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08/22/2003: "TGIF Movie Review – T2, T3 and Ahnold"

For this week’s TGIF feature let’s talk about moderation in two films starring Arnold Schwartzenegger, Terminator 2: Judgment Day and Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines. My take is that T2 is very much a moderate movie, and T3 most definitely is not. Both have many similarities, as would be expected in sequels to yet an earlier film. There’s plenty of violence for example, not that this disqualifies a film as a moderate movie. The moderate movie review is not a “should you take the kids?” feature. Moderates can enjoy movies with a certain level of violence (and car crashes and sex), if it’s not the main event. Indeed, when presidents of entertainment organizations use the phrase “butts in the seats” for a blockbuster movie, they’re primarily talking about political moderates’ butts (they really use phrases like that, as I can personally attest). T2 is a moderate movie because it showed great balance, as the Sarah Connor character played by Linda Hamilton, having turned herself into a extreme merc for the noble purpose of saving posterity, is brought back to balance by her son, played by Edward Furlong, producing a happy ending. Ahnold shows true grit in his struggle with a superior adversary. These themes are largely missing from T3, with a decidedly unheroic John Connor, the transition of the caring vet to Machine Gun Claire, and a nasty version of Ahnold that tries to take out John Connor, unsuccessfully in the present but successfully in the future. And let’s not forget that the movie ends with the deaths of billions of people, not the happiest ending in history! BTW, I’m not picking on T3 because Ahnold is running in CA (or is it Ca-Ca?) Although we had previously explored the recall situation in our illumination of the “Wright Ratio” of political mischief to bankroll, Ahnold’s candidacy probably has a lower WR value that other CA Republicans. For one thing, he’s starting to spend serious amounts of money (see our new Television definition in the Devils Dictionary). This of course reduces the WR. Most importantly, Ahnold is triggering what I always view as a positive event, the occurrence in the same sentence of the words “moderate” and “Republican.” The big question is which definition of “moderate” he is demonstrating. Is it the “see Liberal” definition (from the perspective of the Right Wing), where he’s really showing some tempering of extreme positions, or is it the “moderation” definition from the Devils Dictionary, where moderation is a sales ploy. The early returns don’t look promising. He’s talking about how Californians are overtaxed and yet is also talking about “investments in children.” One of his statements seems to indicate that he wasn’t aware that he can’t legally run deficits (it must have been a rude shock to have lost this indispensable tool for Right Wing fiscal policy!) And if he is elected, which ending will we get – T2’s happy ending based on balance after hard choices, or T3’s, where ersatz “heroes” flail uselessly against inevitable disaster?
BTW, the blog’s taking a break over the weekend for a Scuba trip.