Winter was coming, the nights were colder, and so going out was definitely out of the question! So what better way to spend an evening than snuggled up nice and warm in front of the fire/one heater in a first floor flat, watching a nice action packed DVD? Well we couldn’t think of a better way and so off we trotted to the local DVD/video rental shop to see what they had in. Now in November they kind of went through a dry month with not many new films coming in but this month there were meant to be at least 5 new films out. There was actually a great choice of movies available when we got there but just one caught my eye…Terminator 3: The rise of the machines.

You may have seen this advertised, well at least you should have because there has been quite a bit of hype for the film. I have to admit, when I first saw it advertised, I wondered what the point of making a 3rd one was. For those of you who have seen terminator’s one and two, you’ll know he died in the end so how could they bring him back? Well this is a movie and like all films, anything goes. But when you actually see the film you will realise how they could bring him back and you’ll also see just how well it has worked out. So if you haven’t seen this film and you’re still curious about the third and final (?) terminator film, then read on to find out exactly what you are missing out on.

***A little history of the Terminator***

I wouldn’t say you need to see the first and second terminator movies to see this film because the makers of it have made sure it’s easy to watch as a first terminator movie. I would however recommend you do see at least one of the first ones before watching this because it does have some reference to the earlier ones (well, about one line, but still! lol). So just to quickly sum up what happened in the first and second terminator movies here is a short paragraph you might find interesting:

Terminator one saw Arnie playing the part of a bad guy out to kill the mother of an unborn child that would eventually grow up to save the world from the machines. He didn’t succeed though and he ended up in pieces at a petrol station. So that’s terminator one summed up but what about the second one?

Well in the second one Arnie is back only this time as a good guy out to save the child who has now been born, from an evil terminator. Now I found this one better for graphics because the evil terminator could now turn itself into liquid form and it had a massive spike on the end of its fingers. It killed John Connor’s (the boy who Arnie is trying to save), parents and it wasn’t going to rest until it killed him. Arnie died at the end in his machine form after a long goodbye scene and he took himself down into some lava stuff to kill himself in order to save John. So that’s the second one summed up for you and that was made in 1991.

So as you can see that was a quick description of the first and second terminator films, to find out more about them in better detail you should check out other opinions on them specifically. Now onto terminator 3 and first things first who is in it?
***The cast and crew***

First I think it is only fair that I should give a mention to the creators of this fine film so here goes…

Terminator 3: The Rise of the Machines was directed by Jonathan Mostow. He isn’t the most famous director in the world but from this film it looks like his career will certainly take off more than it has done so far. He has also written films and published a couple too and his most recent film to be coming out is one that will be appearing in 2005 called Mexicali (you heard it here first!).

A more famous man created the characters of the film who you may know as James Cameron. James’ most famous film that I can think of that he wrote was Titanic. I remember watching an interview with him on the Oprah Winfrey show. Anyway other films that he has written include ‘True Lies’, ‘Terminator two’, and ‘The Terminator’. He has done many things in his career and he definitely is one of the most respected film writers/producers in his field.

Gale Anne Hurd was an executive producer of the film and like James Cameron, she has an impressive list of films to her career. Some of these include ‘The Hulk’, ‘Armageddon’, and ‘Tremor’s’.

So as you can see it has an impressive crew but what about the characters of the film? Who are they and who do they play? Well just for you here is a list of the cast and the characters that they play within the film:

Arnold Schwarzenegger returns as a good terminator in this film. He is of course, as always, a machine and he returns to save John Connor. Arnie has been in every terminator film making him the main star of them all and I have to say he gives an excellent performance in them that when you see him out of character you still see him as the terminator. He hasn’t just starred in the terminator though as most people will know. Some other famous films he has starred in are ‘The 6th Day’, ‘Doctor Dolittle 2’ (as the voice of the white wolf), and ‘Jingle all the way’. There are many more films that I could list but we’d be here a long time!

John Connor is the other main character in the film and he is played by Nick Stahl. Now Nick hasn’t starred in a lot of films that I have heard of but he has still been in quite a lot! The only one I have heard of is ‘The Thin Red Line’. However his performance in this film as John Connor is really impressive and I’d definitely see another film that he appears in for just his acting techniques. Anyway John Connor is now in his 20’s and he doesn’t have a place that he calls home which makes me think he must be really lonely. I actually feel kind of sorry for him because once again he ends up having to save his life from machines. He seems to be brave and independent.

A famous actress that I haven’t heard anything from for ages also plays a big part in this film. She is of course Claire Danes. She is better known for playing a leading role as Juliet in the modern version of ‘Romeo and Juliet’, playing alongside Leonardo Dicaprio. She has also starred in ‘The Hours’, ‘Igby Goes Down’, and ‘Brokedown Palace’. In this film she plays the part of Kate Brewster, a pretty obvious love interest for John Connor. The film starts off with her engaged and she works at a local vets practice. She is quite highly strung and she is known for making the right choices in life and never messing up.

Now another famous actress which the guys will have heard of is Kristanna Loken. She plays the part of the bad terminator in this film and I have to say she gives a great performance. This is the first film I have seen that I have noticed her in but she has starred in ‘Panic’ and ‘Gangland’, just to name a couple. As the bad girl, she is built the most powerful terminator so far. She is harder than Arnie and she has several showdowns with him that show this. She first appears on our screens at the beginning, naked as with all the terminators that are sent to earth. She gets her clothes from a woman in a fancy car.

Scott Peterson is Kate Brewster’s fiancé and he is played by Mark Famiglietti. Now I knew I’d seen him somewhere but after doing some research I found out it wasn’t from a film I had seen but from a sky television series called ‘hang time’. He hasn’t really been in a lot of films or television programs but he is still young and there is plenty of time for him to get noticed as a talented actor. He doesn’t play a huge part in the film, in fact he probably only appears around 3 times before his character is killed off so all you really need to know is he is Kate Brewster’s fiancé.

The only other notable character I’d say is Kate Brewster’s father, Robert Brewster. He is played by David Andrews who has also starred in films like ‘Hannibal’, ‘Fight Club’, and ‘The Rat Pack’. So even though I’ve never heard of him before he is a talented actor. In the film he works at a big company that works on computers. They create machines and things and conduct various experiments on them from what I could gather.

So you’ve seen the cast and crew and I’ve no doubt you’ll be impressed by the list of actors so let’s move on to the actual story.

***The Plotline***

Now I don’t usually like doing this part of the film opinion because it can really spoil a film if you haven’t seen it. However I have come to the conclusion that no matter how well a person describes a film, you still have to watch it to appreciate it and understand it properly yourself. So without further ado here is my version of what the plotline is:

The story starts off with John Connor sitting on a bridge, drinking and looking down into the water. He is telling his story explaining why he is sat on that bridge and why he isn’t snuggled up at home safely. When his parents were killed and after the last terminator film he figured he wouldn’t be safe anywhere and it was his job to protect himself by not having an address, phone number or any other contact information that could potentially allow his opposition to find out where he is and to kill him. So this means that he has been living rough in order to survive.
This has worked out well for him up until he needs some painkillers. So he brakes into the local vets and takes some animal tablets. It then goes to Kate Brewster’s apartment where she is in bed with her fiancé, and it shows her receive a call telling her to go to the vets urgently. So she gets there and sees John hiding there. She thinks he is a junkie and she gladly informs him that the tablets he took were tablets used for neutering cats and dogs. She locks him in a cage and calls the police. This we soon find out is a big mistake.

While this is going on T-X (the bad terminator) has come to earth in her naked state and she has taken a fancy sports car and already killed her first victim (the sports car’s owner). She also proceeds to kill two policemen because they stopped her for speeding and her exact words before she killed them were ‘I like your gun’. It was actually pretty funny because in order to distract the policemen, she made her breasts bigger. It worked a treat and that’s how she killed them. She goes on to look for a few names in her memory which are all connected to John Connor and Kate Brewster in some way.

So within the first 15 minutes there are quite a few people dead!

Anyway while they are stuck at the vets an old woman comes in with a cat and T-X is on her way to the vets too. Luckily for Kate and John, they realise that T-X is there because she kills the old woman. Now this is the first encounter John and Kate have with T-X but it definitely isn’t the last! They seem to have several close shaves and I have to say it really keeps you on the edge of your seat.

Arnie arrives in a strange looking round thing, also in a naked state and he gets his clothes inside a strip bar. He walks into a strip bar for women and everyone thinks he is there to strip for them until he tells one of the males dancers to take off his clothes. It is quite funny really because the stripper seems to be gay and he thinks Arnie wants to see him naked. However Arnie forces him to take his clothes off and the result is Arnie looking like a biker. He has some funny star glasses that he wears at first too.

So Arnie goes off to the vets and saves John and Kate from T-X. They then drive away with Kate locked in the back not having a clue what is happening and she thinks they have kidnapped her.

We then find out that Kate has to be protected too because in the future she is John’s wife and they have children. They have to get to a safe place because judgement day is coming. John thought they had stopped judgement day before but they hadn’t and Arnie is saying that they cannot stop it so he is taking them to a safe place where they will stay alive while the rest of the world dies.

Of course that isn’t the end of the film and John and Kate soon realise that Kate’s father’s company is what is causing the war and that they need to go there to stop what is about to happen in less than an hour. So even though there is some hesitation from Arnie, off they go to Kate’s father.

So with some more near misses with T-X they reach Kate’s father and he tells them where they have to go to shut down the system. He gets killed by machines and Kate and John get set to go to the secret location with some codes her father has given them.

However while this is happening and the machines are going mad in the building, T-X has had a massive collision with Arnie and she has almost completely destroyed him. She didn’t though because she wanted to turn him against John so that he would kill him for her. So she leaves him to wake up with his new mission and she sets off running after Kate and John. They are clever though and they get her stuck to some magnets in a part of the building which then gives them time to get to their aeroplane and jet off to their new location. Arnie however wakes up and goes to the aeroplane in order to kill John. He still has a little of the old Arnie in him though so he still kind of knows that his mission is to save John not kill him. His killing instinct is too strong though so instead he tells John to get out of there before he kills him.

They do manage to escape after a tear jerking moment of Arnie shutting himself down before he kills John, and now they just have to get to their chosen location. When they do they type in the codes given to them by Kate’s father to open a huge door into the secret location. T-X catches up with them though after she had turned herself into liquid and escaped from the magnets. Again they have a near death experience with her but Arnie comes to the rescue and she ends up looking very ugly with big blue robot eyes going after them as the door is shutting. It’s like one of those doors that come down and people have to jump under them before they shut. John says his goodbye to Arnie while the door is closing and Arnie is holding it up for him but while he does that T-X grabs his foot. He manages to brake free though and Arnie shoves a grenade thing in T-X’s mouth and stays there with it until it blows up.

So John and Kate are now left in a room full of computers but it doesn’t take them long to realise that the computers are all really old and they no longer work. They have been led to safety just like Arnie had said they would. They realise that they will survive and the rest of the world will die in 2 minutes and that is their destiny. It then ends and I have to say I found it to be a surprising ending.

Now I haven’t gone into a lot of detail there but that’s only because I didn’t want to spoil it too much for people. I will go into a tiny bit more detail on some scenes now as I go through what my favourite parts of the movie were.

***Aimee’s favourite parts***

My favourite parts were as follows:

1) Arnie getting his clothes.

I really thought it was funny when he was telling the gay guy to take his clothes off and the gay guy was telling him to be patient and that he’d get his turn soon enough. Even after Arnie had got his clothes it was funny to see what he looked like in tight fitting biker clothes. He had these funny glasses that looked like something out of Las Vegas like Elvis style and when he put them on it really made me laugh.

2) Arnie and T-X battling part 1

I think one of the best scenes was when Kate and John had been saved by Arnie and they were in a truck, and T-X had taken over police cars and a fire engine to follow them and stop them so she could kill them. She was in a big truck which had a huge hook on it and Arnie was on it hanging for dear life as she knocked him into everything possible. This was also probably the best graphics scene with lots of great detailed, graphic scenes of things blowing up and Arnie going into buildings etc. She managed to get Arnie knocked off the hook by smacking him into a fire engine. He then took over the fire engine and set off after T-X again.

3) Arnie and T-X battling part 2

The second best battle between Arnie and T-X for me was when T-X changed her legs to wrap around Arnie’s body and her head turned completely round to face him after he had captured her. This was possible because she could turn herself into liquid. This was another good graphics scene.

Those are just 3 of my favourite parts of the movie that stood out but there were loads more. I really don’t like spoiling a film for people, especially one this good!

***What I thought about the film***

I absolutely loved this film as I felt it was action packed from the beginning. I suppose as with all films it did have a slow bit but unlike other films, this one only had a two minute slow section, not a twenty minute one!

I found it kept me on the edge of my seat all the way through too as they were always having to escape from T-X and unlike the other terminator movies T-X was a lot stronger than Arnie so it made it increasingly difficult for them to escape.

The graphics were the best I’ve seen in ages and the film should definitely get an award for them. It’s a great film for action lovers and I found the plotline gripping (even if I didn’t make it sound that way above). There were a lot of twists and turns in the film and everything came together like a jigsaw puzzle but it wasn’t one of those storylines that you could guess what was going to happen. I don’t know about you but I don’t enjoy a film that much when you can figure out before the end what was going to happen. It’s nice to have that element of surprise and this film definitely has that.

When the film was first advertised I didn’t think I’d like it as it didn’t seem to be my kind of film. I’m more into romantic, soppy ones or comedies. Arnie didn’t really appeal to me. However when we received a free previews disc, I watched it and thought it looked pretty good. I still had my reservations though as I loved Anger Management from it’s previews but noticed that it had only shown beginning bits and the rest of the film was a bit boring. This wasn’t boring at all though as the action bits were all the way through, not just at the beginning.

So I would recommend seeing this film if you haven’t already seen it. From a woman’s point of view I feel it was outstanding and definitely something I’ll be buying on DVD to keep in my collection. I’d say this is one of the best films to be brought out this year.

***Runtime, certified information and DVD extra information***

This film runs for a total of 109 minutes and it is rated as a UK12A. It does have a lot of fighting in it but I wouldn’t say it was gory. Now something I find interesting is on my last film opinion I wrote about ‘Full Frontal’ which was classed as a UK18 and Sweden 11. That was because of sex and violence etc. However this film has no sex in it or any real sexual references etc and it is quite a tame film so I don’t understand why it is a 12A in the UK and a 15 in Sweden? Ah well the world will remain a mystery.

There are quite a few extras included with this DVD compared to some other films. You should find included:

*Documentary – This features talking heads that tell you about themselves and why they
like working on the film.

*Terminal Flaws, gag reel – I personally like watching things like this, the last ones I saw
were on the Men in Black two film. They are basically just
clips of people messing around while making the film etc.

• T3 Visual Effects lab – There are several categories under this title including, Crane
  Crane chase (one of my favourite scenes), Future War,
  T-X transformation, Crystal Peak, Cyberdyne research and a
  Create your own visual effects section. I feel these are pretty
  good and definitely something different to other film extras.
  
• Photo Galleries – Obviously a place to see relevant photo’s of terminator 3 cast, etc.

*Filmographies

*Making of the video Game

*Weapons and Actor profiles

*T3 video game trailer

*Easter eggs (hidden features)

*Terminator Timeline – This helps you understand more about the plotlines of all 3 terminator films.

*Web Links

*Interactive Menu

*Scene options

*SGT Candy Scene – This is a deleted scene that wasn’t put into the movie.

So as you can see there really are a lot of extras…far more than a lot of other films. Personally I only watched one or two of them as I aren’t too fussed with some DVD extras you can get.

***My final word to you***

My final words to you are: Watch this film! You really won’t regret it but if you do please do not blame me lol.

So that concludes my opinion, sorry for boring you out of your brains and until next time my fellow cioer’s…

I’ll be back! (lol sorry couldn’t resist that one!)

Aimee xxx