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Friday, July 04, 2003
If you had told me, before this season's battle of the big-budget sci-fi fests started, that I was going to enjoy Terminator 3 waaaay more than the Matrix Reloaded... I woulda said you'd been partaking of too much of the crack rock.
Well, whaddya know... it's true. Terminator 3 rocked my socks right off, and was completely devoid of any cringe-worthy bits (um, rave scene anyone?) that Reloaded was sprinkled with. I like my destruction large-scale, and T3 had tons of it. The insane chase scene, and even the Terminator fights, had weight to them. Substance. Impact. Didn't feel like a videogame. Didn't exist just to impress me with some CGI-skillz. The Matrix gave me a lot of "wow. cool." moments, but T3 gave me a whole bunch of "Gah!" and "Holy shit!" moments. Huge difference. The cast was better, their performances were solid ... Nick Stahl was perfect, Claire Danes didn't annoy me at all, and even Arnold did a better job of acting wooden than Keanu did. (Oh, wait, Keanu's not supposed to be a robot. Nevermind.) Ahnuld's one-liners walked the fine line between amusement and self-parody, and actually worked for me. And geez, shirtless Schwartz is like 56 years old and he's still totally cut. Seriously. He's a musclebound freak o' nature. The plot was simple, the end was satisfying... I never got bored. The expository scenes weren't out of left-field, they weren't forced, and didn't feel like a setup for the next level of a Matrixy videogame. Sure, if you think about time-travel too much, the plot unravels... but the same holds true for the first two Terminator films. Speaking of which, I'd probably rank T3 above T2, although neither beats the first one.... a sci-fi classic that blew my 15 year old mind. When they announced Terminator 3, I was like "eh. whatever.", and didn't even care if I saw it in the theater... it was actually Amie who insisted we see it opening weekend. (exact quote: "If we can see Lord of the Rings at 11 o'clock in the morning on opening day, then we can see T3 the first weekend.") Well, when they announce T4, no more apathy from this guy. Wonders do, in fact, never cease.  |
 neil halstead live in cambridge, ma on november 14th, 2008 previously: joy formidable - boston 2011 recent posts on the 'nac...
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