Terminator 3 starts with a bang and doesn't let up. This desert fuel cell explosion was created by ILM. All images courtesy of ILM. ©2003 IMF Internationale Medien und Film GmbH & Co. 3 Produktions KG.

We can wax philosophical about how Terminator is a prophetic look at our technological capabilities in the face of our ethical accords. We can picture John Conner as a picture of Greek tragedy; he is the Oedipus who struggles against his destiny only to reinforce and cause it to happen in the first place. We can ponder the temporal existentialism of beings coming in from the future to prevent themselves from ever happening at all. We can wonder how we ourselves are headed into the technological paradox where we create machines to overcome us and take dominance. Or we can sit and watch the pretty pictures, our fingertips glistening with popcorn juice, our eyes wide, our imaginations stirred.

Willi Geiger, lead technical director, did some research at Stanford University before creating the explosions. Photo courtesy of ILM.

Terminator 3 doesn’t dive deeply into philosophy, nor does it offer a truthful glimpse into the human condition. It does, however, blow a lot of stuff up, and that’s what we’re here to talk about. Now I’m not going to offer a recount of the film. I’m not even going to tell you if I liked it or not. I’d like to cut to the heart of the matter and speak about what I thought were some of the finest CG explosions I've ever seen in a film.

In particular, there is a nuclear explosion during a dream sequence in the beginning, that sets off the beginning of the end of the world as we know it — Judgment Day. It is with this explosion that I perked up and peeled open my eyes for more, even momentarily forsaking my bag of Sour Patch Kids as I looked on.

When I walked into the theater, I was curious to see what Industrial Light & Magic would do with the effects in this film, having come away disappointed with The Hulk (not ILM’s fault; I personally didn’t agree with Ang Lee's direction). This single effects shot allayed any hesitance I may have had about seeing T3, and set a great tone for the rest of the film for me, because I knew that some great folks were on the job. Twice more I would see a stunning explosion like this one, and every one of them grabbed my devout attention, much to the chagrin of my Sour Patch Kids.

Judgment Day arrives in T3 with this ILM-designed nuclear explosion.

Now, what grabbed my attention with the first explosion in the dream was the level of detail inherent in the shot, and how it all came together to work as one. And I was struck by the nagging question, “How’d they do that? Was that fluids? Was it custom code?” And that to me is a mark of a good effect; along with the ever important question, “That was an effect? Where? Really?” Having been in effects animation a number of years now, I’ve had my boyish wonder about effects yanked out from under me, replaced with an analytical process, so now I tend to watch effects laden films with a critical, if not deconstructivist eye. When I see something that makes me wonder how it was done, I’m giddy. Not to say I know how everything’s done — far from it; but I tend to discount effects that I see clearly standing out as effects. Yet this explosion just looked natural, as if it belonged in the frame; well, as natural as a dramatic movie explosion should look at least.

The next day I was on the phone with ILM’s Willi Geiger, the lead artist responsible for these explosions. He confirmed for me that a fluid dynamics system was used to create the motion for the explosion and laid out basically how they accomplished the shot.