T3
We’re going into the last week of “pack to move halfway across the country while also going full-steam ahead through the novel,” and I’m trying to be as good as I can about policing my sanity. I can, you see, be very bad about figuring out when I need to take breaks, and when those breaks need to involve human beings not inside the Magic Picture Box.
To that end, I wandered down to moonartemis76‘s place this evening, and we finished our tour through the Terminator movies by watching T3: Rise of the Machines. I wanted to see it mostly to bridge between T2 and the upcoming Salvation, but I have to say: surprisingly, it was not nearly as bad as I was expecting. In fact, I don’t think I would call it bad. Not as good as the first two, and overly self-indulgent when it comes to the special effects — but they did a nice job of finding ways to rotate their ideas* and develop motifs from the previous movies. The call-backs were pretty thick on the ground, but that’s kind of a feature on the franchise. (“She’ll be back.” Etc.)
I’m interested to see the fourth movie, and I do want to give The Sarah Connor Chronicles a shot at some point, since apparently that isn’t half-bad, either. As far as franchise survival goes, this one is maintaining a better average of quality than most — which is to say, not phenomenal, but not a steady downhill slide, either.
*By “rotate their ideas,” I mean things like how Schwarzenegger was the bad guy in the first film but the good guy in the second — and if you watch T2, they do an excellent job of faking you out on that front. The series works very conscientiously to set up your expectations and then do something new. The “something new” isn’t always brilliant, but I give them points for trying.
