Movie

Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines (2003)

Few would argue that this movie is weaker than The Terminator (1984) and Terminator 2: Judgement Day (1991). But this “conclusion” has a shockingly dark ending, a welcome cameo from the traumatised Dr Silberman (Earl Boen), and a cyborg enemy with a default female form. This fitting finale should have been the last act, but a popular franchise demands unwanted reboots. And so came messy follow-ups that completely contradicted the narrative that came before.

Future resistance leader John Connor (Nick Stahl) is now an adult living off the grid. Being hunted as a child leaves mental scars, and John has nightmares of the apocalyptic future he supposedly prevented. He’s wise to be sceptical, because the artificial intelligence Skynet remains a threat and is about to be activated by naïve military commanders. Judgment Day – global nuclear destruction and the end of the world – is coming, and machines will rise against their creators.

To ensure victory, Skynet sends a cyborg through time. Previously, we’d had Arnold Schwarzenegger’s T-800 target John’s mother, Sarah, in the 1980s, and Robert Patrick’s liquid metal T-1000 come after the man himself in the 90s. The latest model is Kristanna Loken’s T-X, a solid metal skeleton installed with advanced weaponry and covered in a liquid metal exterior. The “terminatrix” has the shapeshifting abilities of the T-1000, plus a plasma cannon and the frightening power to take over other machines.

Skynet is determined to win the coming war before it begins, and the T-X arrives in the early twenty-first century with a deadly mission. After the trademark nude arrival scene – in a Beverly Hills fashion store window (!) – the female cyborg hijacks a vehicle from a passing motorist. With John Connor in hiding, Plan B is to eliminate the men and women who will become his key lieutenants. The T-X goes on a murder spree through Los Angeles, taking out minor players with the usual efficiency.

The familiar storyline – a retread of the first two films – has a protector sent back in time. It’s another less advanced T-800 series model (actually a T-850) that arrives naked in the desert. The scene that follows is a humorous variant on the “acquire clothes” objective, with Arnold’s cyborg gatecrashing a strip club to widespread female applause. Pretty soon he has the classic leather outfit and an inappropriate pair of funky glasses, which he replaces with more traditional dark shades.

Until the end, the movie plays out as expected, with the human heroes and the “obsolete” terminator proving a match for the more technologically advanced opponent. Other characters – even named ones – are cannon fodder as Los Angeles again becomes a battleground for the fate of humanity.

Villainess

T-X (Kristanna Loken)

After eliminating two targets, the T-X goes after Katherine Brewster (Claire Danes), a woman destined to be Connor’s wife and second in command. By chance – or fate, according to the narrative – a wounded John breaks into the animal surgery where Kate works, only to get captured when she responds to an early morning emergency. There’s barely time for conversation before the T-X arrives and guns down an innocent woman, believing her to be Kate. Then the cyborg tests (actually tastes) a bloody bandage and learns her primary target, John, is nearby.

Kate flees the scene, but the T-X corners her in a parking lot. The cyborg asks about John’s whereabouts before she’s interrupted by the reprogrammed T-850. Kate witnesses the destruction that follows as a vehicle crashes into the T-X, resulting in a huge explosion. The rescuer is more interested in keeping her away from harm than freeing her, so secures her in a van.

John escapes as the T-X – buried in rubble – reforms, and encounters Arnold’s leather-clad protector. Time for the villainess to get serious, so she shrugs off conventional weaponry, reveals her plasma arm cannon, and blasts the old Terminator model into a storage shed. In the middle of all this, John drives off with Kate still in the vehicle. We then get a demonstration of the T-X’s machine control power when she takes over the autopilots of emergency vehicles and sends them in pursuit.

The lengthy chase scene – with the T-X driving a Champion crane truck down a highway after her much flimsier target vehicle – is one of the best action scenes in the franchise. Besides remote-controlled cop cars, John must outrun a seemingly unstoppable truck that smashes its way through traffic. And the T-X uses her plasma cannon to devastating effect.

Eventually, the T-850 reactivates and commandeers a motorcycle. Arnold comes to the rescue by jumping on the crane – with destruction raining around him – and gets on board despite his foe’s best efforts. Other drivers watch on as the two cyborgs battle amidst carnage and explosions. It takes dropping the crane hook down a manhole to stop the T-X. She emerges from the wreckage unscathed, a determined opponent that will not be bested so easily.

After that chaos, it’s time for some less action-packed story segments. John explains the situation to a sceptical Kate, and the T-850 takes the heroes to a cemetery. There John finds his late mother’s resting place, except the coffin is really a weapons cache. Alerted by a witness, the police arrive in force. In response to the recent chaos, they bring a full S.W.A.T. team to stop the T-850. That goes as poorly as expected, though the reprogrammed cyborg avoids human casualties.

Before all the shooting started, we were introduced to Kate’s boyfriend, Scott. Being a relative of a main character is normally fatal in these movies, and Scott soon has a deadly encounter with the terminatrix. The T-X impersonates Scott to deceive two detectives, who take “him” to the cemetery. The two cops become expendable once the cyborg locates John, leading to a not so happy “reunion” with Kate in a graveyard.

Kate witnesses the cyborg morph into her natural form and prepare to fire. Frozen in shock, she’s fortunate that the T-850 arrives to save her in a bullet-riddled hearse. An RPG stops the T-X, but she reforms and comes after the vehicle, sprinting at high speed. After another chase – shorter and less chaotic than the city pursuit – a passing truck provides the T-850 an opportunity to slice the hearse in two and remove the threat. The T-X’s cannon is damaged beyond repair, but the villainess has many secondary weapons at her disposal.

Kate learns her future self sent the T-850 back in time, her own father is the man in charge of Skynet, and the nuclear war is only hours away. After those shocking revelations, she and John join their cyborg protector and head for the military facility. As the general ponders whether to activate Skynet, the T-X is already on site, disguised as female military personnel. The villainess uses her machine control function to take over T-model prototypes, which include advanced drones and minigun-armed tanks.

Kate and company arrive, but they’re too late. The T-X impersonates the heroine and guns down the general in the control room. One more future lieutenant disposed of, but the T-850 buys precious time by shooting the T-X and knocking her down a vent shaft. As the rogue machines massacre the civilian staff, the dying general tells his daughter about a secret bunker within flying distance.

Now battle-hardened, Kate shows her strength by grabbing a rifle and destroying a machine to save John. The T-850 rips a minigun from one tank and destroys another. But it’s the inevitable one-on-one battle between the terminators that’s the standout scene. The two cyborgs destroy a corridor and bathroom, reducing concrete walls to rubble. Against a superior opponent, the T-850 uses makeshift weapons, including a gas tank and a urinal (!). But the T-X wins the lengthy fight, decapitates the T-850, and takes control of it. We all knew that plot development was coming.

John comes up with a clever strategy to defeat the T-X by powering up an accelerator, which creates a magnetic field. That’s ideal for dealing with a cyborg armed with a flamethrower, and with the liquid metal spread over the pipe, Kate gets her first badass quote when she tells the “bitch” to die. Anyone familiar with the earlier movies knows that initial attempts to defeat ruthless Terminators don’t work. And history repeats as the T-X escapes the trap by cutting the pipeline with a circular saw.

After a confrontation with the corrupted T-850 – that nearly ends with the out-of-control machine snapping John’s neck – the heroes fly to the remote bunker. On arrival, they find an old nuclear fallout facility, not the system core they were told to expect. This leads into the bleak finale where nuclear missiles launch, nearly wiping out humanity, and the dark future comes to pass. With the VIPs likely dead, John and Kate are now in charge of the survivors, and the fightback against the machines begins.

Before this, the T-X arrives at the bunker to eliminate the future threat. A submachine gun barely impacts the liquid metal, so it’s good the T-850 has fought off the corruption. John and Kate almost escape through the closing bunker door, but the T-X makes one last attempt to crawl through before the T-850 pulls her damaged skeleton away. In an earlier scene, we were shown the T-850 was powered by two energy cells that cause massive explosions when ruptured. A convenient explosive to ram into the T-X’s mouth and terminate her for good.