Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines
Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines[a] is a 2003 science fiction action film directed by Jonathan Mostow. Starring Arnold Schwarzenegger, Nick Stahl, Claire Danes, and Kristanna Loken, it is the third installment in the Terminator franchise and a sequel to Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991). In its plot, the malevolent artificial intelligence Skynet sends a Terminator (Loken)—a highly advanced killing machine—back in time to ensure the rise of machines by killing top members of the future human resistance as John Connor’s (Stahl) location is unknown. The resistance sends back a less-advanced reprogrammed Terminator (Schwarzenegger) to protect John and Kate.
While Terminator creator James Cameron was interested in directing a third film, he ultimately had no involvement with Terminator 3. Andrew G. Vajna and Mario Kassar, who had produced Terminator 2: Judgment Day through their company Carolco Pictures, obtained the rights for the franchise through both Carolco’s liquidation auction and negotiations with producer Gale Ann Hurd. In 1999, Tedi Sarafian was hired to write the first draft of the script. Mostow joined the project as director in 2001, and he brought on John Brancato and Michael Ferris to rewrite Sarafian’s script. With a final budget of $187.3 million, it was the most expensive film ever made up to that point.
The budget included a $5 million salary for Mostow and a record $30 million salary for Schwarzenegger. Filming took place in California from April to September 2002. Industrial Light & Magic (ILM) and Stan Winston created the special effects, as they did for the previous film.
Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines premiered in Westwood, Los Angeles on June 30, 2003, and was released on July 2, 2003 by Warner Bros. Pictures in the United States and by Columbia TriStar Film Distributors International in worldwide territories. It received generally positive reviews and earned $433.4 million worldwide, finishing its theatrical run as the seventh-highest-grossing film of 2003. A sequel, Terminator Salvation, was released in 2009.
Plot.
Several years after destroying Cyberdyne Systems,[ b] John Connor has been living as a nomad following the death of his mother Sarah to hide from the malevolent artificial intelligence Skynet, despite a war between humans and machines not happening in 1997, as foretold. Unable to locate John in the past, Skynet sends the T-X, an advanced prototype shapeshifting Terminator made of virtually impervious liquid metal, back in time to John’s present in Los Angeles, to instead kill his future allies in the human resistance. The human resistance sends back a reprogrammed T-800 Terminator, a less-advanced metal endoskeleton covered in synthetic flesh, to protect the T-X’s targets, including John and his future wife Kate Brewster. After killing other targets, the T-X locates the pair at an animal hospital, where Kate works.RELATED:
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John becomes the T-X’s primary target, but the Terminator helps him and Kate escape, taking them to a mausoleum where John’s mother is supposedly interred. Inside her vault, they find a weapons cache left at Sarah’s request in case Judgment Day was not averted and the Terminators returned. They escape from an armed battle with the police and fend off the pursuing T-X. The Terminator reveals that John and Sarah’s actions only delayed Judgment Day and that Skynet’s attack will occur that day; the Terminator intends to drive John and Kate to Mexico to escape the fallout when Skynet begins its nuclear attack at 6:18 p.m. John orders the Terminator to take Kate and him to see her father, U.S. Air Force Lieutenant General Robert Brewster. Kate agrees at her identical request, as she had reprogrammed the Terminator, who killed John in the future, in sending back in time for orders.
Meanwhile, General Brewster is supervising the development of Skynet for Cyber Research Systems (CRS), which also develops autonomous weapons. The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff[c] pressures him to activate Skynet to stop an anomalous computer virus from invading servers worldwide. General Brewster discovers too late that the virus was actually Skynet slowly becoming self-aware. John and Kate arrive too late to stop Skynet from being activated. The T-X fatally injures General Brewster and activates the CRS weaponized machines, which kill the employees. Before he dies, General Brewster gives Kate and John the location of what John believes is Skynet’s system core.
The pair head for the tarmac to take General Brewster’s single-engine plane to Crystal Peak, a facility built inside the Sierra Nevada. After a battle, the T-X severely damages the Terminator, reprogramming it to kill John, and pursues John and Kate through the CRS facility. When a particle accelerator is activated, it magnetically binds the T-X to the equipment. The still-consciously-aware Terminator struggles to control its outer functions. As it prepares to kill John, he urges the Terminator to choose between its conflicting programming; it deliberately forces a shutdown of its corrupted system, enabling the pair’s escape. Shortly after they leave, the Terminator’s system reboots. Meanwhile, the T-X escapes the accelerator and resumes pursuit.
Development.
By the end of 1995, Carolco had filed for bankruptcy, and Cameron wanted to direct a third film with the involvement of 20th Century Fox. Cameron’s 3D film ride, Terminator 2 3-D: Battle Across Time, would open later in 1996. The project reunited the main cast of Terminator 2: Judgment Day, and had prompted Cameron to begin writing a script for a Terminator 3 film. Cameron said Terminator 2 3D: Battle Across Time would serve as a “stepping stone” toward a third Terminator film. However, such a film would not be ready for a few years as Cameron was busy working on Titanic for 20th Century Fox.
When Carolco filed for bankruptcy on November 10, 1995, its assets were bound to a liquidation auction. That day, 20th Century Fox signed a $50 million deal to acquire all of Carolco’s assets, including the rights to Terminator sequels, as well as the company’s existing film library. Fox withdrew its bid in January 1996, when Canal Plus bid $58 million for Carolco’s film library. Canal Plus’ offer did not include purchasing the rights for Carolco sequel films, but Fox wanted all of Carolco’s assets and was unwilling to match or exceed the bid offer made by Canal Plus. The sequel rights would ultimately be auctioned through U.S. bankruptcy court, where Fox intended to purchase them
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Pre-production.
By 1999, Kassar and Vajna had been negotiating with various studios about partnering on the project, but decided to finalize the film’s concept and script first. They founded C2 Pictures that year, and by October 1999, they had brought Toho-Towa and German company VCL onboard the project as co-financiers. The latter companies helped finance development of a script by Tedi Sarafian, who was hired for the film in 1999, along with David C. Wilson for a possible fourth installment. Fox held discussions with Vajna and Kassar about buying the rights from them for Cameron. Mechanic said these discussions were never serious. It was also reported that Fox and Cameron had been in discussions with Vajna and Kassar about partnering on the film. Vajna and Kassar accepted a proposal from Fox, but it fell apart once Toho-Towa and VCL were brought onto the project, as the latter companies purchased the distribution rights for Japan and Germany, the
largest markets outside of the United States. Kassar and Vajna intended to proceed on the film with or without Schwarzenegger, although Kassar preferred that he be involved. Filming was expected to begin in 2000 for a release the following year.
In March 2000, it was announced that VCL would have a 25 percent stake in the film, as well as the rights in German-speaking territories. At the time, Sarafian was days away from completing his draft, and Kassar hoped to announce a director within 45 days. Filming was still expected to commence later that year, with a release scheduled for the fourth quarter of 2001. Kassar wanted to have Terminator 3 and Terminator 4 shot back to back, possibly with different directors. Plans to shoot the film and its sequel simultaneously were later dropped, in case Terminator 3 did not become a success. Later in 2000, the start of production on Terminator 3 was delayed by a year.
Casting.
Schwarzenegger signed on to the project in June 2000, after reading Sarafian’s draft. Edward Furlong signed on in August 2000, to reprise his role as John Connor from the previous film. However, in December 2001, casting began for a new actor to replace Furlong, who was dropped from the project because of a substance abuse problem. Furlong was removed by Warner Bros., which was concerned that his publicized drug problems could jeopardize the project. Furlong later stated “I don’t know [what happened]. It just wasn’t the time. I was going through my own thing at the point in my life – whatever, it just wasn’t meant to be”. According to Mostow, Furlong had been considered, but the director wanted to start from scratch with a new actor, as John would be portrayed as “a very different character now.” Mostow described the character as someone who has carried the burden of being a leader in the future, saying “it’s very lonely because
nobody else in the world knows about it or believes it. Even if he tried to explain to somebody, they’d think he was crazy and that’s a really interesting character.” Mostow wanted the character to have soulfulness and he believed that Nick Stahl was the right actor for the role. Although John Connor was written as being 10 years old in the script for Terminator 2, Furlong was actually several years older than that. For Terminator 3, Mostow wondered whether the character’s current age should be faithful to what was written before. After some consideration, Mostow chose to make the character slightly older for Terminator 3, to be consistent with Furlong’s real age. The film states that John was 13 years old during the events of the previous film. Mostow said he tried to avoid the age discrepancy as much as possible in the film. Some fans were disappointed by the decision to recast Furlong, and some were alienated by the age change
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Filming.
Filming began on April 15, 2002. The first night of filming involved Schwarzenegger’s Terminator crashing a vehicle into the T-X outside the animal hospital, which was constructed as a set in Los Angeles’ Sunland-Tujunga neighborhood. Initially, Mostow was somewhat hesitant about following Cameron’s footsteps as director, but he eventually put aside such concerns and later said, “Everyone will see this movie and make comparisons, but I can’t control any of that.” Schwarzenegger missed working with Cameron and initially did not have the same kind of confidence in Mostow as filming began. However, during the first week of filming, Schwarzenegger became convinced that Mostow was an adequate choice. Production designer Jeff Mann and his crew of 350 people designed and constructed multiple sets for the film during a four-month period prior to filming. Los Angeles Center Studios was a major filming location, as the production used six sound stages there.
At least three sound stages were occupied by the project at all times during filming, and at one point all of the stages were in use for the shoot. In June 2002, driving scenes were filmed at Rose Hills Memorial Park in Whittier, California. Filming also took place at Big Bend National Park in Texas. Some sequences use more than 1,000 simultaneous tracks of audio.
Stahl had few scenes during the initial weeks of filming, giving him time to work on his physique. Schwarzenegger worked out during lunch breaks to maintain his physical appearance. He had a 20-foot trailer with a gym inside, where he would work out in between filming. Schwarzenegger also performed many of his own stunts, something that he enjoyed doing. One of the most elaborate and choreographed stunts was devised by Mostow and stunt coordinator Simon Crane. The scene involves the T-X driving a 100-ton mobile crane down a street in pursuit of John Connor. During the scene,
Schwarzenegger’s Terminator hangs on to the crane arm as it is swung around, smashing him into a glass building and a passing fire truck. Fourteen cameras were used for the shot in which he crashes through a glass building, as the film crew would only have one chance to film it, which was the case with many of the film’s stunts. Schwarzenegger enjoyed filming the scene and called it “unbelievable,” while stating, “We used every safety precaution, but there were close calls, many times.” The street chase was filmed on a quarter-mile set of road and buildings, constructed at a Boeing plant in Downey, California. The film’s showdown between the two Terminators is set in a marble and steel bathroom. Mostow’s vision for the scene was to have the bathroom completely destroyed by the Terminators by the end of their battle. The scene took four weeks to rehearse and two weeks to film. In early September 2002, scenes were filmed at San Bernardino International Airport.