When he said I do he never said what he did.
When he said I do he never said what he did.
Harry Tasker, a secret agent, thinks that his wife is cheating on him. He uses his intelligence resources to track her. His plan ends when she becoms a hostage to some real terrorists. When they attempt to use some stolen nuclear weapons on American cities, it is up to Harry and Helen to stop them.
After his string of hits that began with The Terminator Cameron wanted to switch gears. All of the films that he had made up to that point were sci-fi. He wanted to break out of the mold and make an action comedy. His source material comes from a rather unexpected source; a French action movie called La Totale! . He wrote the screenplay himself and got he old buddy Arnold Schwarzenegger to play the invincible secret agent. Initially Arnold was apprehensive about doing another action comedy after Last Action Hero's less than stellar performance at the box office. He discussed wanting to concentrate more on the action aspect with Cameron. In the end Cameron convinced Arnold to trust his vision for the film. Bill Paxton, another of Cameron's frequent collaborators, was cast as a con-man named Simon.
Anyone thinking that since it was not sci-fi, and set in the present day, the budget was more manageable obviously is forgetting who Cameron is. The action involved stunt after stunt, each one crazier than the previous. For the seven mile bridge distraction sequence a 1/5 scale miniature of part of the bridge was build in the water off the keys. Miniature may be the wrong term the thing was nearly 200 feet long and cost almost as much as building in full scale. Full scale was not used because balsa wood and breakaway materials would look fake flying through the air at that scale. For the scene where the car drives off the now destroyed section of the bridge a real car was pushed off a section of the original 7 mile bridge (which is now closed and sits next to the newer one that people drive on).
The final, and craziest, sequence was an action sequence involving a US Marine Harrier "Jump-Jet" hovering at sky scraper level. The Marines rented some real harriers to the crew for $100,736 ($2,410 per hour). Most of the shots were to complex to use the real planes, so they made a full scale model out of fiberglass. For the shot when it takes off from street level it was lifted by crane. During the fight on the crane on top of a sky scraper several techniques were used to capture as much realistic looking movement as possible. Originally the whole thing was going to be done in green screen. Visual effects supervisor John Bruno joked about building a motion control rig on top of the building; when Cameron's eyes lit up he knew that Cameron did not see it as a joke. For the shots featuring the real actors climbing all over the harrier it sat on top of a motion control rig on top of a sky scraper in down town Miami. The wide shots with stunt doubles, in safety harnesses, had the harrier suspended from a crane over the side of the building. Shots that would not work either way, like the terrorist dropping onto the back of the plane, were shot on green screen and enhanced with computer effects.
After going hugely over-budget (the original budget was $60 million; they actually spent close to $120 million) filming during Florida's biggest heat wave in years, and driving the crew crazy (crew members printed shirts reading "T3 NOT FOR ME" and "YOU CAN'T SCARE ME - I WORKED FOR JAMES CAMERON") the most expensive movie in history (Waterworld was not until the following year) was ready for release. Quite a few critics called it mindless violence (might have been mindless but at least it had a sense of humor about the whole thing). National Council on Islamic Affairs called for a boycott of the film because the terrorists are Arab. Some groups picketed theaters with signs reading "Hasta la Vista Fairness" and "Open Your Eyes and Terminate the Lies". Exactly what the lies were is an unknown to me; there are many people out there, SOME of whom are Arab, who would like to nuke an American city. In response 20th Century Fox attached a disclaimer to the end credits reading "This film is a work of fiction and does not represent the action or beliefs of a particular culture or religion". In the end they made $149 million domestically; not too bad considering, foreign markets, video, DVD, and television airings were still ahead.