July 28, 2003
The balloon went up...
...and it was a happy ending? Wha....huh? That was my reaction to the end of Terminator 3, which I saw with Josiah, Mesh, and Holton on Saturday afternoon. Big spoilers here for those of you who haven't seen it, just so you know.
Basically, it turns out that Judgement Day hasn't been averted, only postponed.
(Within the first few minutes of the film I consigned myself to the utter abandonment of any of the standard time travel objections. The movie just won't hold up under scrutiny. And I'm not talking intense scrutiny, I'm talking the "Hey, I wonder if...?" The answer is no, that doesn't make sense, but watch the movie and enjoy it anyway. Which I did, just so you know.)
Anyway, plot hole issues aside (Can we all say "Swiss cheese"? I knew you could!), the thing that bothered me most about the movie was the fact that when Judgement Day happens, it's a kind of bittersweet, happy ending. We're watching ICBMs launch and detonate over major cities, and the last scene of the movie is a shot from space of dozens of thermonuclear explosions roiling the atmosphere, with some delicate, emotional string music in the background. What the hell?
When T2 came out, it was 1991. The Berlin Wall had only been down for about 2 years, and when the movie was released, the Soviet Union was in the process of disintegrating. The Cold War would end in December, 1991. Back then, we still believed that global thermonuclear war was the greatest threat to the continued existence of humanity. But we haven't faced an Evil Empire that could literally destory the country for almost 12 years. It seems that we don't believe in nuclear war anymore.
Which makes perfect sense. The only people who have nuclear capabilities are either 1) not crazy enough/have too much at stake (Russia/China[?]); 2) would use them on someone else first (Pakistan/India); or 3) don't actually have enough warheads to destroy the country (North Korea). As much as the French hate us, I don't think they'd nuke us. The Brits and Israelis certainly wouldn't. And that, folks, names most of the major members of the nuclear club. So contrary to normal practice, something that was once a dangerous reality has become the stuff of science fiction.
But remember the opening shots of T2? The playground? The piles of skulls? The quiet, muted voice-over? "Three billion lives ended on August 29th 1997. The human survivors of the nuclear fire lived on to face a new nightmare - the war against the machines." I get the feeling that Jonathan Mostow was trying to recreate this feeling of dread with the shot of human skulls under the river, but he's no Cameron, and it shows. Welcome to the first postmodern Terminator movie, where nuclear holocaust isn't real enough to be theatening, even after September 11, 2001. Or, maybe, it's because of that. We've seen terrorism, and though it truly is terrible, if that's the worst they can do, MAD isn't part of the equation. A terrorist may be able to destory a city, but only a nation can destory every city.
Now we get to wait for the (inevitable?) T4, in which we see John Conner actually lead the Resistance to victory.
Oh, and just for the record, in T3, Claire Danes has the worst day currently on record. She holds up surprisingly well.
If Jonathan Mostow wasn't intentionally channeling the spirit of Dr. Strangelove for T3's last minutes, then he's guilty of some lovely unintentional comedy.
"We'll meet again, don't know where, don't know when, but I know we'll meet again some sunny day."
Posted by: mesh at July 28, 2003 11:40 AMI was actually thinking of The Mouse That Roared, another Peter Sellars movie. I had a split second hope that the whole nuclear disaster wasn't really the way it was going to end, but, alas, was (not) to be.
Posted by: ryan at July 28, 2003 01:47 PMPlot holes, whatever, but the whole time-travel thing DOES hold up to scrutiny. Think 12 monkeys. What they people _say_ about the effects of time travel doesn't hold up, but what actually happens in the move _does_. Nothing is ever changed. Have you read the 3rd Harry Potter book? Same deal. Time travel only works if nothing ever actually gets "changed." Everything only happens once. But certain individuals, via time travel, experience discontinous portions of the timeline.
Here's why the ending was bittersweet, and guys, I thought this was already obvious in the second movie. If Judgement Day is truly inevitable, and if everything has already been fated, then the success of the human resistance is _also_ inevitable.
I'm going to kick myself for this, but it's sorta the way Good Friday is "good." On it's own, it's not good, but as part of a bigger plan of which it is evidence, it is good.
I was hoping all along that the movie WOULD end with Judgement Day, since this was the only way the story could really make sense.
Because "death" was unavoidable, we are assured that the "resurrection" is likewise unavoidable. And so we see how the plot brought together and preserved the leaders of the human resistance, even though the "plot" thought it was destroying the human race.
Posted by: nick at July 28, 2003 03:41 PMUmm, I wasn't thinking about paradoxes and stuff like that. I didn't even have to get that far. I'm thinking along the lines of "If the machines can send things back in time, why didn't they just have a T-X waiting inside Crystal Peak?" "Why didn't the Resistance simply assassinate the developer of Skynet?" And remember from T2, the only reason Skynet could exist in the first place was because the CPU from the T-101 (T-800?) survived and was discovered by an engineer. But they destroyed that, and all data on it. Nor did T3 mention any of that research. They just kind of posited Skynet. Whee.
And you lose 10 points for trying to save T3 with eschatology. The success of the resistance is not the point. Averting Judgement Day is. Yes, we win, but 3 billion people die then, with untold millions in the war. "That's a whole lotta stiffs."
Posted by: ryan at July 28, 2003 08:09 PMPerhaps you've got me on the "eschatology" thing. I'm not sure I really care.
But I don't think you're thinking hard enough on the alleged time-travel-related plot holes.
For some reason, they weren't able to have a TX waiting in Crystal Peak. We have no idea what the limitations of their abilities are. They're involved in full-scale combat.
Don't you remember the solution to the grandfather paradox? The question: could you go back in time and kill your grandfather? The answer: you didn't. The same answer solves all the alleged paradoxes in the Terminator story.
Since we know Judgemet Day happens, it should be a given that some bizarre chain of events must occur to make it happen despite all the attempts at stopping it. In fact, the attempts at stopping it are what bring it about. That's one of the whole points to the story, isn't it? The bizarre and unlikely nature of the events is precisely the point: Judgement Day was fated. But so was the success of the human resistance.
Geez, it was a fun and stupid movie. I don't really give a flying flip about it, anyway. I hate blogs. ;)
Posted by: nick at July 29, 2003 12:06 AMPerhaps you've got me on the "eschatology" thing. I'm not sure I really care.
But I don't think you're thinking hard enough on the alleged time-travel-related plot holes.
For some reason, they weren't able to have a TX waiting in Crystal Peak. We have no idea what the limitations of their abilities are. They're involved in full-scale combat.
Don't you remember the solution to the grandfather paradox? The question: could you go back in time and kill your grandfather? The answer: you didn't. The same answer solves all the alleged paradoxes in the Terminator story.
Since we know Judgemet Day happens, it should be a given that some bizarre chain of events must occur to make it happen despite all the attempts at stopping it. In fact, the attempts at stopping it are what bring it about. That's one of the whole points to the story, isn't it? The bizarre and unlikely nature of the events is precisely the point: Judgement Day was fated. But so was the success of the human resistance.
Geez, it was a fun and stupid movie. I don't really give a flying flip about it, anyway. I hate blogs. ;)
Posted by: nick at July 29, 2003 12:06 AMI'm willing to grant the possibility of Skynet, etc., and the impossibility of extra time-manipulations beyond the ones we see. But they should talk about it. How did Skynet come to be? Why can't they just send a T-X to Crystal Peak? And T3 doesn't agree with your answer about paradoxes, because the characters that come back from the future in T3 have a different past than the ones who came back in T2. History has been changed.
Posted by: ryan at July 29, 2003 08:51 AM