On Terminator 3 (CONTAINS SPOILERS)

The future has not been written. There is no fate but what we make for ourselves.

OK, I'm sure that once I get over the initial WOW-ness of this film, I'll probably decide it wasn't quite as fantastic as I think I'm about to make out here. Part of what WOW-ed me was that I was expecting it to be awful, and yet it was really good. I don't want to compare it to T2. I think T2 is a great film, but occasionally I get the impression it's far too polished, far too perfect.

What ruined T3 for me was that I'd read a review of it describing it as having a "brave, non-Hollywood ending". This meant all the way through I was half-expecting the ending and that it didn't have quite so much impact. That being said, it had impact enough. To explain, remember that I grew up in the 80s, where paranoia about the prospect of a Nuclear War was at its highest since the Cuban Missile Crisis. It's still something that terrifies me. Now, I know a lot of people are gonna read this and say "Yeah, well it terrifies me too, it's only natural", but, well, 80s paranoia. But the reviewers were right, it was a brave ending to have. The fact that it leaves things open for a kick-ass T4 film about the War between Humans and Machines is of course purely accidental.

Still, the ending was not the only good thing about the film. Arnie, obviously, had lots of good lines. One of the best (and craziest) things about the Terminator films is they don't require Arnie to act, part of what makes his lines good are their cold and wooden deadpan delivery.

And the car chase! I don't think it measures up to the freeway chase-fest in Matrix Reloaded, but it was certainly pretty damn fantastic. Alison felt it went on a bit too long, but I was just enjoying the ride. We both found it very reminiscent of the Burnout 2 game, particularly dashing crossways through streams of traffic at crossroads. And up-ending a flatbed crane. Fantastic.

Finally, Skynet builds a Terminator with built-in weapons! Didn't take too long to realise that was useful, did it now? Pretty funky built-in weapons too. I wouldn't mind having a few of those.

I also liked the trick of the TX talking to a modem down the phone.

However, there was one big glaring snafu of a hole in it. In the narrative at the beginning, John Connor says that T2 happened when he was 13. This cannot be true. Terminator was set in 1984. This would mean that John was born in 1985. He would be 13 in 1998, which, as any geek worth their salt will know, is after the "original" date for Judgement Day. I say "original" with over-emphasised finger-quotes because T3 implies that Judgement Day was never 29th August 1997. Incidentally, that was Alison's 21st birthday, just so you know. Then later in the film he says that his Mom fought leukiemia for a few years just to see that Judgement Day didn't arrive on that date. Since there was no mention of her having leukiemia in T2 that means T2 must be set a good few years before 1997. John Connor can only be 10 at most during it, and that's pushing it a bit. He looks older than 10.

Not that I'm one to pick holes, you understand.

I like the cyclical nature of the story that was introduced in T2 and that T3 carried on - the whole fact that John Connor only became the man he needed to be to fight the machines from the fact that the Terminators were sent into the past to kill him in the first place. The temporal implications of T3 are either very simple, or mind-manglingly complex, it's hard to know which way to look at them.

I could carry on, and tell you all the lines that I liked best, but I won't. Like the previous two films it's a rich source of quoteable lines.

Did anyone else think John Connor looked like a cross between Robbie Williams and Dr Bashir from DS9? Did anyone else think Kate Brewster looked a lot like (Angel Season Four) Cordelia Chase?

Talk to the hand.