TERMINATOR 3: RISE OF THE MACHINES

TERMINATOR 3: RISE OF THE MACHINES (see IMDb for minor vts. and German versions). Jonathan Mostow, dir. James Cameron, characters from T1 and T2 and Gale Anne Hurd (characters and exec. prod.); John D. Brancato, Michael Ferris, and Tedi Sarafian, story; Brancato and Ferris, script. Arnold Schwarzenegger, Nick Stahl, Claire Danes, Kristanna Loken, David Andrews, Earl Boen (returning as Dr. Peter Silberman), featured characters. Production Companies (from IMDb): C-2 Pictures, InterMedia Film Equities Ltd., IMF Pictures, Mostow, Lieberman Productions, IMF Internationale Medien und Film GmbH & Co. Produktions KG, Pacific Western, Toho-Towa, VCL Communications GmbH, Village Roadshow Productions, Warner Bros. Distributors (simplified from IMDb): Warner Bros., Columbia TriStar [US and various countries], Cascade Film, Intermedia Films (foreign), Sony Pictures International, Toho-Towa. 2003. 109 min.

Sequel to THE TERMINATOR and TERMINATOR 2: JUDGMENT DAY (q.v., this section [note: interpreting the films as a trilogy can alter their meanings]). In T-2, it is the private corporation, Cyberdyne Systems, that is responsible for the ultimately AI Skynet and the near extinction of the human species in "Judgment Day." In T-3, the source of this evil is a US military operation combining DARPA with a centralized US computer command (which may exist). Visuals indicate that in addition to Skynet, this operation produces the aircraft and super-tanks the machines use after Judgment Day to "terminate" the remaining humans. The moral is made explicit in images of US ICBMs taking off, and in voice-over: the war-machines humans develop to protect ourselves threaten our destruction. Note also: (1) Kristanna Loken's really-big-truck-driving T-X "Terminatrix" usually disguised as an upper-class woman, contrasted with Schwarzenegger's reprise of a scruffy biker, Nick Stahl's self-marginalized, working-class John Connor, and Claire Danes's general's daughter—working as the number 2 veterinarian at a veterinary clinic. (2) The ability of T-X to control other machines, including a fairly successful attempt to take over Schwarzenegger's Terminator. (3) Shift in human/machine difference from human feeling (pain/love) in T-1 to ability to cry in T-2, to, in T-3, the free-will ability of humans to choose suicide. (Terminators can nobly sacrifice themselves on a mission but cannot in the formulation of T-2, "self-terminate." Alternatively, Schwarzenegger's Terminator in T-3 nobly sacrifices himself and commits suicide, combining with other abilities seen in the final minutes of T-3 that might reduce the human/machine difference.) For variations on the motif of mechanized nuclear holocaust, see FAIL-SAFE (1964) and DR. STRANGELOVE. CAUTION: About all that remains of the insightful commentary on masculinity and machismo from the earlier TERMINATOR films is a comic "Macho Man" male-stripper scene for T-800 to get clothes—which includes some gratuitous gay stereotyping in the largely unnecessary dialog.