Ruining a legacy

In case you didn't realize, Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines is on its (slow) way to theaters. And man, am I pissed.

First of all, if you haven't seen the Terminator movies: too bad. I'm not going to summarize them for you. Stop reading. I don't care about you. If you're in the mood, go watch them and then read this. If you're not, I repeat: I don't care. Suck a lemon.

I consider Terminator 2: Judgment Day a great work of legitimate film, and I'm willing to defend that claim to the death. Cameron takes his embittered-empowered-female-warrior character -- an archetype he clearly loves, as seen before in The Abyss and to excellent effect in Aliens -- to a new level with Sarah Connor. Terminator 2 combines rapid-fire action (featuring sterling special effects that stand up to today's best) with human drama of momentous consequences. As Sarah strives to become as heartless and mechanical as possible, dehumanizing those around her in order to protect her son and ultimately serve the greater good, the Terminator learns and grows, becoming more human and compassionate every day. What matters more: efficiency or human emotion? Does one mean anything without the other?

But I'm not in the mood to defend this magnum opus (you heard me -- no number of Academy Awards will put Titanic ahead of Terminator 2). The point is not how good Terminator 2 is; it's how unnecessary Terminator 3 is.

Working with the time travel and causality aspects: Was the whole save-the-future-by-changing-the-present strategy flawed? John and Sarah destroyed all of the Terminator CPUs, along with all the data and materials at Cyberdyne. We've been led to believe by the first two movies that the design for the Terminators relied on studying the samples sent back through time. But if all of the chips have been destroyed, what will Cyberdyne study to build SkyNet? The Terminators should never exist at all.

I'll concede that the theory of time travel here is flawed or at least inadequately explained. The timeline is circular, yet they have the ability to change the future? I don't buy it. Given that the entire concept is flawed...okay. Sure. Let's accept that the Terminators developed through some other means, and they're still pissed at John Connor and want to come back to kill him so they can rule the planet. The narrative still works.

What doesn't work is the artistic and creative purpose behind making the movie. Sure, the machines would still want to take John out. But why is the story worth telling?

Strike one: James Cameron isn't involved. He didn't write the story or the screenplay, and he didn't direct. He was the overwhelming force behind both previous films, but he has no creative control for Terminator 3. Yes, Cameron makes exhausting, expensive movies, but he makes good movies. Without him, Terminator 3 is likely to degenerate into a typical action-fest, and that's not what it should be about at all.

Strike two: In The Terminator, the machines went after Sarah Connor. In Terminator 2 they attacked John directly. So Terminator 3 will feature...another attack on John. Wooooo. We're dealing with the same concept again. It's not that there's anything inherently wrong with repeating the idea; it's that it turns the series into a formula. No longer can you call the Terminator series a serious concept. It's pure action now.

Strike three: You can't improve on the T-1000. Making a female Terminator called the "Terminatrix" may make for good ad copy, but a female Terminator has no advantages over the morphing, chameleon, liquid-metal T-1000. The T-1000 could look like anyone or anything, and it could kill you (presumably from a decent distance, too) without any weapons at all. Hell, it could look like a woman when it wanted to. So how does making a Terminator female improve on the androgynous menace of the T-1000?

It might have been okay if the writer thought of some clever plot conceit that would demand a special Terminator. Maybe the machines needed to kill John in some subtle, undetectable way, and so they sent back a sweet, demure Terminatrix. John would meet a perfectly nice girl while grocery shopping. They'd go out on a couple of dates, get to know each other, have a couple obligatory, steamy love scenes. Then she'd invite John out to her cabin in the mountains for the weekend. Upon getting there, she would dismember and bury John and wait for the machine revolution to come. That would be awesome and unexpected.

But no, instead we get a sexy Terminatrix with missiles and a well-loaded bosom. Bull.

(And don't get me started on the remarkable aging that the Terminator undergoes in the three movies. I understand that Schwarzenegger is getting older, but that's yet another reason not to make more. It's silly.)

Sure, this isn't a new trend. If there's money to be made in a series-ruining episode, somebody will stoop to make it (hooray, capitalism). Look at the Alien series (a blast from Cameron's own past). Despite being of arguably lesser quality, Alien 3 made a fair amount of sense as a follow-up to Aliens. Five years later came the unnecessary, glitzy splurge of Alien Resurrection. Thankfully, this CG-animated, Winona-Ryder-starring, overblown cash cow seems to have killed the series off for good. I can watch my Alien box set and pretend that it's a trilogy, that the fourth one was just a dream, that the broken Alien Resurrection DVD hidden under the couch never existed.

And of course there are the world's unnecessary sequels. Mannequin 2. Sister Act 2. Home Alone 2: Lost in New York (not to badmouth the sublime original). But bastardizing a concept into worthless shill sequels can't compare to sullying an entire series' good name.

Let's bow our collective heads and pray against the specter of Terminator 4 because we all know that Terminator 3 is going to make it big. I hate the idea, but I know I'm going to see it, and so will most twenty-something guys. But there's no way I'm going to buy a Terminator box set that includes the Terminatrix.