Time Travel for Dummies

Rating: 8/10 (6 July 2003)

!!! WARNING: SPOILERS !!!
"Terminator 3" is not a great film, but it is a very good one. Lacking is the intense score by Beltrami, the sense of doom and dread in every shot, and the gritty atmosphere created by James Cameron. As a technical film, it is expertly handled. But it is missing its artistic vision. Jonathan Mostow is a competent (even talented) director--see "Breakdown" for an excellent suspense film--but he was given the task of taking care of another director's baby.
In trying to satisfy all the prerequisite elements of the Terminator films, he seems to have sacrificed the essence of them. They're gritty, violent, doom-filled stories about the end of the world. "Terminator 3" occasionally achieves that sense of defeat, particularly in the final ten minutes. But with all the mayhem and action sequences, there doesn't seem to be an urgency about them. It's an excellent summer flick, but don't expect the kind of grandeur that the first two films exhibited.
With that being said, "Terminator 3" almost seemed essential (and makes me wonder why James Cameron didn't want to make it). If, as James Cameron's films stated, John Connor sent his own father back in time to protect his mother, he would not exist if Judgment Day did not occur. This makes for a paradox--how can someone exist if their father is from the future? The future must be set, and if the future is set, what we decide can't change it. It could take hundreds of films to adequately deal with the implications here.
An episode of "The Outer Limits" dealt with this nicely--a woman changed her life by going back in time and "correcting" all the problems. Every time she came back, her brain was forced with another lifetime of memories. If you've fixed all the problems in your past, there is no reason for you to go back in time. Your present would be altered without repair.
In all actuality, there could be no movie about the events portrayed in the "Terminator" films. Granted, this is taking it way beyond the sci-fi roots and trying to ground the films far too much in reality. But hypothetically speaking, the moment a robot is sent from the future, everything would change. If a robot was sent to the past, and it was meant to destroy a certain person, then its very existence proves its failure inevitable. If it did succeed in killing a particular person, then the moment it arrives in the past, it would vanish--there would be no need for this robot to be sent back in time to kill that person. Seeing as how killing the person would alter the future, why would they need to send a robot back? How could the future be dead-set if it can be changed so simply? Something not dealt with in time travel films--how does time travel affect the past and present as well? If you send a terminator back, and they complete their mission, your present is no longer the same, you would not have to send a machine back in time to kill that person--they'd be dead from the previous timeline. So there must be infinite timelines--and time travel would simply be traveling from one version of time to another. The theories of time travel really give me a headache if I think too deeply about them.
Another thought: sending something back in time is probably an impossible task. It is well beyond the limits of my own mind. If you send someone back in time, it is the present to everyone else. This would mean to those people that the future is set, that it has already occurred.

"Terminator 3" deals with all of this, though hidden beneath layers. You have to dig to figure it out--it doesn't tell you everything. That's one of the impressive traits of Mostow's film. The script smartly gives us the questions, but lets us delve into them. If John Connor is killed by one of the Terminators, then the future is changed, and John Connor can not send his own father back to protect his mother. Talk about your mind-warps!
While this is merely just scratching the surface of the paradoxes time travel theory creates, it is after all, just a movie. "Terminator 3" has a decent cast (Kristanna Loken leaves a bit to be desired, although she acts about as much like a killing robot as I would expect one to act), a well-written script, and a talented director. The action is above par, and sometimes downright brutal. Best yet, the ending is a downer, a surprise that caught me off guard. That a big-budget film would attempt such an ending (and intelligently deal with it) makes me feel a little more generous with my rating of the film. All in all, I recommend this one as a good continuation of James Cameron's imaginative story, although lacking his artistic creativity.
Rating: 3 stars out of 4 (*** out of ****)