-grown alien. Disregarding humans, gives the predators an amazing killcount of…one facehugger and one alien after a full hour of the film. How spectacular.

Hispanic Guy and Heroine then fart around for a while, babbling some more exposition for the terminally idiotic amongst us, before deciding to side with the predator. Before they can do that, they encounter an alien and simply run away from it by using their Combined Ethnicity powers. While running away, they come across a broken pathway spanning a bottomless chasm. Hispanic Guy slow-mo’s his way across successfully, followed by Heroine, who makes a complete dog’s breakfast out of it, primarily owing to her being female. She scrambles around a bit before falling to her doom, sadly only to be rescued at the last second by her testicularly-endowed companion. Relief all round then, apart from the unlucky sod watching the film. i.e. me.
Fortunately, the wave of despair which overcomes you at the thought of more buddy-buddy action is short-lived as Hispanic Guy swiftly gets shish-kebab’d by an alien. Whether it’s the same asthma-afflicted alien that failed to catch them just a few minutes previously or one of his mates is unclear. Or maybe it is, but I don’t care enough to check.

Hispanic Guy, being taken from behind by a xenomorph.

Just when we think Heroine is going to finally have her day ruined by the remaining predator, they get ambushed by more aliens. In a startling break with tradition, Heroine bucks her trend of being a total failure and stabs one of the aliens. Once the rest of the aliens are gone, the predator, in a wild fit of misjudgement, decides to spare Heroine’s life. Like the whiny bitch she is, she’s not content with that state of affairs, so she roundly abuses the predator until he gives her some of the most ridiculous arms and armour ever seen to man and lets her accompany him. I’m quite certain he’s wearing the biggest smirk ever underneath that mask for the entirety of this scene. Anyway, thusly equipped, the pair dash off like some sort of 80’s crime-fighting duo.

A piece of string, displaying more acting prowess than the entire cast put together.

Upon seeing the hordes of alien eggs waiting to hatch, the predator arms his insanely powerful megabomb and forgoes the long standing predator tradition of honour, opting to mince off to the surface with Heroine instead of staying behind and going down with the ship, as it were. But who cares about questionable character traits when we’re murdering two great franchises, right?

Our two glorious survivors, Starsky & Hutch’ing their way to the surface.

Finally back on the surface, the predator and Heroine share a tender moment, with some action that literally leaves Heroine’s face smoking. Nanoseconds before the Barry White music kicks in, the alien queen, newly relieved of her shackles, rudely barges in. Moodkiller, as she shall henceforth be known, trades blows with the predator for a time while Heroine washes her hair somewhere out of shot. They then trade places, with the predator having a nice lie down while Heroine stabs Moodkiller and runs away with her in hot pursuit. Heroine then hides beneath a water tank or something and Moodkiller proceeds to display all the intelligence of a boiled egg trying to kill her.
Just as it seems Heroine is going to have some facial restructuring done free of charge, the predator, refreshed from his temporary nap, ninjas his way back into the scene to give Moodkiller some improvised neural surgery. Some more stuff happens and the incorrigible duo is preparing to send Moodkiller off into an abyss when Moodkiller stabs the predator with her tail. Distraught at seeing her erstwhile lover impaled, Heroine actually starts making an effort for once and away Moodkiller goes.

And so the predator slowly begins to shuffle off this mortal coil, with Heroine gazing into his eyes, entirely oblivious to several cloaked predators standing beside her and a mothership approximately the size of Greenland hovering right over her head.

Head predator guy judiciously decides to leave Heroine to fend for herself.

Despite the fact the other predators are conned into thinking Heroine is some kind of honourable warrior and actually of any worth, they’re clearly no stranger to comedy. Head predator guy decides not to kill Heroine, but leaves her alone in the middle of Antarctica, with barely any clothes, food, or equipment. He doesn’t leave her entirely empty-handed though; he presents her with a very useful and versatile spear. An essential item for taking shelter from those freezing Antarctic winds, providing sustenance and directing her back to civilisation.

A final fuck-you from the guys behind AvP. Yes, there will be an AvP 2.

As if the collective minds (and I use the word ‘mind’ in the loosest possible sense) behind AvP didn’t shaft all of enough by the end of the film, they decide that we should leave this film not only filled with regret at having wasted 101 minutes of our lives, but also filled with dread at the prospect of Alien Vs. Predator 2. As such, the final shot is of the predator lying somewhere in the predator mothership leaving earth. The other predators leave the room just as the predator starts heaving, much like yours will be if you watch this film. Out pops a predator-alien hybrid, or predalien, waggling his head like Kermit the fucking frog. Save me.