Not nearly as satisfying as T2, but pretty fun

Rating: 7/10 (7 July 2003)

John Connor is shown in a flash-forward in the beginning of 'T3,' not just as triumphant, but triumphant with an American flag draped over his shoulder. An American man saves the world from the small-minded machines. And so begins the sometimes not-so-subtle love song to the American man, that 'T3' so often is. A love song sung in broken English, and with a German accent.
Nothing that Hollywood puts this much energy and money ino can ever be dismissed as just an action picture.
A film student could probably do a pretty decent dissertation on the differences in directing styles by comparing 'T2' and 'T3' as two films that are as similar as two films can get in terms of subject-matter, but which differ so noticeably in tone and subtext.
The cold, dark blue world of T2 was full of sophisticated foreboding and it couched it's fantastic effects and spectacular violence in some interesting meditations on the concepts of Generation X and of the passage of time. Arnold was older, but still the picture of vitality and robotic perfection. There was some poetry to the picture.
The present effort is not devoid of these elements, but comes precipitously close on a number of different levels.
For those of us who were 16 when the original 'Terminator' came out, watching 'T2' was like watching your idiot friend get a date with his sexy first-year college professor. Someone big decided to take this slightly moronic but highly entertaining concept seriously and make a silk purse out of it and it was great. 'T3' is kind of like what it'd be like if that friend came around again after marrying the professor and tried hard to remember what it was like to be down with his boys way back when. You want it to be the same, but it just isn't. It's an exercise in sentimentality mostly.
But what we don't get in terms of depth and scope, we get in terms of Arnold's personal vision of masculinity. I mean, let's face it, everybody knows the 'Terminator' movies are for boys -- the girls have 'Sex in the City.' Arnold's commentary on the state of the American male ego is subtle, but if you watch for it, it becomes very clear.
Firstly, I was highly suspect of the newcomer bad-guy, or gal, in this case. From press pictures, she didn't seem scary at all -- or even mechanical in any way. I thought the angular dimensions and sheer size of someone like Brigitte Nielsen, in her heyday, would have been far more adequate a choice. But I have to say Kristanna Loken won me over early. Soft and supple, but somehow menacing in her sheer determination, I don't think it's an accident a pretty young German woman wound up opposite my favorite Austrian killer robot. And I doubt it was an accident she comes dressed in the guise of a leather-clad, Lexus-driving material girl who pumps up her breast-size to get out of trouble.
Further, the scene in which Arnold and Kristanna square off in a men's room is very nearly worth the price of admission. Not simply a dance of destruction, but subtly, a contest of dominance and submission. Indeed, Arnold works his old-fashioned German values into this film probably more than any other I've seen. Arnold's robot makes value judgments this time around and says things like "Maybe you're not the John Connor I know." I doubt it took more than a couple of Nazi movies for Schwarzenegger to feel it was his duty to rehabilitate the sensibilities of his grandparents to the typical American if he ever got the opportunity. One must wonder how much he is appealing the current, non-threatening (think Tom Hanks) consensus of movie manhood, when his character says things like "I am an obsolete design" and "she is a healthy female of breeding age." Finally, *** SPOILER *** one can't help but read into the imagery of Arnold's robot pulling a grasping female robot off of the John Connor character and ramming his, Arnold's, heart (metaphorically) down her throat to finish her off. The young Connor escapes with his bride-to-be. This is a powerful image of male dominance that implies something of fatherhood and parental dynamics.
It's easy to debate these inferences, but it's important to remember that when Hollywood whispers, everyone hears.
I think old Arnold thinks the American male is a little embattled and a little down on himself and thinks we could take a lesson from our vanquished teutonic foes. Because this is the movie he'd make given that mindset.
Do we need this shot in the arm? Hey, I'M not gonna argue with him. It's Arnold!
This movie review by Erik Gloor