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T3 is soft spot in action trilogy
By John Behling
Published:
Thursday, July 10, 2003
"No fate but what we make" is a typical phrase from the balls-to-the-wall slogan-crazed 90s.
A similar battle cry: "No Fear" appeared on the shirts of my classmates when I was obsessed with Terminator 2: Judgement Day. Now, "No Fear" shirts are quickly passed on at Savers for more favorable duds that read "Hudson Soccer: District #3859," or "Lazy Jake's RV Resort."
Likewise, the heir to the Terminator series, Jonathan Mostow, has passed on "No fate but what we make," for something like... "Woa isn't that explosion awesome?"
The morning of T3's screening I'm watching a liquid nitrogen- drenched T-1000 shatter from Arnold's shotgun blast- still one of my favorite scenes in T2. Five minutes later I'm at the doctor's office, sitting on the examining bench, hand outstretched over a spitting cup of real-life liquid nitrogen. I tell myself "No this isn't fate," and try to have "No Fear."
"This is really going to hurt isn't it," I say, far removed from the memory of the last time I had a wart terminated.
"Yeah. It's going to sting," the doctor says.
Talk about understatement.
That night I'm sitting in the theater with a bandage barely covering what looks and feels like a sub-dermal June Bug sticking out of the side my finger, watching with typical sequel anxiety, thinking through the pain: "I hope this doesn't suck."
A haggard John Connor (Nick Stahl) lives off the grid: no address; no phone number; no identification. This is where no one living or non-living can find him, at least for the film's first five minutes. In a coincidence that should be sickening to die-hard T2 commandos, Connor meets up with Kate Brewster (Claire Danes), an oblivious veterinarian with best-laid-plans and a puzzling past/future connection to the young rebel leader (puzzling at least for the next 15 minutes). Enter nude time travelers T-X (Kristinna Loken) and T-800 (Arnold Schwarzenegger) who return to do exactly what their predecessors did in T2, kill/save John Connor.
This plot is a no-brainer, which is good because my finger still hurts a lot. It hurts so much that all I can think of is liquid nitrogen. Although it only has a cameo in the film, liquid nitrogen could be the most dangerous man-made appliance in T2. What else is colder than the heart of a steel serial killer; colder than Jason Patrick's liquid-metallic mask; colder than Linda Hamilton in faux-catatonic sleep; colder than how the original Terminator drones "Sarah Connor?"
Bam!
But without a tribute liquid nitro scene, what is cold about Terminator 3?
The only answer I have is: T-X. Kristinna Loken's Barbie-doll plasticity and runway gait and glare weaves sex with violence as tight as her designer outfit.
She's got my attention when she says her first victim's name in a delicious receptionist fatale tone and then pulls the trigger.
That may be cold, but cool is really the word action director Mostow (U-571) is going for.
Mostow must understand that he can't recreate the brooding, death metal march of the series and doesn't even try. Instead he is content with trying to one-up Cameron with an orgiastic jag of twisted metal punctuated with relentless one-lined assaults on the film's seriousness. But it is cool. I even laughed when Arnold dead-panned "talk to the hand." I laughed hard, and I meant it.
To accent this lighter tone, Mostow adopts the George Lucas school of violence. Despite a barely-earned R-rating, realistic carnage is cut for cute-as-a-button bullet piercings and gratuitous no-blood-no-foul machine on machine beat-downs.
Although the other two movies celebrated this arcade-style assault on living machines with firearms, each had an explicitly graphic caveat to the tune of human weakness. But this side of the sword is dulled in T3. The frailty of flesh is underplayed far beyond the mark of absurdity when Brewster is tossed like a rag doll to collide head first with a tool chest. She hits hard enough to give her a nasty gash if not shatter her melon, but instead rebounds from this Home Alone-style pratfall without an ideal in her pretty head harmed. �����������
Similar in its lightness is this film's treatment of Weapons of Mass Destruction. Don't be looking for Cameron's nightmare of burning playgrounds and rising mushroom clouds. Instead think of something more inline with the thrill of dunking tennis balls in liquid nitrogen and shattering them with a hammer. I admit this is, very very cool. I just wish I could enjoy it, but a pulsating blood blister on my finger is my reminder that: oh wait... there are real-life consequences to playing with dangerous compounds. Hmmmm.
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