10: Terminator 3 (2003)

10: Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines (2003) - Judgement day.
Currently the 10th most expensive film ever made, Jonathan Mostow's $200,000,000 Terminator entry had a mixed critical reception, with many fans of the franchise put off both by the casting of Nick Stahl as John Connor and by the very dour and fatalistic tone of the movie. ILM comfortably topped the oft-criticised nuclear-blast effects from James Cameron's T2. The sequence stops short of showing the actual effects on humanity of the blasts, and thus can't help reminding one of Doctor Strangelove (see #3).

Impact: Two huge cult movies had built up judgement day, but we had only ever had a taste of it before in Sarah Connor's controversial T2 dream-sequence. Here instead all the VFX stops are pulled out to show a world at nuclear war. The impact is yet heightened by the fact of John Connor and Kate Brewster (Claire Danes) having been tricked into taking refuge from the bombs when they thought they had a chance to stop it, as at the conclusion of T2.

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