There's nothing like a bit of inspiration really, funny the places that comes from too.  Like how unusual I'd get the impetice to write from simply sitting in a cinema...

Terminator 3: Rise Of The Machines - stars some uber babe who blows shit up!!!

Few things boil my blood, very few. People who talk over the top of me, nuclear war, bad acting, that kind've thing. Speaking of nuclear war, we went and saw T3 last night. Anyone seen it? Well if you haven't and you want to, wait til you see it to read this...actually I said this about Matrix Reloaded, am I allowed to talk about that yet???

First off, look it really isn't that bad despite what I'm about to write. I've heard two very distinct opinions of the movie and avoided all the critic's write-ups. And of those two opinions, they both concurred with "Interesting ending dude". Should I skip to the end first then? I'm glad you asked, yes, is the short answer.

The end was great, probably the best part of the movie - in terms of story-line that is. In terms of acting, things headed in a downward spiral with about 15 minutes to go, worse than the rest of the movie...ok I'll get to all that in a tic. So yeah, the ending in terms of plot was great, brilliant, I mean who wants the fluffy ending smelling of roses and well kept lawns? Crap to that, nuclear war people, that's what this whole business was all about. James Cameron might even dig that...that bit, I'm not suggesting he'd be stoked with the rest of it.

So lets go back to the beginning, John Connor's all grown up, Arnie's had botox injections and the new evil terminator is the hottest thing to hit the screen since Angelina axed some robot in her basement, in hot pants! Warning warning, annoying bit: do we really have to see the terminator's feet after they land? Are we surprised that they have human feet and can actually use them? Were we expecting them to fly? Assuming we've seen T1 and T2, which this movie does in spades, do we still know nothing about terminators that we need the director to go "Hey, check it out people, feet."

Moving on, before I saw T3, a fellow critic mentioned that John's character isn't exactly, er, well all he's been built up to be. And fair enough too to a certain extent. Here's what I mean, did you notice that John's "living off the grid", yet is happy to sit on bridges drinking piss, riding motorbikes reeeeaaaally fast and crashing them, then overdosing on whatever horse tranq's he can get his hands on? Not really saviour-of-the-world stuff is it. However, the character does make it abundantly clear that after avoiding Judgement Day all those years ago that his future was pretty uncertain, to the point where he'd deluded himself into believing that it was never going to take place at all. From that perspective, his attitude makes perfect sense to me, his lack of enginuity however is great cause for concern!

On to the terminators for a tic, good old Arnie hasn't lost his touch. A major mistake however was giving him too much personality. The Terminator was brilliant in T2, perfectly monotone and machine-like, smart enough to learn, not smart enough to lift his eyebrows when making a point. Hhmm. The new T-X on the other hand deserves to be the good guy. You could just see John Conner going "fuck John, you coulda sent one of those back in time to protect yourself. IDIOT!". And she's mean, I kept getting flashbacks to T2 with Robert Patrick running around being the axe killer T-1000 who was super mean, this chick is definately a notch above the T-1000.

Alrighty, so is there any action? Hell yeah there's some action, my favourite sequence is when the T-X, bless her, is careering down the road after John in some crane-truck-thingy and destroying literally everything as she goes. Meanwhile, Arnie's hanging on and getting slammed through buildings and light poles and glass and cars and, oh its just totally frenetic, a great scene. If it lacked it was the gun fights, not enough weapons being discharged for my liking. Remember in T2 when Arnie and John and Sarah used every possible weapon they had in their arsenal, right down to when they ran out of ammo they chucked the guns at the bad guys too. This time they've got a whole coffin full (can anyone say irony?) of shit and they only use like two guns. The chick, Kate Brewster (Claire Danes) doesn't even get one, she has to borrow whatever John's hanging on to.

Now I can't avoid this, where did T3 fall down? Its one of those movies that you can forgive for its dumbness, but happily smash at the same time. I'll concentrate on the last 15 minutes or so when things go pair shaped and Cyberdine (sp???) becomes "self-aware". So here goes:

Think I'm finished, noooooooo...actually yeah, this is the last one I'll touch on.

Then, blessed be, came the end. What I've pointed out here is nothing short of lazy. If you're going to take charge of a sequal that has to have so much attention to detail to have it sit nicely with its two predecessors, you've got yourself a pretty big challenge without adding to it your laziness. So, Jonathon Mostow, outside for an uppercut now.

The bottom line however, is its good fun. I know I've given it some stick, but don't take my word for it. If you dig T1 and T2 (go revisit them first just for a laugh), by all means sink your teeth into T3. Its great fun and a great ride and you'll be rooting for the bad guys in no time, no pun intended. Loads of people are saying (now that I've read up some) there were too few links to the previous two movies. Well as I said up top there somwhere, this movie assumes you've seen the other two and know them intimately enough to pick up every linking nuance this has to offer - and there's tons of them. My guess is these critics spent their time watching this while sending text messages to their pet poodles...who no doubt were texting them back!

Oh and one other thing, the big screen does make a couple of scenes worth it, but only just. I give this 3 and a half stars.

BH

* Rolling On The Floor In Fits Of Hysteria