Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines (2003)

Schwarzenegger is great and funny, but the guy who played John Conner was a bad casting choice. I hate to be negative, but I'm not sure what his appeal was to the casting directors - his acting skills were subpar (didn't seem emotionally connected enough at times) and he seemed sooo different from the younger John Conner they had in the second Terminator movie. I didn't find it believable that they were supposed to be the same person. There'd been all this build up to "the great John Conner" over the previous Terminator movies, but I was so underwhelmed by this actor. Linda Hamilton's absence is also greatly felt. Maybe she could've helped carry the movie - Clare Danes and the guy who played John Conner just can't pull it off in my opinion. Schwarzenegger is perfect for comedic effect, but he's not really ever the protagonist in these movies in the traditional sense, even though the series was named for his character. He was the best part of this movie; it's saving grace, I guess. Overall, it's an okay movie, but the first two Terminator movies were way better.

This movie is just stupid. I was laughing for most of the runtime. On a technical level, this movie is fine. The way its shot is great, but aesthetics don't make a movie. The acting is worse than the previous movies, and the script is a mess. Most of the characters act like complete morons. I would not recommend this movie. Its not even worth watching for comedic purposes because of how frustratingly stupid most of the characters are. Its almost hard to believe that this movie came from the two before it.

I'm not going to talk about the casting mistakes (where are you, Edward Furlong and Linda Hamilton?) Or that Terminatrix that looks like something from "Species" (that horror of the name of Terminatrix, by the way ... Porn movies). No. Nor will I talk about how the heck Skynet is created without Cyberdine or Dyson. And I'll spare the character of Claire Danes.What I am going to talk about is the lack of spiritual coherence with the rest of the saga.In "T-2" was mentioned the phrase "there is no destiny, only the one that we do". The definition of free will, come on. But what does John Connor discover in "T-3"? That the Final Judge was inevitable. Like Neo of the saga "Matrix", Connor becomes a pawn that never had opportunity to change history.And that makes "T-3" a Greek movie ("Gods handle our lives and mortals are mere puppets") as opposed to the biblical / Christian approach to "the world is like you do" of the previous ones.And I give a five to the movie because Arnie, his character and his lapidary phrases are still the same.

There was a period of time between when I was at university and when I started writing reviews for films again that I had become somewhat distracted. In fact there was a period of time when I didn't see all that many films at all, with the exception of some really big name ones that I absolutely had to see – Terminator 3 was one of them. I guess the reason was because ever since Terminator 2 I wanted to see a version set in the future where they are fighting the robots, and a part of me was expecting the third installment to be that movie. Unfortunately, as it turned out, this wasn't to be the case. In fact it seems, in many aspects, simply a remake of the second film – pretty much more of the same.This time we are ten years in the future and John Conner is now in his early twenties. He is a drifter, his mother is dead, and it seems as if the world has been freed from Skynet. Well, the problem is that John still seems to be having these nightmares, so he is wandering whether he can actually relax. It is clear that he can't because he is simply drifting, off the grid, simply trying to survive while hoping that the world doesn't blow itself up. Unfortunately that isn't going to be the case because two more terminators come back from the future, one to protect him and one to not only attempt to kill him, but to also kill his lieutenants.As I suggested, this film is basically just a rehash of the plot of the second film, which boils down to the simple line of two robots slugging it out. Sure, we have Arnie returning to reprise his role as the T800 (actually it is the T850 now, which is somewhat better than the previous two), but we also have another terminator come back, this one being a more advanced version that can now create energy weapons as opposed to simply knives and stabbing weapons. Mind you, it felt a little contrived since it seemed that the T-1000, that was pure living metal, was somewhat more advanced than this new one that happened to have an endo-skeleton.I have since discovered that the second movie was supposed to be the end of the franchise, but obviously the demand for sequels was just that little too high, which is why we have had it resurrected in this third, forth, and fifth movie. However, the idea behind the film, in that while Cyberdyne was destroyed, the idea of Skynet wasn't, does hold a lot of water. For instance, the suggestion is that Miles wasn't the only person that worked at home. The other thing is that the movement of technology was inevitable. All we need to do is look about us today to see how the movement towards AI is progressing, and more so, despite the warnings that are given to us in not only movies like Terminator, but also Isaac Asimov, we seem to be blindly charging into the future once again. Who knows, one day we may wake up under the rule of our robot overlords.