Entertainment
By justed

Parents who watch their child growing up witness the awakening of the cognitive fascination that stacking blocks (creating something) brings.

Along with the development of motor skills, block stacking and assembly represents one of the first acts of creative influence upon the environment a child experiences as the first step in what will hopefully be a long life of interaction with the world.

But there's an earlier stage of mental growth, before the child's motor skills have developed. At this point the child's greatest discovery is the ability to interact with its environment by destroying the carefully stacked blocks that a loving parent has patiently assembled.

Movie reviewers, at first glance, may seem to be stuck in that childlike world of: helpless to create - only best able to contribute by destroying.

But the process of growth includes death, destruction and decay.

That isn't to say movies of the post-Apocalyptic genre are simplistic, infantile works of childish destruction appealing to the earliest memories of childhood frustration at the inability to change the world.

Rather, they suggest that the bleak portrayal of a world without hope resonates with some of the earliest childhood memories of helplessness we all share, at some inarticulate level of remembrance.

Movie: Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines
Being the third in a series holds some pitfalls: on the one hand you know everybody knows the 'back story' but on the other, you pay some slight lip service to the idea they might need to 'brush-up' on a few of the details. But since plot isn't terribly important, being more of a contrivance for bigger and better, more expensive orgies of destruction (and shouldn't get in the way of all that mayhem), little attention seems to be paid to it. Consequently, it comes as no surprise that Terminator 3 fails to work as an independent production (a common failing of sequels). Years from now, this movie will only make sense when viewed with Terminator and T2.

Which raises two questions:

1) In the ever increasing race to spend the most money to destroy the most stuff in the most spectacular fashion, at what point will the national budget, the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) of some third world country, be exceeded by the budget of destruction of one of these mega-movies? Or has it already happened? And,

2) Given that the Terminator that killed the kid (don't ask), has become corrupted and reboots, isn't it kind of massively stupid to accept unquestioned that upon its return it means no harm?

The message of this movie: The machines will try to take over. But it's too late.

The machines have taken over. Where once they were human, they've become soul-less bean counters which now measure movies in terms of money, both spent and grossed.

So on the b/p/n/g/x scale (bad/poor/neutral/good/excellent scale) I'd have to say: Action effects 'x' (if kind of predictable), but plot 'p.'

and humor scale: x. And in a way the writer did intend. Overall a great movie .

Groove Tonic: Thanks for the kind words.

It may be to late, but the reason I’ve ‘stayed away’ from this posting is to not appear to be nitpicking, argumentative, constantly looking over peoples’ shoulders.

Then, finally, I realized: regardless of other peoples’ perceptions, as long as I knew I wasn’t nitpicking, argumentative, constantly looking over other peoples’ shoulders – there was no reason to not add comments of my own to this thread.

However, it’s other peoples’ thoughts, comments and observations that I’m most interested in seeing (I pretty much already know what I think and am bored with ‘hearing myself speak’ repeatedly).

But the movie and the series first attracted me because of my insatiable desire to see How the Concept Would Be Handled.

This of ‘course means I am a ‘sucker’ for these kinds of movies (Science Fiction). And I consider them to be a stimulating exploration of the ‘what if’ scenario that has previously been explored by television shows such as The Twilight Zone (original) and Star Trek (also the original – in spite of all its 60’s sexism).

But with ‘T-3’ I was (as usual) a ‘sucker’ but a very disappointed ‘sucker’.

Still, lots of neat stuff was trashed (it wasn’t a total loss).

this was a great movie.i love it