Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines

SPOILERS

Under-rated, worthy chapter to the story, with surprisingly provocative ideas and some stellar acting.

While this movie admittedly has neither the grit of T1 nor the grand vision or pathos of T2, I'd like to share what I believe to be three elements which together cement T3's place in the canon of the Terminator franchise.

The first is the way the actors acted the relationship between Connor and the T-800. While Connor has memories that we the audience recall from T2, the T-800, played by Arnold, was not the same T-800 from T2. This is just another machine from off an assembly line of T-800s that were manufactured. Yeah, Arnold looks like Arnold, but this T-800 has no memory of the previous installment because it was not ...

The worst Terminator movie. Which seeing as what came after it is... Quite the burn.

Final rating:½: - Boring/disappointing. Avoid where possible.

Is it in the song "American Pie" where Don McLean sings "Fire is the Devil's only friend"? Well, I hate to contradict him, but I am afraid time travel is also one of his allies - especially when it is handled in quite such a derivative fashion as this. This time Arnie returns from the future to protect the under-the-radar drifter "Connor" (Nick Stahl) and his as yet unknown, future, wife "Kate" (Claire Danes) from another, much more state of the art "Terminator" - the "T-X" (Kristanna Loken). The plot thickens when we discover that her father is an US Air Force general in charge of an whole load of military tech and that baddies Skynet hope to be able to manipulate the past and take control of the defences leaving the nation open to attack ...

Well... I kind of feel like giving this 10 stars based on Salvation and, especially, Genisys. I mean, in retrospect, compared to those two, it actually feels like you are watching a really good movie doesn't it?

It has a plot that actually makes sense, and, unlike Genisys, it fits into the greater Terminator story without changing everything just to, well, just to change the entire canon and story for the sake of... what? I honestly don't know.

However, when you compare it to Terminator and T2, it actually seems like you are watching a horrible movie. Nick Stahl was possibly the worst person to play John Conner they could have cast, Sarah Coner is gone (and with her the protagonist everyone loved) and Claire Danes just doesn't seem to...