Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines is an okay popcorn movie, it has some reasonable moments in action, story and visual effects but it misses the mark in just so many ways and falls short of all the great things that James Cameron managed with his two outings. However, one thing the movie did succeed in was moving the story into the future and allowing a delayed Judgment Day to happen. Among the fanbase Terminator 3’s dark ending is the most complimented part of the movie – and deservedly so.
Director Jonathan Mostow spoke to Vulture about the dark ending of Terminator 3:
“What enabled us to do the very dark ending was that Terminator 3 was an independent film. Actually, all but one of my films have been independently financed films. What that means is, yes, it was distributed by a studio — Warner Brothers domestically, Sony in most of the foreign territories — but those studios really weren’t involved in the making of the movie. In fact, only one person at Warner and one person at Sony could have a copy of the script. It had to be kept in a safe, and no one else was allowed to read it. So, they got to read it ahead of time when deciding whether or not they wanted to co-finance the movie. And then, once I was done with the movie, we invited them to come to a screening and we showed the movie, and that was it. From a filmmaker standpoint, to be doing a $200 million movie without the studio nervously looking over your shoulder was amazing. Had that been a typical studio film, we never would have been able to do a dark ending like that.
I also wanted that to be a surprise for the audience. So, we said to Warner Bros. and Sony, “We really want to keep this a secret.” So we scheduled the premiere for just like two nights before. We scheduled it right before the release, and the publicity people were really good about getting all the journalists to have no spoilers, hold the reviews, and everything else. But looking back, I feel like had we teased a little more that there was a surprise coming, it might’ve actually been better for the box office domestically. It may be one of the reasons why the film did better overseas, because by then the cat was out of the bag.”
Jonathan Mostow told Vulture
Well, Terminator 3 really didn’t feel like an independent movie at all, the ending of T3 may have been the product of a project with artistic control but the project still allowed itself to be corrupted by commercialism and also by Arnold Schwarzenegger‘s gubernatorial run; the latter being a driving force to make everything leading up to that dark ending, a technical parody movie from hell for most Terminator Fans who were anticipating a much darker and more serious movie.
I remember the official Terminator 3 forum / website being run with a steel fist. With any concerns about the movie being met with bans and threats from moderators. I also remember a shill media – a controlled media who shaped a narrative about Terminator 3 and its success.
Vulture claim that T3’s reputation has “eroded with time”, and Jonathan Mostow now claims that the movie’s humor has not aged well. To many, the movie’s reputation was already in question on day one and the humor was cringe inducing on the first viewing.
To me, it was a disappointment.
The Governator – Terminator 3 and Politics
I’ve always felt, and referred, to Terminator 3 as an extension of Arnold Schwarzenegger’s political run for Governor. Here Jonathan Mostow talks about that some more:
Vulture asked…
“T3 came out the year Schwarzenegger became governor of California. Was his political career at all a thing during the shoot?“
Vulture
Mostow replied by saying:
“Yeah. It was. I joked that we had somebody from every level of elected office visit the set when we were filming. Because Arnold, he’s a born politician. So he would have all these, like, VIPs who were visiting. We had everybody from the local city councilmen to the mayor. We had governors of other states come. At one point Bill Clinton came to set, with the Secret Service and everything. We had built several city blocks of L.A. out in this industrial park, and we were in the process of demolishing them. He’d just got out of office, and he’s looking at this thing, and he’s going, “Wow. This is amazing.” Like on a whole other level of amazing of what he had seen. And I thought, “Okay, if he thinks that’s amazing, I think it’s amazing.” So that was a great, great moment.”
Jonathan Mostow
How were Terminator Fans ever meant to get a serious Terminator movie when the set is riddled with politicians intent on political spin and controlled publicity? You’re meant to be making a Terminator movie!
Look at the following image…
This picture is a fine example of the lies Terminator Fans have been told; this image was suggesting that the movie would be dark and gritty, as a body lays on the floor near the T-850‘s feet. The low, James Cameron style, camera shot showing the Terminator as this towering and imposing figure in halls that echo the same feeling of the West Highland Police Station massacre from The Terminator (1984).
Instead, we ultimately get the sad the truth behind the false advertising… the T-X (Kristanna Loken) did the kill. It’s a veterinary surgery and Arnold Schwarzenegger is a wise cracking protector Terminator, which has become a mundane staple and mainstay of the Terminator franchise – the ‘good‘ Terminator.
Regardless of T3’s ‘dark ending’, the political correctness of everything surrounding it renders it obsolete, unless you can appreciate Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines for what it is, an okay action movie; but for the people that were expecting the bar to be lifted with each outing, this was a sore disappointment.