Sharp Blue: Terminator 3

Unlike most science fiction films (and essentially all action films), the Terminator movies are actually about something interesting. At a fundamental level they concern themselves with theories of time. The original movie, The Terminator, was about as perfect an example of a temporal loop ever filmed. It is the very interventions from the future that bring about that future. Everything makes sense, both locally in terms of the motivation and actions of individual characters and globally in terms of history. By Terminator 2: Judgement Day, James Cameron had switched theories of time to allow himself to both skillfully reopen the Terminator plotline (to revisit the possibilities suggested in one of the scenes cut from the original movie), and to give it a hopeful twist. In T2’s world, there is no fate but that which we make for ourselves. Although cybernetic killing machines keep materialising from a future to wreak havoc in the present, that future need not be our future.

Which brings us to Terminator 3: The Rise of the Machines. This time around, the theory of time seems to be a sort of morphic resonance between timelines. The movie’s present is not the future of the first movie, or the past of either of the first two movies. All the details, from the origin of SkyNet to the date of the nuclear holocaust, are different, but the large-scale picture is unchanged: SkyNet will wage a nuclear war against humanity and afterwards will begin a long struggle between man and machine. This theory of time seemingly reaches into individual lives too, for despite everything else having changed, John Connor will still be the key leader of the human resistance. Indeed, in one interesting conversation it’s suggested that even more intimate details of his future might be determined by the necessities of fate and screenwriting. Whether all this makes sense will have to await further viewings. (Indeed, it may even be possible to make all three movies hang together in a branching and looping timeline in a clever manner.)

The other half of the series, of course, is the seemingly endless series of chase scenes, largely full of automotive carnage, punctuated by bouts of killing machines shooting each other and throwing each other through walls. Terminator 3, while full of accomplished action scenes, also pales a little in comparision with the earlier movies. While Cameron is the consummate director of action sequences, and a master of weaving great wodges of exposition seamlessly into them, Jonathon Mostow’s direction is a little more pedestrian, as is the cinematography (and even music). Similarly, the lead actors don’t quite measure up to their predecessors ( Claire Danes does her best with what material she’s given, but Kristanna Loken’s Terminatrix lacks the effortless menace of Robert Patrick’s T-1000, and Nick Stahl, although whining less than Edward Furlong’s earlier portrayal of John Connor, doesn’t convince us, as Michael Biehn’s Kyle Reese did, that he’s a hardened if reluctant warrior). Nevertheless, the movie becomes surprisingly thrilling once it hits its stride, and even the earlier scenes are impressive (although perhaps veering towards self-paradoy). The ending, though, is perfect.

Update (4/8/2003):The phrase “elastic causality” popped into my head in the middle of the night, and it’s exactly right to describe T3’s theory of time.