Will it be set in a retirement home?
posted by MrBaliHai at 8:31 AM on December 5, 2001

This is one franchise that should have ended after the last film. The only thing I'm looking forward to from it are more sound bites that can be used for Arnold Prank Calls.
posted by almostcool at 8:36 AM on December 5, 2001

*yawn*
posted by terrapin at 8:42 AM on December 5, 2001

Wow, Arnold hasn't had a hit in ages, Cameron's not going to direct, and they want to sink $200 million into this? Sounds like a big mistake.
posted by cell divide at 8:49 AM on December 5, 2001

I LIKE IT!!! Hopefully this one will be focused on the futuristic war between man and machine (which might explain why it would need (?) such a hefty budget). Thats what I'd like to see out of it.
posted by howa2396 at 8:50 AM on December 5, 2001

Is he good or bad this time?

Or perhaps there's a good Arnold AND a bad Arnold? Has Arnold done a twin flick yet? Aside from the one with Danny DeVito, I mean?
posted by rocketpup at 8:50 AM on December 5, 2001

I wonder if Strom Thurmond got a call back on that one?
posted by Kafkaesque at 8:53 AM on December 5, 2001

Ohhhh Jesus.

Hmm.. Mostow's Breakdown was pretty good, u-571 was ok, but there is really nothing great about him. Have you seen the writers? Unwritten film rule #456 - "No good film has ever had 5 writers asigned to it", especially when those writers have Tank Girl and The Net to their credit. Eeek....

Edward Furlong however is signed on, and I like the guy. So, maybe it'll further his career.
posted by tiaka at 9:09 AM on December 5, 2001

I never understood why (in the second movie) the T1000 didn't just go back in time again to the time of the first movie and kill Sarah Connor back then. That's the beauty of time-travel.

Endless "do-overs."
posted by ColdChef at 9:13 AM on December 5, 2001

Edward Furlong however is signed on, and I like the guy. So, maybe it'll further his career.

People gotta eat, I guess. Either that or he's got huge gambling debts.
posted by ColdChef at 9:14 AM on December 5, 2001

Hmm.. I was just reading the delvelopments on the project and it looks even worse. Aparantly no one wanted to do this and it's all Arnie's fault, well, perhaps there are a few producers. hehe. Anyway, they talked to Cameron, McTeirnon, Fincher, Scotts, both of them, and they have to settle on Mostow. There was a screenplay, but it was rewritten, and now there are two other writers that are making a re-write of the rewritten screenplay.

Yeah, Furlong's career has hit nowhere since terminator 2, except a few years ago was "pecker" and that is pretty good, been making the rounds over cable a lot lately. There was also Animal Factory, and ahh... Detroit Rock City, which was pretty bad.
posted by tiaka at 9:21 AM on December 5, 2001

I second terrapin: *yawn*
The first one was made before he became so important/self important and could play a villain. Now we can't escape him. (The scene in Lost World where the rampaging momma tyrannosaur busts into the Blockbuster where there's a lobby card for Arnold Schwarzenegger's King Lear comes to mind...) Given the trend the previous two established, he'll be playing replicant Jesus in the next one. Come back to to confiscate every last bootleg video of Pumping Iron...
posted by y2karl at 9:37 AM on December 5, 2001

Won't be any fun without Linda Hamilton.
posted by witchstone at 9:53 AM on December 5, 2001

Has Arnold done a twin flick yet?
Not a twin movie exactly, but he did play himself and his clone last time I saw him in a movie.

I will almost certainly see this, as it sounds like fun and won't be all that bad no matter what.
posted by thirteen at 10:39 AM on December 5, 2001

Ever since Return of the Jedi, I've suspected that film trilogies go like this: The first one's great, the second one's far better than the first, and the third one's a yawner. As further evidence, I submit the Godfather trilogy. And so far, I'd say Terminator's running true to form.

Still, I wouldn't mind seeing the Terminator endoskeleton running around with some Godawful hunk o' firepower like this or even this.
posted by alumshubby at 10:39 AM on December 5, 2001

I just read Arnold will get a cool 30 mil payday...Thats alot of cheerios...
posted by neo452 at 10:44 AM on December 5, 2001

Okay - my Terminator gripe (as long as everyone's airing these out) - How did the Evil SkyNet supercomputer ever get built in the first place? Based on the movie's premise, SkyNet gets its start in the 1990s because of the advanced chip found in the destroyed Terminator's endoskeleton. But if the Terminator was created by SkyNet in the 21st century, how could that be?

Chicken and the egg. SkyNet could only exist because of a chip that was manufactured by SkyNet. Ack, does not compute - I am stuck in an infinite loop.
posted by kokogiak at 10:59 AM on December 5, 2001

That kind of closed-loop time-travel paradox is such a staple of SF (since Heinlein's "All You Zombies--" at least) that it's become a cliche. Enough of a cliche that even Hollywood can make use of it.

Every step of it makes sense, it's just when you look at it "from outside" that it's confusing. But in reality, no one ever gets that "outside" perspective.
posted by rodii at 11:06 AM on December 5, 2001

I agree with alumshubby. A well-structured trilogy follows the classic narrative pattern of exposition, climax and denouement. In star wars, the (first) destruction of the death star is a false climax, inserted for the sake of making the movie complete.

Now, the problem is, who wants to watch a denouement?
posted by vacapinta at 11:08 AM on December 5, 2001

kokogiak,

the skynet thing is an example of a closed causal loop.

think of it this way - with billiard balls.

B gets smacked by A, runs along the table and smacks into C.

You have set up a mini-time-portal which sends C back in time. It turns out that B and C are the same ball!

Where did B/C's energy come from? How did it get moving in the first place? Creepy.

Its like a self-consistent loop in time which just "shows up" in the universe - a primordial knot perhaps in space-time.
posted by vacapinta at 11:14 AM on December 5, 2001

oops, i meant A and C are the same ball.
posted by vacapinta at 11:15 AM on December 5, 2001

Okay, I dig the closed causal loop idea (theory, premise), I just don't buy for a minute that it's possible. (I know, many years of Philosophy classes have molded my head in a painful manner). There has to have been a first mover of some sort - The billiard balls A,B and C weren't just created in motion, hitting each other, some other force caused that loop to start.

But I digress too far and begin to hijack the thread, so I will stop with a grumble about myself stooping arguing over a Hollywood storyline.
posted by kokogiak at 11:23 AM on December 5, 2001

I personally like Edward Furlong...American History X was great (mainly because Ed Norton was a convincing racist) but I digress....This movie is a bad idea.
posted by Benway at 12:19 PM on December 5, 2001

Where's the sequel for this?:

posted by panopticon at 12:28 PM on December 5, 2001

vacapinta,

a denouement is made a lot more bearable when it features Carrie Fisher in a harem-slave outfit.
posted by alumshubby at 12:31 PM on December 5, 2001

ohh.. right, american history x, almost forgot, that was his best.
posted by tiaka at 12:46 PM on December 5, 2001

alumshubby,

you mean the metal bikini ?
posted by vacapinta at 12:57 PM on December 5, 2001

Ever since Return of the Jedi, I've suspected that film trilogies go like this: The first one's great, the second one's far better than the first, and the third one's a yawner.

Except maybe the Indiana Jones series (First one brilliant, second one way below standard, third one good, but mostly a remake of the first). Or is that the exception the proves the rule?
posted by cakeman at 1:01 PM on December 5, 2001

Not to be picky here, but Trois Couleurs was 1st (Blue) good, 2nd (White) worse, 3rd (Red) best, IMHO of course.
posted by Kafkaesque at 1:29 PM on December 5, 2001

they took chenny!
posted by Spoon at 1:29 PM on December 5, 2001

I'm still waiting for the third in this unfinished Schwarzenegger trilogy...
I think I'll be waiting for a long time...
posted by modofo at 2:31 PM on December 5, 2001

Another Terminator and another Rambo? Maybe someone will get on the ball and finally continue this franchise. I've been waiting so long.
posted by eyeballkid at 2:33 PM on December 5, 2001

Or is that the exception the proves the rule?

I'd say that the Back to the Future series went that way too - good, bad, good. Who wouldn't want a flying deLorean or steam engine? (Ok, so I'd want the hoverboard too.)
posted by phoenix enflamed at 3:14 PM on December 5, 2001

sorry, but i just couldn't get into Godfather 2, and that's probably my favorite series ever. godfather 3 however, seemed to kick it's butt and was almost as good as the first. then again, opinions are strange.

i am very sure that terminator 3 will suck. which i sad, because i remember seeing the second one on my birthday, close to if not the day it came out. very exciting stuff. competed with Aliens for awhile over which was the coolest action movie ever, at the time.
posted by lotsofno at 5:16 PM on December 5, 2001

Hey! Tank Girl was more fun than Stargate, Speed, and The Shadow put together!

In written trilogies, the stinker is usually the second book, which suffers from comparison to the novelty of the first and the (hoped for) climax/denoument of the third.
posted by retrofut at 5:40 PM on December 5, 2001

sorry, but i just couldn't get into Godfather 2, and that's probably my favorite series ever. godfather 3 however, seemed to kick it's butt and was almost as good as the first.

Repeat after me: There was no Godfather 3. There was no Godfather 3.

Whew, you almost shattered my worldview there. Next thing you know, you'll tell me there was an Alien 3 and 4, but that would be preposterous.
posted by eyeballkid at 7:42 PM on December 5, 2001

No, thre was an Alien, then there was an Aliens, then there was an Alienses...
posted by kindall at 9:53 PM on December 5, 2001