ChiefJustice001

My ticket says PG-13, and it wasn't that bloody...

But I checked the theaters and you seem to be correct.

Wonder if I win a prize...

moocher

Well, I finally saw it. Although anything I say about it will probably duplicate something in these 13 pages, I loved the movie. The only thing I have seen this summer that tops it is Nemo (obviously a completely different kind of film).

I'm really sorry to see that it doesn't appear that it will be a hit. Dropping 50% off a 44M weekend does not bode well for it.

I liked the humor, plot and action. However, as I believe some have already said, the TX was not as menacing as the other terminators. I did not get that "how in the world are they ever going to defeat her" feeling I got in the others (particularly the T1000).

I don't see where they go from here with a T4. Since the reason for sending terminators back is finally fully explained and given the ending, even though some things seemed to suggest a T4, I don't see where they could go with it.

matome

LOL, only a 50% second week drop these days IS indicative of a hit.

Lateralus

Just saw this movie, and I loved it. In my opinion it was better than the Matrix and The Hulk.

Nuff Said!

Revoltor

I haven't read everyone's opinions on the movie but from what I see, people are crazy.

T2 was perfect and couldn't have had a better ending. The t-800 had to terminate himself. There was no other choice.

T3 though.....bad. Definitely the worst of the series. I think my main gripe was how fake everything looked. I think I read somewhere that they spent 175 million to make it. I find this impossible unless they bought some really expensive computers. I think this is an ongoing scam in Hollywood to artificially inflate movie budgets by replacing flesh and bones (or latex and wire) SFX with CGI SFX.

Storywise the movie was silly and in all honesty T3 should've never happened. For the sake of conversation though, I'll overlook how the Terminator franchise is built on plotholes. Anyway, these new Terminators suck ass at "terminating". Instead of quick kills, we get people tossing. A lot of people tossing.

At least the characters were pretty good. This is obviously a new model of Terminator (t-100?) so that probably explains why he isn't as cool as the past terminators. Still everine managed to make me laugh and sit on the edge of my seat at times.

One particular scene where they're housed in the general's office and judgement day began gave me the willies. I dunno, that might've been post stress trauma or something. But fast forward to how the movie ends--Why bother? It was so half assed.

"HAHA! I tricksied you! There was no stopping judgement day!!"

It almost makes me think the t-100 was evil all along and just leading them onto it.

Not future but what we set my ass.

Birrman54

I was watching T2 and T1 today, and it's very apparent how much more menacing Robert Patrick and Arnold were as Terminators than Loken. Arnold was scary simply because he was huge and just killed anything in his path. Patrick, however, was just as deadly, but he was significantly more intelligent (much smarter than Tx ever appeared to be), the scene where he's talking to the parents pretending to be a cop has got to be the smoothest behavior I've ever seen in the T movies.

Though I still think T3 was great.

birrman54

Face/Off

There's a contradiction in this paragraph. You wonder where all the money went, then complain that it probably went to all the CGI effects... yet don't question what the cost is on actually destorying real things?

Face/Off

Child grows up in a redneck, gun-toting, militant atmosphere being told he's going to be the great leader of a post-apocalyptic rise from the ashes; then his mother gets arrested and committed for trying to blow a building up, he's told she's a nutcase and he gets put in a foster home where, for better or worse, he finds out what a normal life is like; then a pair of terminators show up -- one to kill him -- and he finds out it's all real again; then Judgment Day doesn't happen and the only person that knows the truth about his "destiny" dies and there's no one left in his life he can turn to; part of him thinks something bad will still happen and lives his life accordingly, but what if nothing happens -- what is he destined for now after all he's been through?

So you believe where John Connor is by T3 is sloppy writing and a dramatic change?

dave955

I finally saw the movie tonight. I was surprised at how good I found the film to be, given the negative reviews I had read here and seen Ebert give the film (particularly the former).

Certainly the film is not perfect. I found its major weaknesses to be:

(1) a weak opening and, to a lesser extent, ending, with too much voiceover and simple exposition (true also of the crypt scene)

(2) an overreliance on comedic one-liners by Arnold: many worked, but a few were obviously inappropriate (e.g. tell it to the hand). Some of the other humor was pretty stupid, too. Whereas stuff like Arnold's comment about how it was good they were laughing was hilarious.

(3) whereas I thought the film talked too much in the beginning and end, it showed too little at a few of the plot points people have mentioned (base entry, why the TX shows up at the vet's office at 4:30 am, etc.)

(4) the police and TX show up a bit too quickly at the cemetary

All in all, I found the movie's first half to be stronger than the second. I thought Danes and Stahl did a good job; ditto for Arnold and Loken. The score was invisible, whi ch I didn't find to be a good thing. Script was in need of a tight rewrite to fix some of these problems. Loved the final revelation when the characters realize where they are, and what it means.

Definitely the weakest of the films, but nevertheless, well worth seeing. I'm unsure whether I really want a sequel: if they do one, I hope they'll spend a bit more on getting the script right. Though many of the not-CGI effects in that first chase scene were incredible, and worth every penny IMHO. (I'm assuming so, since they looked very much unlike CGI...)

Revoltor

From what I gather, CGI isn't really that expensive compared to getting an actual 10 mile strech of LA and smashing it all up IRL.

There's nothing contradictory about my statement at all. I'm just pissed 175 mill went to Arnies pay and a bunch of bad CGI.

Just compare it to T2.

Actually dont. There is no comparison. T2 is the Christ figure of all action films.

chanster

Well technically Arnold didn't terminate himself...he cant "self-terminate"

T2 is a great film, T3 isn't as good, but I was highly entertained. I also thought that T1 was better than T2, so there you go.

Michael Corvin

Who said terminators had to be scary and menacing looking? They just have to be able to terminate an objective.

Timmio

The ending to T2 sucked... I was never happy with it. It made no sense. While the rest of the movie was so freakin awesome, the ending was just wrong.

It's simple if everything had been stopped, John Connor would've ceased to exist at that moment. Sarah Connor would've had no memory of what had happened in T1 and in T2. No Terminators would have been there to travel in time. The future would've been a continuation of the present time right before the first terminator came in the first movie.

The way they should've ended T2, if they indeed were ending the series, was to have Arnold dip into the lava. Then, as John and Sarah embrace, the screen fades to white, and we jump back to 1984 and recreate the scenes with Sarah Connor, but just kinda show her from a distance doing her normal thing. The camera dollys back, maybe put a voice over about how JD never happened and how the future was never written and then fade to black.

That would've been a cool ending to end the series with.

I thought T3 was an awesome continuation to the series, it made the ending to T2 make sense... Plus I thought the effects kicked ass. Don't you think if JC made T3 that he would've used a lot of CG too?? I think he probably would've used more...

What CGI stuff looked sooo bad to you? And who said that CGI isn't expensive...it's very expensive. You also have to understand that CGI is still pretty much in it's infancy. Give it another 5 to 10 years and we probably won't be able to tell the difference between efx and live shots at all... give it a chance to grow. jeez!


Timmio

Revoltor

I think CGI was expensive up to a certain point in Cinema. If anything, the costs are related to research. T3's effects looked like the same ones used in Eraser (more than 5 years ago)

CGI isn't in it's infancy. Final Fantasy:TSW and Flight of the Osirus prove that. Those are films where I know the millions spent on it went somewhere. Of course, it wasn't back into SquareHawaii (heh, heh)

As for JC, well, the t1000 was cg and I loved that. There wasn't much else that was though. Titanic had a fair amount of CG too but it wasn't really discernable. Aliens of course had none and well...we all see what a classic that turned out to be.

I dunno really. I appreciate the old way of doing things. Just recently the director of Gremlins truned down the idea of CGIing his creatures in a sequel. I respect that. It makes everything feel more real.

It's so easy to point out what's real or fake these days. Being tricked my it is great though. LXG's Mr. Hyde proved that. I coulda sworn it was CGI but it turns out it was good ol' latex.

pum

do you guy think the story in T2 is somewhat illogical, especially on the relationship of John Corner and his mother: that she's insane and he's ashame of that etc.
i mean if he rented The Terminator (which done superbly by James Cameron), isn't it obvious that his mother tell the truth? (kid love action movie, isn't it?)
or maybe because Terminator is r-rated film, then he can not watch it yet?

Jason1973

Here are my thoughts on the whole Terminator lore, I also eliminated the paradox of Reese being Johns father.
I'm assuming everyone has seen the movie, but Possible spoilers!
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Original Timeline:
Sarah Connor is impregnated with John Connor by her then boyfriend. This is the same guy who stood her up near the beginning of the original film. This eliminates the paradox of Reese being the father of John.
John then meets his future wife Kate. When Judgment day occurs, Kate’s father takes them to a fallout shelter where they survive and eventually lead the resistance.

A terminator is sent back thus creating the second timeline:
Basically this is where the original Terminator movie picks up. Reese is still not John’s father as Sarah is already pregnant.

Then we get to the events of Terminator 2. What happens here is Judgment Day is delayed not prevented.

Then we get to Terminator 3. Basically, John and Kate ended up in the same place as they did in the original timeline.

DGibFen

That's a heck-of-a analogy if I've ever read one!

moocher

What's all this with the "bad" CGI?? I thought I read where Mostow made it a point not to overuse CGI. In fact, I thought much of the effects work was done with real world sets/stunts(including much of the chase sequence). I thought Mostow's viewpoint is that if it can be done in the real world, do it that way. If it can't (TX scenes, etc.) use CGI.

shill66

Don't worry too much. If you go back and count those who claim "bad CGI" in this thread, the count will be awfully small. Especially compared to those who had good things to say about the effects.

Kube

Couples of questions?

1) Will there be a T4 - did this movie make enough to allow another one to be made.

2) Do the machines now have their own intelligence? And if so, how come Arnold doesn't learn to think for himself?

3) Why did John C. between T2 and T3 spend his time training himself to get ready for another attack by another Terminator? He seems less skilled than Claire Danes (who doesn't know what's about to come).

Daytrip

not sure where you got this. The T-X seemed to terminate her targets pretty quick, and T-800 wasn't programmed to terminate

Cusm

I find it hilarious that you are fighting over philosophy. A field that contains no black or white. You quote one school of thought of destiny, but the funny thing of philosophy is that there are hundreds, if not thousands, of conclusions and speculations that can be made about, of, for, against, etc destiny, and none of them are wrong (technically).
It is also funny that you are fighting over time travel, a theory that may or may not be viable, let alone the laws that would govern them. You do know that BTTF is the not the be all, end all authority on time travel.

Please disregard all of this if you happen to be god and do know all the answers of the universe. If however you are not, and I as an Atheist am safe, please don't spout off like you are talking about facts, and everyone is wrong and just an idiot.

Disclaimer: I am not, nor claim to be an expert in the fields of Philosophy and/or Time Travel. I have stated observations of a semi-informed idiot.

Daveg27

Relax man, you took my post way too seriously. No one is fighting about anything here, we're just discussing a movie. I am merely trying to point out an inconsistancy in the whole fate/future is fixed thing with respect to the Terminator movies. I apologize that it wasn't clear that I wasn't talking about reality.

But thanks for calling me an idiot!

audrey

It’s sloppy, because in a series it’s unusual to significantly change the nature of a central character with out explanation. Here, the writers jumped to the end of the character arc w/o including any of the journey. Since Conner’s lack of confidence isn’t really central to the T3 storyline, the change makes no sense other than to make Kate seem more dynamic. In fact if it weren't for her actions, Conner wouldn't have made it to the end of T3. How Conner lost his confidence is pure speculation on your part—it’s not on the screen.

And again it’s not worth quibbling over. If the missing character arc were the only problem w/ T3 I would have enjoyed it.

audrey

Just out of curiosity, how can an individual with different fathers, different DNA turn out to be the exactly same person?