Indeterminate Termination

Last night I finally saw "Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines." I realize that if I say "finally" like that, it makes it seem as though I had really been anticipating this cinematic masterpiece, which I assure you was not the case. But unfortunately for guys my age, it’s just something you have to do. You have to complete your allegiance to films of your youth. I think we could safely call this "The Star-Wars Syndrome." Our loyalty to the original Star Wars trilogy forces us to go see the new installments, both of which have been the sci-fi, cinematic equivalent of a train-wreck. I could write better dialogue in my sleep than George Lucas. In fact, I could write better dialogue even if I were passed out drunk in a hotel room in Fresno, woken up with a bucket of water to the head by a couple of Hollywood goons, and then forced to sit at the desk with a pen and the Holiday Inn stationery to scratch out a few scenes, nauseous from the fumes of my own breath. I wonder if George Lucas wanders around his house saying things like: "Good Morning, my wife. This table is hard and wooden, not like you, you’re soft and fluffy, like a pillow." Otherwise, his writing has absolutely no conceptual relationship with the way that people actually speak, alien or otherwise.

But I’ve gotten lost in the disappointment that is the total corruption of the childhood, light-saber dream. When Terminator 2 came out I was in high-school, I remember it being the first time I had ever been blown away by special effects in a film. The demented metal-man was so far ahead of its time it made the movie fantastic. And I think it’s still an enjoyable film; I watched it last weekend as a matter of fact. But this new one… God, what a waste of celluloid. In fact, the special effects in the new one don’t seem as good as the old one. How does that work? I think the whole movie was designed to see how many abnormal vehicles they could drive around at top speeds and smash the bejesus out of. Let’s see, you’ve got a huge boom truck, a firetruck, an ambulance, a hearse (which becomes a convertible), a veterinary pickup truck with a kennel in the back, a big Camper R/V, a cessna, a few military helicopters of varying sizes, and the regular amount of cop cars and police motorcycles. I’m sure John Woo was on the edge of his seat. I guarantee there was a checklist to make sure they smashed up more strange, large vehicles than the first two movies combined.

I guess it also irritates me that this movie totally undermines the last one. T2 was, you know, "No fate but what we make" and all that junk; they change the course of the future by choosing to fight the past. In this new one, they start along the same track, but then realize that there’s nothing they can do, the future is inevitable, and the world is going to blow up whatever they do, boo-hoo (sorry, if you didn’t know that the whole movie was pointless).

In this way, we see that Terminator 1 & 2 reflect the philosophy of Plato, Aristotle, Aquinas, Descartes, Locke and the rest of the gang, who believe that human free-will establishes the course of our future, especially with the help of time-machines and cybernetic, Austrian assassins. Whereas Terminator 3 takes a tire-smoking U-turn over into the works of Epicurus, Kant, Hobbes, Mill and Calvin in the determinist tree-house club, who believe that no matter what you do, and no matter how many times you send an obsolete, gubernatorial killing machine back in time against ever-improving, technologically-superior cyborgs, you’re still pretty much screwed. Which kind of makes you wonder, "Why bother?"

You see?That’s how you get kids to pay attention in philosophy class.

Yeah, and I would have had slightly more respect for this movie if they hadn’t called the crazy, hot new terminator chick, "The Terminatrix." Poor form.