11/30/2022 0 Comments James cameron terminator 3![]() ![]() To the credit of everybody involved, it too the best part of a decade before they finally figured out how to make a third movie happen regardless, and it wasn't until July, 2003, one day shy of twelve years after T2 was released, that Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines perpetrated itself all over the world's movie screens. Neither path leaves an opening: one is absolutely certain and one is absolutely ambiguous, and trying to smuggle a sequel in there would be so obviously, inherently dumb, violating everything that T2 claims about destiny and fate simply by existing. Hell, there are two separate endings for T2, completely incompatible with one another, of wildly differing quality, and both of them offer no basis for future sequels: the worse one by telling us in momentum-crushing detail how very much it is the case that nothing else bad ever happened in that movie universe, the better one by insisting with grave intent that the future being absolutely unknowable and plastic, there's no point in wondering what "really" happens after that closing moment, because any future is as likely as another and all that matters is plugging through the day-to-day. And not least of the reasons why is that director and co-writer James Cameron gave it such a profound sense of finality, not resolving his story in anyway - the opposite of it, in fact - but resolving the emotions and themes with such grandeur and passion that no future Terminator picture could possibly do anything but degrade itself and its wonderful forebears. The great Terminator 2: Judgment Day was, in 1991 and for many years thereafter, the highest grossing R-rated film ever, an award-winning cultural touchstone that represents a high-water mark for a certain kind of commercial action filmmaking. Alas, not all years-later sequels are so lucky. And to the surprise of most of us, it actually turns out to be something other than a worthless waste of time. This week: it took 10 long years of nobody anywhere giving much of a shit one way or the other, but now Men in Black 3 exists. ![]() Every Sunday this summer, we'll be taking an historical tour of the Hollywood blockbuster by examining an older film that is in some way a spiritual precursor to one of the weekend's wide releases. ![]()
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