Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines (2003)

His Review:

Terminator 3 takes place when John Connor (Nick Stahl) is now in his early 20s and is a junkie-loner.  This time around, an even more elite terminator, the T-X (Kristanna Loken), is sent back in time to go after John’s future lieutenants in the resistance, rather than John himself.  You might be thinking that at the end of T2 they stopped Dyson/Skynet and ended Judgment Day, but our old friend T-101 (Arnold Schwarzenegger) shows up and tells John and his future wife Kate (Claire Danes) that Judgment Day is inevitable and Skynet eventually will take over.  The goal now for the T-101 is to make sure that Kate and John survive the nuclear fallout.

Terminator 3 sees the departure of director James Cameron and Linda Hamilton from the series.  Arnold Schwarzenegger is still here doing the same old stuff but it is now 19 years after the first movie and he sure looks like middle-age guy trying to be a buff badass, and it only works so far.  The Terminator being a woman this time around doesn’t help either.  I mean the badass Sarah Connor is gone, but that doesn’t mean you need to add a sexy model into the mix as your main killer.  Don’t get me wrong, Terminator 3 isn’t a bad movie at all with plenty of action and a story that isn’t too bad, but as far as a sequel goes, it doesn’t give you the same feel that the second movie gave to the franchise.

8/10 Stars – Pretty decent movie by itself, but it’s definitely #3 both in rank and title for the franchise.

Click below for links to IMDB and Rotten Tomatoes

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0181852/

http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/terminator_3_rise_of_the_machines/