# The Terminator 3 review thread(spoilers marked) **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [July 2, 2003, 3:06am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-terminator-3-review-thread-spoilers-marked/185701 "2003-07-02T03:06:22Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![Neidhart](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/bbe5ce/32.png) [@Neidhart](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Neidhart)\ **Post date:** [July 4, 2003, 1:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-terminator-3-review-thread-spoilers-marked/185701/41 "2003-07-04T01:15:45Z")
One thing, though - the T-1s and the HK were prototypes and the base was a test facility. Who loaded them with live ammo? ---
**Author:** ![iamthewalrus\_3](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/258eb7/32.png) [@iamthewalrus\_3](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/iamthewalrus_3)\ **Post date:** [July 4, 2003, 1:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-terminator-3-review-thread-spoilers-marked/185701/42 "2003-07-04T01:25:58Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by Whack-a-Mole \* > \*\*Not quite: > > [spoiler]We know the Skynet base (or at least where they turned the thing on) is unsafe because the terminator initially refuses to take John there and specifically mentions that the base won’t survive but John insists on going anyway. > > As to letting Kate, John amd Terminator show-up in the Skynet base armed to the teeth and just letting it pass I can’t. I found that particular scene jarring. Terminatrix is wandering the base corrupting the proto-terminators…I can buy that…her getting in wouldn’t be a problem. Then we see Kate’s dad start Skynet, then terminatrix Kate shows then BAM…Arnie is shooting terminatrix with everything he’s got. He’s just ‘there’ all of a sudden. Suspension of disbelief is fine but when a movie shocks you out of your suspension it has failed in some fashion…at least for that set of scenes. [/spoiler] \*\* Actually: The terminator specifically mentions fallout in that area. The base, perhaps, will not be hit directly, but will be near enough that radioactivity would render any humans dead. I’d imagine that computers and other machines might have much higher tolerances to ionizing radiation (especially ones designed and used by the military. ---
**Author:** ![vandal](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/v/858c86/32.png) [@vandal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/vandal)\ **Post date:** [July 4, 2003, 3:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-terminator-3-review-thread-spoilers-marked/185701/43 "2003-07-04T03:43:46Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by Neidhart \* > \*\*One thing, though - the T-1s and the HK were prototypes and the base was a test facility. Who loaded them with live ammo? \*\* It’s a test facility, yes, but that doesn’t mean that live rounds can’t be used. I mean, the guns have to be tested for accuracy, stability, etc. ---
**Author:** ![HPL](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/3da27b/32.png) [@HPL](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/HPL)\ **Post date:** [July 4, 2003, 3:46am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-terminator-3-review-thread-spoilers-marked/185701/44 "2003-07-04T03:46:14Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by iamthewalrus(:3= \* > \*\*Actually: > > The terminator specifically mentions fallout in that area. The base, perhaps, will not be hit directly, but will be near enough that radioactivity would render any humans dead. I’d imagine that computers and other machines might have much higher tolerances to ionizing radiation (especially ones designed and used by the military. \*\* What about EMP? That should have wiped the Terminator’s hard drive clean. ---
**Author:** ![Fnoonf](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/f6c823/32.png) [@Fnoonf](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Fnoonf)\ **Post date:** [July 4, 2003, 4:07am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-terminator-3-review-thread-spoilers-marked/185701/45 "2003-07-04T04:07:41Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by Tuckerfan \* > \*\*The second one _could_ have been better, if they’d kept Arnold’s good side hidden until later in the film. (If you didn’t find out that Arnold was a good guy until Linda Hamilton did, the film would have kicked major ass! Instead, all it did was look pretty.) \*\* This is kind of funny. I was always of the same opinion, until I realized something. They probably _did_ try to keep it a secret initially, though it probably spilled out somewhere along the line. T2 is my favorite action film, so I’ve seen it quite a number of times. Each time, I notice something new that strengthens my hypothesis that they were in fact planning to keep it a secret initially, at least in the film’s editing stages. If you take a look at the movie’s opening scenes (both Terminators being “hatched” from the future, both of them finding suitable clothes/disguises, etc.) you’ll see that there’s nothing overtly evil about the Robert Patrick character from the get-go. Sure, he kills the cop whose guise he will take, but Arnold roughs up the guy whose clothes he takes pretty good (as well as his whole gang). Couple this with the fact that an audience who’s seen the first film will automatically assume Arnie’s the bad guy, and numerous subtle visual hints that the Robert Patrick character is there to do good (for example, when he pulls up in front of Connor’s foster parents’ home in the squad car, the camera lingers briefly on the “To Serve and Protect” crest on the driver’s side door) and an “uninformed” audience probably has a pretty good reason to believe Robert Patrick’s the big protector guy, not Arnold. The scene in the mall, where Connor is trapped between the two Terminators in the narrow corridor and each of them is heading towards him further strengthens the theory. It’s my guess that that scene was supposed to be far more climactic than it was; this was where the audience was supposed to suddenly gasp as Arnie steps on the roses, points the shotgun, then, amazingly, says “Get Down” instead of blowing young Connor’s brains out. That’s my 2 cents, anyway. Sorry for the hijack. I just found **Tuckerfan** ’s post intriguing, because I held the same opinion for so long. ---
**Author:** ![Skeezix](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/839c29/32.png) [@Skeezix](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Skeezix)\ **Post date:** [July 4, 2003, 4:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-terminator-3-review-thread-spoilers-marked/185701/46 "2003-07-04T04:44:58Z")
**Fnoonf** , that’s almost a verbatim transcript of the discussion Mrs. Skeezix and I had on the way to the theater, last night. Had a tighter lid been kept on the details of T2, that scene would have had much more impact, I think. That’s exactly what Cameron was shooting for, IMO. The fact that you never actually _see_ Robert Patrick kill the cop, explicitly, leads you to think of him as the next Kyle Reese, early on. And despite the fact that Arnold doesn’t kill any of the bikers, he’s a lot more brutal onscreen than the T-1000. [Hijack] During the filming of that biker bar scene, Arnold wore the loudest, most outrageous jams that he could lay his hands on, making most of the rest of the actors have to work hard just to keep a straight face while filming it. [/Hijack] **iamthewalrus(:3=**: Thank you! I didn’t think I’d heard any mention of the base being physically destroyed, but I was doubting my memory. Prevailing winds will carry fallout a lot further than the blast zone of a nuke. And since Skynet is now tied into _every_ missile launch computer (the virus that wasn’t a virus) it can assure that no return fire will hit the production/test base. > [@](#): > > _Originally posted by **Guinastasia** _: > \*\*Do they explain why Sarah Conner isn’t there? > > Also, how do they explain that the Terminators were still there, when they were destroyed in T2?\*\* **Major Kong** covered the first question, but specifically, she was diagnosed with leukemia shortly after the end of T2, but despite being given six months to live, she manages to hang on until the original date given for Judgement Day, just to make sure the world doesn’t go ka-blooey. And as to the second bit [spoiler]I don’t recall that it’s ever specifically mentioned in the film, now that I think about it. I’ve long had the suspiscion that Cyberdyne had a decent off-site backup of their files, which was in government hands, leaving the creation of Skynet to the military, instead of the company. Besides all that, Skynet _has_ to come to be somehow, or Kyle Reese never would have gone back in time, to father John. By the movie’s logic, once Kyle and that first Terminator showed up in 1984, the existance of Skynet was unavoidable. There’s a quick one-off by Arnold in T3 that Judgement Day is inevitable, and the events of T2 only postponed it. But they never _do_ outright explain it.[/spoiler] ---
**Author:** ![Duderdude2](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/cdc98d/32.png) [@Duderdude2](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Duderdude2)\ **Post date:** [July 4, 2003, 5:59am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-terminator-3-review-thread-spoilers-marked/185701/47 "2003-07-04T05:59:33Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by Fnoonf \* > \*\*This is kind of funny. I was always of the same opinion, until I realized something. They probably _did_ try to keep it a secret initially, though it probably spilled out somewhere along the line. T2 is my favorite action film, so I’ve seen it quite a number of times. Each time, I notice something new that strengthens my hypothesis that they were in fact planning to keep it a secret initially, at least in the film’s editing stages. If you take a look at the movie’s opening scenes (both Terminators being “hatched” from the future, both of them finding suitable clothes/disguises, etc.) you’ll see that there’s nothing overtly evil about the Robert Patrick character from the get-go. Sure, he kills the cop whose guise he will take, but Arnold roughs up the guy whose clothes he takes pretty good (as well as his whole gang). > > Couple this with the fact that an audience who’s seen the first film will automatically assume Arnie’s the bad guy, and numerous subtle visual hints that the Robert Patrick character is there to do good (for example, when he pulls up in front of Connor’s foster parents’ home in the squad car, the camera lingers briefly on the “To Serve and Protect” crest on the driver’s side door) and an “uninformed” audience probably has a pretty good reason to believe Robert Patrick’s the big protector guy, not Arnold. > > The scene in the mall, where Connor is trapped between the two Terminators in the narrow corridor and each of them is heading towards him further strengthens the theory. It’s my guess that that scene was supposed to be far more climactic than it was; this was where the audience was supposed to suddenly gasp as Arnie steps on the roses, points the shotgun, then, amazingly, says “Get Down” instead of blowing young Connor’s brains out. > > That’s my 2 cents, anyway. > > Sorry for the hijack. I just found **Tuckerfan** ’s post intriguing, because I held the same opinion for so long. \*\* Actually, that’s exactly how it was intended. James Cameron says so on the new commentary track that accompanied the new DVD re-release of T2. He sounded kind of upset though that it was virtually impossible to keep a secret due to the nature of interviews, etc. “So Arnold, what’s it like to play a good guy”? Anyways, it was definitely intended as a secret and they did a damn fine job of it IMO. ---
**Author:** ![Guinastasia](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/guinastasia/32/5751_2.png) [@Guinastasia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Guinastasia)\ **Post date:** [July 4, 2003, 6:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-terminator-3-review-thread-spoilers-marked/185701/48 "2003-07-04T18:47:23Z")
Back when I had a crush on Edward Furlong when I was thirteen (and I mean a MAJOR CRUSH!) I had this book about child actors that featured him. Basically, it mentioned that the reason Arnold was playing the good guy was because people wouldn’t buy him as the bad guy, or it wouldn’t be “good for him,” because by now he had married into the Kennedy family, was on the President’s physical fitness council, etc. So it wouldn’t work. Kind of stupid, but there you go. One thing I found interesting was that Robert Patrick’s T-1000 was so much more evil, and so NON-threatening, because unlike Arnold, he could be more, “human.” He smiled, he laughed, he joked. He played a cop, someone you could trust, etc. And Arnold is this bad boy unemotional dude on a big ass bike. ---
**Author:** ![Svt4Him](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/7feea3/32.png) [@Svt4Him](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Svt4Him)\ **Post date:** [July 4, 2003, 7:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-terminator-3-review-thread-spoilers-marked/185701/49 "2003-07-04T19:08:50Z")
The problem with time travel, is if you analyze it too much, you loose the amusement of the movie. If they had d-day, or even pushed it back three years or so, then the first terminator would have not come when he did, as he was built from technology that had three additional years to make, and the whole thing gets messed up. That is also why time travel is only possible in the minds of sci-fi. For a movie, the only reason I thought it was better is simply because of the gfx. Otherwise it didn’t have a lot of great twists and turns. But then I didn’t really expect deep dialogue with Arnold. ---
**Author:** ![handsomeharry](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/e9c0ed/32.png) [@handsomeharry](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/handsomeharry)\ **Post date:** [July 4, 2003, 8:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-terminator-3-review-thread-spoilers-marked/185701/50 "2003-07-04T20:50:38Z")
as an aside, how does arnie look? i mean, the guy is in his mid 50s. ---
**Author:** ![Duderdude2](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/cdc98d/32.png) [@Duderdude2](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Duderdude2)\ **Post date:** [July 4, 2003, 10:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-terminator-3-review-thread-spoilers-marked/185701/51 "2003-07-04T22:21:31Z")
Arnie looks just as he did in T2. It’s remarkable. ---
**Author:** ![Skeezix](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/839c29/32.png) [@Skeezix](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Skeezix)\ **Post date:** [July 5, 2003, 2:55am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-terminator-3-review-thread-spoilers-marked/185701/52 "2003-07-05T02:55:49Z")
Indeed, whether or not physical or CG FX were used (or quite possibly not) the man still looks damned good. As I’m rewatching T2 (well, while I’m surfing the boards, not really watching it to the exclusion of other activities) I remembered one other thing that I wanted to mention. [spoiler]At the end of the film, Arnold ends up with about half his synthetic flesh burned away. While I am a true fan of old-school mechanical and physical special effects, there are some things that you can only do really well with CGI. When he looks directly at the screen, and it’s obvious that the half of his face that’s still got meat is really Arnold, and not a puppet, and you can see the background through the gaps in the metal of the other half (most noticeably at the jaw line)… _That_ was pretty freakin’ spiffy.[/spoiler] ---
**Author:** ![Menocchio](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/9de053/32.png) [@Menocchio](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Menocchio)\ **Post date:** [July 5, 2003, 4:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-terminator-3-review-thread-spoilers-marked/185701/53 "2003-07-05T04:24:40Z")
It was okay, but I felt the movie suffered badly in comparison with the previous entries. [spoiler]I was disappointed that they utterly dropped the themes of “no fate” from the second film. Everything is fated now, if the details can be tweaked. Of course, the terminators’ mission hinges on the theory that the future is potentially mutable, or else they’d know that trying to kill or prevent John is futile. In the first film, it’s stated that the Terminator was a last-ditch effort by a losing Skynet. In T2, it seems that there’s at least one other plan and killer as well. Here, we have yet another, still more advanced model, and we learn that John is actually killed (implying that these two were sent back some time after the first two batches left). I also have trouble buying that John would be killed by one of the only forms he _knows_ to belong to a terminator.[/spoiler] I also thought the humor was kind of forced. ---
**Author:** ![El\_Elvis\_Rojo](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/898d66/32.png) [@El\_Elvis\_Rojo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/El_Elvis_Rojo)\ **Post date:** [July 5, 2003, 2:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-terminator-3-review-thread-spoilers-marked/185701/54 "2003-07-05T14:23:58Z")
Okay, spoil something for me: How is John killed in the future? Because if that happens before they send the terminator and Kyle back, that’s really dumb. ---
**Author:** ![vandal](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/v/858c86/32.png) [@vandal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/vandal)\ **Post date:** [July 5, 2003, 4:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-terminator-3-review-thread-spoilers-marked/185701/55 "2003-07-05T16:23:00Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by El Elvis Rojo \* > \*\*Okay, spoil something for me: How is John killed in the future? Because if that happens before they send the terminator and Kyle back, that’s really dumb. \*\* It is revealed that… he is assassinated by Arnie himself. The same model that is sent to protect him in T3. ---
**Author:** ![Major\_Kong](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/b9bd4f/32.png) [@Major\_Kong](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Major_Kong)\ **Post date:** [July 5, 2003, 6:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-terminator-3-review-thread-spoilers-marked/185701/56 "2003-07-05T18:40:29Z")
> [@](#): > > he is assassinated by Arnie himself. The same model that is sent to protect him in T3. Actually, it is the same specific unit, not just model. ---
**Author:** ![Guinastasia](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/guinastasia/32/5751_2.png) [@Guinastasia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Guinastasia)\ **Post date:** [July 5, 2003, 6:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-terminator-3-review-thread-spoilers-marked/185701/57 "2003-07-05T18:43:50Z")
H’uh? Why-that doesn’t even make sense? ---
**Author:** ![SuperNova](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ea666f/32.png) [@SuperNova](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SuperNova)\ **Post date:** [July 6, 2003, 3:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-terminator-3-review-thread-spoilers-marked/185701/58 "2003-07-06T15:29:14Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by Guinastasia \* > \*\*H’uh? Why-that doesn’t even make sense? \*\* [spoiler] Yes, the T3 Arnie is the exact same unit that kills John in the future. According to the movie, the robots sent that model of Terminator in to kill Conner because of his “emotional attachment” to it. After it killed him, the other rebels succeeded in capturing it and reprogrammed it to protect Conner after being sent back in time. What I don’t get is why future-Conner would be stupid enough to let a person who he KNOWS is a Terminator close to him. But I’m willing to suspend my belief because it got Arnold in the movie. [/spoiler] ---
**Author:** ![El\_Elvis\_Rojo](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/898d66/32.png) [@El\_Elvis\_Rojo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/El_Elvis_Rojo)\ **Post date:** [July 6, 2003, 9:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-terminator-3-review-thread-spoilers-marked/185701/59 "2003-07-06T21:51:45Z")
Hmmm…so, **Supernova** , does that mean that the terminators in the future are able to make T-800s that DON’T look like Arnold? I remember in the first one, the terminator that attacked the hideout in Reyse’s dream looked nothing like Arnold, and it seems really stupid for them to make them all look the same if they’re supposed to be “infiltration” units, but T-2 kinda gave me the impression they all looked the same. Do we see any humanoid ones that don’t look like Arnie? ---
**Author:** ![Lumpy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lumpy/32/446_2.png) [@Lumpy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lumpy)\ **Post date:** [July 7, 2003, 12:58am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-terminator-3-review-thread-spoilers-marked/185701/60 "2003-07-07T00:58:34Z")
Of course, you could argue that John Connor didn’t know he was going to be assassinated- **until** the past John got that information. Remember, the unit refused to answer John’s question, but apparently no one had told it not to reply to his (future) wife’s query. Presumably history changed at that point. Anyway, in response to the whole time paradox thing, it seems to me that this is a modern take on a very ancient theme. At least as far back as the ancient Greek myths, if not further, we have stories of people trying to escape prophecies only to fail; often their very actions leading to their doom. This was supposed to show that try as we might, you can’t escape the will of the gods. It’s the old question of do we make our fate, or does our fate make us? I think that overall the three movies argue that it’s both. I do have a question about the timing of when the terminator units show up in the past. In the first movie I presume that Skynet sent the first terminator back to the earliest time it had any record of the whereabouts of _the_ Sarah Connor, mother of _the_ John Connor. And even then the terminator only knew that she was living somewhere in L.A. at that date. (Presumably most data was lost in the nuclear annihilation; the sole trace Skynet had on her might have been something like a fifty-year old parking ticket.) But I don’t know why the T-1000 turned up on the date it did in the second movie; why then? The third movie said That it had something to do with John meeting his future wife on that date, but I don’t really understand what that has to do with it. Perhaps Skynet literally _can’t_ send terminators back in time to any time or place where the logical paradoxes would prevent them from being sent back; they just can’t “materialize” there, or something. Overall, I consider the third movie to be a faithful way of continuing the franchise. I found the bittersweet ending particularly poignant. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-terminator-3-review-thread-spoilers-marked/185701.md?page=2) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-terminator-3-review-thread-spoilers-marked/185701.md?page=4)