Trivia / Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines

• Awesome, Dear Boy: Once the T-X was established as female, the nouveau role of a female Terminator became incredibly coveted, with about 10,000 actresses auditioning for it.
• Actor Leaves, Character Dies: Linda Hamilton had no interest in returning, as she felt that the story ended with the second film and that she'd just be doing the same thing again. As a result, Sarah Connor is said to have died of leukemia in-between films. This was later retconned in Terminator: Dark Fate.
• B-Team Sequel: To James Cameron's Terminator 2: Judgment Day. Cameron refused to return, saying he'd finished the story he set out to tell. He had some interest in a third movie, but no ideas, especially as Titanic (1997) overtook his life, and so when the producers of the second movie purchased the franchise's rights (half from their company's liquidation auction, half from The Terminator producer Gale Ann Hurd), Cameron was left out.
• Creator's Apathy: In his blog, co-writer John Brancato makes clear he didn't care for either of the preceding two movies, but between a career rut and having worked with Jonathan Mostow (Brancato's writing partner Michael Ferris was a college roommate of the director, and the duo had written Mostow's television movie Flight of Black Angel) accepted the gig.
• Dawson Casting: Nick Stahl was actually 23 when playing 19-year-old John.
• Deleted Scene: There were a lot of them.
  • After killing William Anderson, the T-X goes upstairs to kill Elizabeth. The scene was not entirely filmed as Mostow believed that it was redundant.
  • The T-X shoots the woman she misidentifies as Kate onscreen instead of the audience (and Kate) simply hearing it.
  • A comedic sequence expanding on the film's revelation that the US military invented Skynet and the terminators. The scene shows that the T-800 and T-850 model terminators seen in the three films were based upon Sgt. William Candy, a burly and somewhat dim-witted Southerner; when an official questions the suitability of Candy's accent, an aide, speaking with Arnold Schwarzenegger's overdubbed voice, states that the voice can be fixed. The same scene also includes a direct clarification from General Brewster that the US military's CRS branch developed its Skynet AI and early Terminator designs from patents filed by the now-defunct Cyberdyne.
  • An extended version of the scene in General Brewster's office, where Brewster identifies the T-850 as Sergeant Candy. The T-850 replies, "Negative. I was made here." With the deletion of the Sergeant Candy scene, this scene was also removed.
  • Additional scenes of the Terminators fighting in CRS, including a scene where the T-X slams the T-850 into the ceiling of the corridor several times, the T-850 headbutting the T-X, and the T-X biting into the T-850's skin, morphing her jaws into a mechanical set of jaws.
• Disowned Adaptation: Again, this film is one of the three Terminator movies that is completely turned away by James Cameron after Terminator: Dark Fate's production. He personally did enjoy the movie a lot back in 2003 and his opinion stayed that way until Salvation arrived, then he changed his mind and he felt only his first two Terminator movies should be canon.
• Distanced from Current Events: Kate's fiancé was originally named Scott Peterson. However, during production, a real Scott Peterson murdered his pregnant wife, so the character was renamed Scott Mason. Despite this, he is still listed as Scott Peterson in the credits.
• Doing It for the Art: During the car chase, the T-X attempts to shake the T-850 from the crane's hook by smashing the crane through a building. The studio didn't want to shoot the scene because it was too expensive, so Arnold paid for it himself at a cost of $1.4 million.
• Dyeing for Your Art:
  • Arnold Schwarzenegger worked out for six months, about three hours a day, before shooting started, by which time he said he had the exact same body weight and muscle measurements as he had 12 years previously while shooting the second film.
  • Kristanna Loken put on 15 pounds of muscle to fit her role of the T-X. She also took a mime class to prepare for her part. Because her character has so few lines, she had to learn to communicate through facial expressions and body gestures.
• Flip-Flop of God: Although he admits that T3 isn't the direction he would have taken the films, James Cameron actually enjoyed the film. Considering what he had to say about another sequel to a movie of his, that's quite an accomplishment. But after the arrival of Terminator Salvation, however, he changed his mind and heavily criticized all the sequels after ''T2'', especially this film. As of Terminator: Dark Fate, he's also called this movie "a bad dream", so it's no surprise that Dark Fate ignores the events of Rise of the Machines and acts as the direct sequel to T2.
• Focus Group Ending: An alternative ending was partially shot where another T-850 would appear in Crystal Peak and destroy the Skynet system core. This ending was to be used in the event focus groups disagreed with the official ending.
• Money, Dear Boy: Arnold Schwarzenegger initially refused to make the film unless James Cameron directed it. In the end, $29.25 million plus 20% of the gross profits (and reportedly Cameron himself) convinced him to make it anyway. As the Doing It for the Art and Dyeing for Your Art examples above indicate, he definitely earned his paycheck.
• Never Trust a Trailer: When the T-X is blasted through shutters and down a lift-shaft, the T-850 says, "She'll be back." In the trailer, he turned back from the shutters to say this. But in the movie, he said it while still peering down the shaft.
• The Other Darrin:
  • Edward Furlong was originally supposed to reprise his role as John Connor, but he was dropped from the film, allegedly due to a substance abuse problem. Enter Nick Stahl.
  • In the Latin American Spanish dub, Blas García replaces Humberto Vélez as the T-850, José Gilberto Vilchis replaces Benjamín Rivera as John Connor, and Francisco Colmenero replaces César Arias as Dr. Silberman.
• The Other Marty: Sophia Bush of One Tree Hill fame was originally cast as Kate Brewster but was replaced by Claire Danes a week later as Jonathan Mostow felt that she was too young for the role although only being just a few years younger than Danes.
• Permanent Placeholder: After the funeral battle, when the T-X scans its damaged weapons arm, the diagnostics text is an obvious placeholder (and reused for all of the weapons!). ^{Click to read.} "TEXT regarding the current weapon being displayed in XPG 40 weapon sub window. Important information regarding this weapon is being displayed here. 679098-8"
• Technology Marches On: Cruelly used in the last few minutes. After the heroes arrive to blow up Skynet's mainframe, they discover that due to all the changes they've made to the timeline in previous films, this current iteration of Skynet is actually a distributed computing network spread all throughout the Internet and thus impossible to destroy, just as its military creators intended.
• What Could Have Been: See the franchise's page.

---