Rise of the Machines
Post from Nostalgia Zone Net-log, by Kenneth Williams. May 6th, 2017.
A Guest Post by @Nerdman3000
Good things often come in threes, and films are no exception to this rule. From the Original
Star Wars trilogy, the
Indiana Jones Trilogy, the
Back to the Future Trilogy, and the
Alien Trilogy are just some of the many examples of iconic and perfect film trilogies which have defined pop culture and stood the test of time. The
Terminator Trilogy is no exception to this rule, featuring a perfect beginning, middle, and fitting end. 1984’s
The Terminator by James Cameron, for one, is a brilliant horror/smart slasher film, while 1991’s
Terminator 2: Judgment Day is honestly one of the best action masterpieces of all time.
Terminator 3: No Fate, which is the subject of today’s post, is itself regarded by most fans (myself included) and critics as a practically perfect, satisfying action-packed end to the Terminator trilogy (at least until the movies-that-shall-be-ignored came out a few years later and tried to ruin it[1]). Now, with the recent announcement that we’re getting a reboot of the Terminator franchise soon, I'd thought I'd revisit the ending to one of my favorite movie trilogies of all time, hence today's post on
Terminator 3: No Fate.
Thankfully not this and released 6 years earlier than in OTL. (image source: IMDB.com)
Released in meta fashion on August 29th, 1997 (yes Cameron, we saw what you did there) ahead of the Labor Day Weekend, the T3 would nonetheless be the first in the franchise to technically not be directed by James Cameron. Technically being the key word, as while Cameron was not officially the film’s director, he would nonetheless stay on as one of the film’s producers and one of its main writers, and rather unofficially, having a large directing contribution to the film. Officially, with Cameron busy with
Dragonflight and
Titanic, Orion decided to give the film’s director’s chair to director John McTiernan, a known action movie director whom Cameron is said to have personally given a stamp of approval. McTiernan, who had a good track record for action films, having directed films such as
Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves,
The Hunt for Red October, and
Nothing Can Last, was seemingly a natural fit for the series, and while it can’t be denied he was a great choice, it’s arguable whether the final film was truly McTiernan’s film, rather than James Cameron’s. Dozens of stories abound to this day that Cameron had a bad habit of coming to visit the set and reshooting various scenes, as well as unofficially serving as the film’s 2nd unit director (knowing Cameron though, said rumors are probably true). While Cameron’s antics didn’t end up negatively impacting the film, and some might argue may have even ultimately improved the film based on some stories about the early cut, rumors abound that McTiernan to this day has never forgiven Cameron for essentially hijacking the film and has reportedly since refused to ever work with him again.
Casting-wise, the main actors of T2 would return for the final installment of the trilogy, with Linda Hamilton reprising her iconic role as Sarah Conner while Zachery Ty Bryan returned to his role as her son, the teenage John Connor, the future leader of the Human Resistance against Skynet (and his second major film appearance that summer, given his other iconic role). Rounding off the OG trio was, of course, Arnold Schwarzenegger, who despite generally moving a bit away from action around this time in favor of drama and comedy, still manages to return for what would be one of his last big action movies, where he plays a human US Special Forces soldier Sgt. David Wagner, the human soldier who in the original timeline served as the basis for the Model 101 covering for the T-800 Infiltrator[2]. Joining the returning trio was Bruce Willis as an older General John Connor, one who has traveled back in time to defeat Skynet once and for all, and Sigourney Weaver as Skynet (or rather the Terminator housing Skynet’s consciousness). Finally, rounding out the new cast is a young Bryce Dallas Howard, in her first major acting role, as young Allison Williams, a young teenage girl who is caught in the crossfire of events, due both to her future role as one of John Connor’s lieutenants in the alternate future war against Skynet, and due to her father, played in a brief cameo by Ron Howard himself, being one of the chief scientists who worked with Miles Dyson in Cyberdyne, and thus an individual whom Skynet decides eventually to pay a visit to in the course of its new mission.
Bruce Willis as General John Connor[3] (Image by
@Nerdman3000)
Before we delve further into the film itself and get into the nitty gritty of this classic, though, it’s probably best to get into background information of just how it got made. Well, the story, as Cameron tells it at least, begins during the premiere tour of
Terminator 2. Cameron’s story goes that during the late production of the film Zachery Ty Bryan came up to Cameron with a question that he’d been wondering during filming of the 3D show, “How come Skynet didn’t just go back in time and tell itself how it lost so that it didn't lose?” Cameron’s initial response, in true Cameron fashion, was to say “Because then the movie wouldn’t happen,” but supposedly that answer didn’t truly satisfy the perfectionist Cameron, yet Cameron nonetheless moved on, with the question reportedly remaining on his mind. A few years later in 1994, Universal Studios approached Cameron on the idea of doing a Terminator ride for their park, which Cameron decided to be involved in. That ride, Terminator: Battle Across Time, would be a motion based dark ride[4], and would feature the return of Arnie, Hamilton, and Bryan for the film’s preshow, which Cameron contributed in by directing. During this, Cameron says he was reminded of Bryan's question, and perhaps combined with the nostalgia of working with Arnie, Hamilton, and Bryan again, Cameron claims that he found himself once again getting bit by the Terminator bug, leading him to begin writing the outline for what would eventually be
Terminator 3: No Fate, a film that would represent Cameron's answer Bryan's previous question.
Now, how much of that is true and how much of it is Cameron telling tales, nobody can truly say[5]. Bryan himself has gone on record and has admitted to barely remembering asking the question, but doesn’t deny he may have in fact done so. Orion Pictures has confirmed that they were increasingly expressing interest in making a third Terminator film around this time, and had begun to approach Cameron on the topic. Ultimately, whatever the reasons why or how it happened, Cameron and Orion agreed to make the film in early 1995, with the film given a budget of almost $110 million, making it among the most expensive films of the decade. Cameron, as we started before, was busy with
Dragonflight and in early production of
Titanic at this point, so he mainly officially stayed on as the
Terminator 3’s producer and writer (not of course that it later stopped him from deciding to borrow the camera). Returning to write alongside Cameron would be William Wisher, who also co-wrote T1 and T2 with Cameron, and joining them, as mentioned above, would be Arnold, Bryan, and Hamilton.
Concept art from the cut extended Future War opening sequence from
Terminator 2: Judgement Day. Said cut scenes and subsequent concept art are reused for
Terminator 3's opening. (Image source “terminatorfiles.com”)
As for the film itself, like with T1 and more so T2 before it, with an opening sequence set in the Future War and Final Battle between Skynet and the Human Resistance. Unlike the previous two films before it however, rather than being a short snapshot of the Future War, this opening sequence would be longer, taking up a good 15 to 20 minutes in length, and would borrow much from the original cut extended Future War opening that was in T2's script but never made it into the final film, minus a small montage that was narrated by Hamilton's Sarah Connor[6]. Here, with some narration this time provided in the first few minutes provided by Bryan’s John Connor, we finally get to see the Future War in its full glory, as well as finally see how Future John and his soldiers (with a cameo from Michael Biehn’s Kyle Reese) arrive at Skynet’s time displacement equipment site and how they sent Kyle and the Terminator from T2 back through time. There, we get our movie’s first twist, as the Resistance fighters not only find that Skynet has sent a Terminator to 1984, but to John surprise[7], it’s sent the T-1000 to 1995 and called the T-900 which houses Skynet's own consciousness[8] back to 1999. As astute viewers come to realize, this John never expected the T-1000 being sent after him as a child, let alone Skynet sending itself back through time, because to him, the events of T2 never happened.
Yes, as the film would later explain, this is essentially Cameron's answer to Bryan's question. As
Terminator 3 reveals, the events of T2 and subsequently T3, are the result of Skynet realizing it had been trapped in a never-ending time loop (the events of T1 essentially). It manages to break said time loop by changing things to also send two additional Terminators back through time, the T-1000 from
Terminator 2 in order to kill John Connor once and for all, as well as sending itself back through time, with the hopes of merging with its “younger self” and giving itself decades of knowledge on its development that it can use to finally destroy humanity once and for all. Future John meanwhile, deciding to role with the punches and being quick on the uptake, elects to send the Uncle Bob T-800 Terminator back to T2, deciding to use the same model as the Terminator sent to 1984 as a way to warn his mother early (thereby leading to the events of that film and also explaining why the Terminator from T2 looks the same as the one from T1), and knowing he’s person who understands Skynet and how to fight it the most, elects to send himself back through time after Skynet to 1999[9].
Naturally, what neither Future John nor Skynet could have ever anticipated was that the 1999 they would find themselves travelling to was not the nuclear washed-out world which had just experienced Judgement Day two years earlier, but a world where Judgement Day never happened, due to the events of T2[10]. This would serve as the film's second big twist, and while there is some fan debate as to the implications of how and the logic behind how time travel in Terminator works, implications which would be explored in the mostly awful fifth Terminator film, overall, I always thought it was a great way to introduce the new Terminators while preserving the ending to T2. Anyways, as you might expect, upon realizing the circumstances of its situation and discovering the death of Miles Dyson in T2 and the bankruptcy of Cyberdyne that resulted from that, Skynet naturally changes its goal from merging with its younger self (which no longer exists) and changing the state of the early war to preserving its existence and ensuring that a Judgement Day/Future War still happens. Future John meanwhile, quickly realizing things have changed, is able to meet up with his mother and younger self, using his knowledge of his mother and what he remembers about her to find them. Together the Connors decide it’s their duty to Terminate Skynet once and for all, thereby essentially twisting the formula again by having the Terminator be the one who’s hunted and the humans being the ones hunting it, which technically makes the humans the film's Terminators.
A young Bryce Dallas Howard alongside her parents at the film's premiere. The film would be her first major film acting role. (Image source “brycedhoward.com”)
As you might expect though, a group of ordinary humans going up against an advanced Terminator that houses the consciousness of an advanced evil AI is not an easy thing[11]. Naturally they need new allies and along the way two new allies would indeed join them. The first of these new allies the Connors encounter is Sgt. David Wagner (played by Arnold Schwarzenegger), a former US Special Forces Soldier who is in fact the human Skynet based the Model 101 skin for their Terminator T-800 Infiltrator series on, and who was forced to retire due to his resemblance to the Terminator from T1 and T2. Here Schwarzenegger delivers honestly some of his best acting chops in the trilogy, as he plays a bitter former soldier who lost everything due to distrust for things not his fault and outside of his control, who then has to deal with the horror of learning that his own face would have been/was used by Skynet in its murder of untold number of humans in the alternate horrific future. Like I said, it’s absolutely some of Arnold's best work, and it really show a lot of the skill he was showcasing in his drama works from the time, much of which is helped by the great chemistry he and Willis have in their scenes together.
The second of the Connor's new allies would be a young girl that they manage to rescue named Allison Williams, who just so happens to be the daughter of a former Cyberdyne scientist. Allison's father, David, is attacked and killed in his home by Skynet, a death which Allison is forced to watch and she only narrowly avoids facing herself due to her successfully hiding and being rescued by the Connors. As the film establishes, David was killed because Skynet is seeking files from former Cyberdyne scientists from their days working at Cyberdyne in the hopes of using them to complete its goal of rebuilding the infrastructure necessary to house its younger counterpart[12]. Both Wagner and the now-orphaned Allison Williams join the Conners on their mission to destroy Skynet once and for all, with young John and Allison even growing close and forming a friendship and the beginnings of a relationship. The scenes between the two of them are in my view a real highlight, with young John and Allison's relationship somewhat mirroring the relationship/dynamic between Kyle and Sarah in the first film, as young John acts as the more experienced protector to the more terrified Allison, who’s been thrust unwittingly into this temporal war between humanity and machines.
Zachery Ty Bryan, aka Young John Connor, circa 1997. (Image source “famousfix.com”)
Now naturally, being an action film,
Terminator 3: No Fate features tons of action scenes throughout. Here, McTiernan’s action-direction truly shines through in the film, as during the over two-hour film there are a number of great action-heavy set pieces throughout the film. Other than the massive and epic $35-40 million Future War sequence at the beginning of the film (which unsurprisingly is one of the most expensive 15-20 minutes ever put on film), the real action highlight of the film in my opinion is the rather massive explosive chase through Downtown LA/Hollywood Boulevard midway through the film, which is somewhat reminiscent of similar vehicle chases in T1 and T2, especially the LA canal chase from T2. The whole thing is impressive to witness, and might even be one of the best action scenes of the trilogy. Yet that isn’t the only notable action scene in the movie, as another great action moment in the film which comes to mind is the massive final battle action sequence that takes place at an old defunct Cyberdyne Server Farm building, where a now-desperate Skynet is trying to upload itself onto the primitive Internet in a last ditch effort to save its own existence, culminating in the very memorable final sacrifice and death of Future John Connor (which, by the way, is a badass scene that really parallels Sarah destroying the Terminator in T1 very well) as he destroys Skynet for good.
Though speaking of destroying Skynet for good, I suppose I should probably address the elephant in the room: the really awful Terminator sequels following T3. Cameron, it should be noted, wanted to ensure that this time the ending of the film would be definitive and leave no room for sequels; however, Orion Pictures reportedly still demanded room for sequels like they did for T2. As a result, while the film ends slightly more conclusive than T2’s more ambiguous ending, the film features a bit of open room left in it that could allow for Skynet, in its last desperate attempt to succeed in its attempts to ensure its survival before it’s destroyed by uploading its consciousness onto the Internet, to have maybe been able to have partially succeeded in said attempt. The (rather awful) sequels would partially run on this idea, establishing that while most of its knowledge of future events is gone and the new Skynet created by T3 isn’t entirely the same, Judgement Day is back on the clock and will happen once more, something which greatly annoyed fans, myself included, who felt T3’s ending perfectly concluded things. And that’s without even getting into T5 all of the sudden introducing a multiverse by introducing a different Skynet from a different timeline where Skynet was victorious, and trying to have that Skynet want to invade the main Terminator universe[13]. Yeah it’s as dumb and confusing as you’d imagine, hence why Orion's original T6 film got cancelled and why most fans just pretend the sequels to T3 didn’t happen and prefer to end any rewatches of the franchise with T3, much preferring T3’s satisfying ending of Skynet finally being destroyed once and for all and Sarah Connor, finally unburdened and free from her two-decade-long war with Skynet, driving off the sunset with her son and Allison Williams to build a new life in a world untouched by Judgement Day.
The S.M. Stirling T2 Novel Series from OTL, which the ITTL Terminator 3 film shares a number of similarities with. What essentially replaces it ITTL is a trilogy of novels written by Timothy Zahn which are set in the Future War between Skynet and the Human Resistance which follows the life of the alternate future war counterpart of Allison Williams. (image source: wikipedia.com)
Still, regardless of how bad everything Terminator that’s come after T3 has been (with perhaps the sole exceptions being last year’s Terminator: New Dawn video game and Timothy Zahn’s excellent and classic 1999-2001
Terminator: Future War book series[14].
Terminator 3: No Fate is by itself a pretty darn great film, beloved by fans and critics alike. It should therefore be no surprise that it managed to be the highest-earning Summer Flick of 1997, earning a massive $602 worldwide, and the second-highest earning film debuting that year after
Star Wars Episode I, with the predicted Year of the Dinosaur instead becoming The Year of the Robots. All in a crowded field of massive summer action hits like
Godzilla,
Jurassic Park 2, and
The Fantastic Four[15].
Now if only a machine from the future could have come back in time to Terminate T4 and T5…
[1] Sadly,
Terminator won’t entirely escape the series of bad/divisive sequels curse it has in our timeline. The only difference in this timeline is that it’s every sequel after T3 that’s controversial to fans, rather than every sequel after T2 like in ours.
[2] Very similar to our timeline’s T2 Novel series from 2001, which uses a similar premise of having the human who is the basis for the Model 101 covering for the T-800 Infiltrator joining Sarah and young John in their fight against Skynet. A deleted scene was filmed for our timeline’s T3 that used a similar idea as well (though in this timeline T3 doesn’t include the dumb voiceover joke for Arnold, thankfully):
[3] Cameron would also pull a George Lucas and, during 2nd unit filming of T3, go back and refilm the brief moment Future John appears in T2 with Willis, replacing Michael Edwards who played Future John in the theatrical cut of T2. This redone version of the
Terminator 2 opening would be included in the 2003 DVD collection of the Terminator Trilogy.
[4] Unlike in our timeline, in which it ends up being a 3D Show. The lack of Back to the Future: The Ride in this timeline means Universal Studios Orlando here is somewhat struggling compared to how it was at the time in ours and the park thus needs a new thrill ride to spruce things up. With a Classic Universal Monsters show also debuting in 1993, the park tries to go for a thrill ride for Terminator, which they still decide to pursue as an attraction like in our timeline. The ride ends up being a motion-based ride (similar to The Amazing Adventures of Spider-Man in Islands of Adventure from our timeline, as well as Disneyland's Indiana Jones and the Temple of the Forbidden Eye and Animal Kingdom's Countdown to Extinction/Dinosaur), that features guests to Cyberdyne being sent to the future and finding themselves in the midst of the battle between Skynet and its forces, T-800 animatronics, and even a Arnie animatronic.
[5] In truth, Cameron isn't technically lying, but is mainly exaggerating. Ultimately this is the guy who claims he came up with the original
Terminator in a nightmare.
[6] In the original script (as well as the novelization) of T2, the Future War sequence in the beginning of the film was longer, and featured Future John and his soldiers sending Kyle and the T-800 ‘Uncle Bob’ Terminator back through time. It was cut in both our timeline and in this one, but in this timeline the extended stuff that got cut gets reused in T3.
[7] For those wondering how the time travel in the film works, it’s actually Cameron’s answer to some of the discrepancy between the time travel of T1 and the time travel of T2. As Skynet itself later explains in the film, the events of T2 and T3 occur basically because Skynet in the future realized it had been trapped in an unending loop (the events of T1). Realizing this, it thus broke the loop by sending the T-1000 back in time (the events of T2) and sending itself back through time (the events of T3). What Skynet didn’t anticipate however was that the action of sending the T-1000 back through time to kill a young John Connor instead resulted in its past self being erased from the timeline. Because of this, Future John Connor does not remember the events of T2, because from his perspective those events didn’t happen.
[8] Terminatrix is not really the official name, unlike our timeline’s T-X. In this timeline, Skynet’s Terminator is given the official designation T-900, but some fans jokingly gave it the nickname designation of Terminatrix since it’s technically a female Terminator.
[9] This idea of Future John going after Skynet to the past is wholeheartedly inspired by @Emote Control’s
Terminator Expanded timeline. Part of Future John’s decision here stems from the fact he doesn’t know if the T-800 will succeed and protect his younger self/defeat the T-1000. Since Resistance tech experts believe that based on Skynet’s own calculations that he will still be able to exist in the past even if his younger self dies, Future John elects to send himself back to essentially the beginning of the war to lead the early human resistance and teach/prepare them with everything they need to know in order to survive and beat Skynet.
[10] Sort of similar to the time travel logic from
Dark Fate, in how Carl, the other Arnie Terminator that kills John, as well as the numerous other Terminators that were sent back in time which Sarah apparently destroyed in the years between John’s death and the arrival of Grace and the Rev-9, were all still able to arrive in the past despite the future they came from no longer existing and already having been averted by the events of T2. Basically, even though the future they come from no longer happened and has been prevented, with the way time travel works, they are still are not erased and are able to skip over the changes to the timeline and still be sent to the destinations in the past they were sent to.
[11] The film’s version of Skynet/Terminatrix, aka the T-900, is sort of a similar to the Terminatrix from our timeline’s T3 but is also more dangerous. There are some differences of course, and in some ways, it even has elements from the evil John Connor from
Terminator Genisys in that it can change its appearance at will (it doesn’t have to touch someone to copy their appearance like the T-1000). It doesn’t have the arm canon though like our timeline’s T-X, but can create knives like the T-1000 and unlike the T-1000 has knowledge on how to build Future War plasma tech/weapons.
[12] As film explains and the Connors are able to summarize, Skynet 's consciousness, due to the limited capacity of its Terminator form, is much weaker and essentially “dumber” than it normally would be, due to having less processing power and being limited in what knowledge it was able to bring with it from the future. Ultimately the Terminator model it inhabits was never meant to do more than house Skynet's consciousness, go back in time, meet up with its younger self, and merge with it. The only reason it’s tactically dangerous and more advanced than a simple T-800 is because Skynet is paranoid that it might be destroyed by humans or even its equally paranoid younger self before it can merge with it. It’s essentially a really advanced and dangerous “walking CD-ROM” (young John’s words) that now has to rebuild the PC hardware it's supposed to be plugged into, and it only has 75% of the necessary knowledge to do I,t since it could originally only store so much data and still save enough for it to properly operate, so it has to fill in the remaining 25% gap in its knowledge. One minor plot point resulting from this is that the T-900 at times has to actually either write down important data and delete other minor data in order to save additional space. By the time it’s destroyed, it’s been forced to delete a lot of information on future war battles. After they discover this and find the saved information that the T-900 was storing on old CD-ROMs, which Future John and co are able to use against it since Future John is able to reuse a number of tactics he knows worked in previous battles against Skynet, taking advantage of the fact it no longer is able to remember those battles.
[13] Long and short of it, in this timeline
Terminator 5 features a Skynet from an alternate timeline which was created in the minutes/hours between Skynet sending the T-1000 and Skynet/T-900 back to 1995 and 1999 and John sending the T-800 and himself to 1995 and 1999. The film establishes that this brief timeline, instead of being overwritten, still exists in the multiverse, which the film also establishes exists, and this Skynet makes contact with the Skynet 2.0 featured in this timeline’s
Terminator 4 as a rather dumb ending twist, with the threat that they will invade in the next film. Yeah, it’s dumb and confusing, and most fans tend to hate this timeline’s T4 and T5 (neither of which Cameron is involved in making), and were basically happy when the planned T6 film gets canceled before more damage can be done.
[14] Set in the original T1 timeline, this highly acclaimed book trilogy tells the story of the original Future War and follows the life of the alternate future war counterpart of Allison Williams. Ultimately it kind of acts as a companion piece to the first three films, and most fans consider it the true (superior) T4, T5, and T6.
[15] Star Wars Episode 1 will break $1 billion (much of it earned in 1998), T3 will come in second with $602 million, The Lost World will come in a close third with $523.8 million total (counting both the T and R cuts), The Fantastic Four comes in (fittingly) fourth with $444.4 million, The Secret Life of Toys makes $380 million as #5, Godzilla comes in sixth with $320.2 million, and Kindred Spirits, which has the misfortune of going toe-to-toe with Star Wars, will come in seventh with $262 million.