T3: Marketable Sequel?

Rating: Null/10 (26 August 2003)

It's almost tradition for each sequel in an entry to slip from its roots and drift more and more into the realms of comedy. It's also tradition for the scope to expand to make it "bigger" and "better." This is most apparent in the horror genre where sequels are in abundance, meanwhile comedy sequels just become more and more mindless. The Terminator franchise also follows this trend.
While I'm certainly not against easing up on the tension every now and again with well placed humor, T3 fails to capture the essence of its apocalyptic predecessors and convince me that it is, indeed, a Terminator film. In T2, Cameron managed to maintain the fact we still deal with machines even if our model 101 killing machine is spouting the occasional Connor-taught one liners. While I liked some of the humor, I didn't much care for quite a bit of it but I won't go into detail on which instances bugged me.
While I'm not against the film due to the lack of the original talent, either Mostow was too eager to create an homage to Cameron's past entries and cluttered the screen with too much homage and too little film or the studio wanted him to re-create someone elses work. I'll give Mostow the benefit of the doubt because I feel somewhere in T3 there's a truly excellent film screaming to get out, but not a Cameron film-a Mostow film. It feels too much like a fish out of water for me to truly enjoy all the way.
Though I have to say, I was happy to find a third Marco Beltrami score that I liked. While Fiedel's original scores were not the absolute greatest scores in the world, Termniator does have a very distinct musical signature to it and a very well done main theme. I won't rush out and buy this Terminator score any time soon, Beltrami does bring an interesting traditional scoring presence to Fiedel's synthetic creations and does follow along in similar veins even if I really didn't like the orchestral rendition of the Terminator main theme, itself.
Like the previously released Matrix 2, T3 suffers from action in excess. It has me worried about the future of action films, actually. As action packed and high tech as these chases are, I find myself yawning from boredom along the tail end of them. Let's face it, we've seen all of this before. Different vehicles, different special effects techniques, but we've seen our share of car chases/gun fights/action scenes . . . making them longer is not going to make them more interesting. I wonder what director will be the first to direct the very first film composed solely of one action scene? Hmm.
I found myself also making the mistake of asking too many questions like "If the T-X has power over other machines, why didn't she utilize it more?" or "Why doesn't she use her cannon to blow up the good guys right there?" I didn't find the T-X too terribly intriguing since they made her so advanced and so much more powerful than anything the good guys could throw at her - I couldn't see how the film would last more than 20 minutes if she utilized her advantages most efficiently, which, realistically, is how Skynet would program her.
The T-1000 concept was a much better idea. He was still very limited, but did he ever take advantage of what he -could- do. He used his mimetic-poly-alloy attributes to the fullest in some of the coolest on-screen displays.
The on screen rise of the machines I could have lived without, unmasking Skynet was a mistake because 1) Skynet's explanation was unbelievable and 2) the previously unseen, mysterious entity, now has a face and form.
The images of global genocide by atomic weaponry had negligible power - Gary Larson drew Far Side comic strips with the same imagery. The scope T3 went for and how it executed it deadened the total impact. Cameron had it right by keeping things off Skynet, itself, and keeping the rise of the machines isolated to one perspective. He kept the camera down on earth where the war would tug hardest: on everyday people. Atomic detonation from the perspective of orbit shows the destruction of land masses, and leaves the billions destined to die to be written off in an abstract paraphrase where a full thesis is needed - it's the cliffnotes to the novel, and not the words of the artist, himself.
Like many sequels, T3 disappointed me because it failed to realize less is more. I didn't hate T3, and I didn't think it sucked. Were it not a part of the Terminator universe, it'd be a decent action flick (and it still is a decent action flick inside the T-universe) . . . but it's the standardized, market-driven Terminator movie that lacks the vision and craft of its predecessors.