Reviews

T3 is an okay movie, I guess. It has some glaring errors, lapses of logic and inconsistencies with its predecessors, but it has its moments. The best of those moments send shivers down my spine because of the way they echo the predecessors.

Yes, the best this movie has to offer is that it's built on a pair of awesome movies. They lift it up, make it touch greatness, and in return it spits on their memory.

I guess my problem with T3 is that T1 and T2 make up a legendary, unparalleled, not to mention complete story. T3 has nothing to add to them. T2 ends on a positive note, building a fragile hope that the future might not be lost, and T3 smashes it by not only showing that the apocalypse was inevitable all along, and nothing the earlier two movies accomplished amounted to anything, but also shows the nukes flying and the world ending, substituting hope for mindless destruction.

I am constantly revolted that people seem to think this movie is a valid part of the Terminator series. To me it feels like fan fiction, an untrained artist lacking a vision of his own finger-painting his unskilled additions on the Last Supper. With permanent colors.

That is to say, I urge you to judge this movie on its own, do not throw it in with its predecessors, for it is not worthy to stand in the presence of such as these. Judge it on its own and notice how utterly it fails to stand on its own.

This movie has two things going for it, and most of those things are found around chest height on Jessica Alba. The diving scenes are rather beautiful, and one cannot deny the beautification increasing effect of Alba in a bikini swimming by the camera.

But after a while the movie devolves into A1 formula action. Not necessarily a bad thing, and it's kind of well done, except when the fight sequences show three (or was it two?) fights between different people cut together. I for one could not follow the events on the screen.

All that however fades into insignificance beside the monumental stupidity displayed by the movie's hero, Jared. He makes one awful decision after another - alienating his girlfriend while failing to inform her she's threatened by a gangster, giving up the secret treasure for no good reason, abandoning said girlfriend to dive into the sea with his hands tied behind his back to randomly destroy the drug shipment that might keep the gangster happy and so on. It goes beyond stupidity into absurdity and one is left to wonder if the movie is supposed to take place in this world and if its makers understand the basic idea of characters the audience can identify with.

People tend to compare this movie in relation to other movies: The quality of the acting, of the story. I believe that is entirely beside the point.

Like the pupils do with their introduction to poetry, determining in callous fact what is a good poem and what isn't -- tear it out, throw it away.

It's about ideas, and its purpose is to teach those ideas. The movie is a sermon, a lesson, as shown by the countless teachers who decide to have their students watch it.

The lesson is to live intently, to defy conformism, to make your life your own, even at the cost of said life. I believe this is a literally invaluable lesson, and the movie does an excellent job of teaching it.

Sic transit gloria mundi - the beauty of the world is fleeting. Grab it, hold onto it, suck every last drop of pleasure from it.