A mere segue for T4?

Rating: Null/10 (4 July 2003)

OK, you know what? Arnie can't carry a movie with the Terminator shtick anymore... it's just gotten TOO old. You gotta give him credit for looking so good at his age, but all the one liners he's forced to utter seem so contrived and derivative (as does the majority of this movie). And that opening sunglasses gag?!... Gimme a break!
It was Edward Furlong and Linda Hamilton's energy & desperation that brought T2 home, and their absence is acutely felt here (not to mention James Cameron's story telling and direction). I'm sure Furlong's real life personal challenges could have been incorporated to make John Connor's current state that much more striking... but oh, that would be too "risky" for such a cash-cow franchise. Clare Danes is the only actor here that could have generated some real empathy and humanity in this movie, but the poor writing does not ask her to.
Robert Patrick's liquid-metal Terminator was excellent in T2 (still gives me the creeps just thinking about it) and his abilities & limitations really added to the story and made some kind of sense. Kristanna Loken's coolness was great and her TerminatriX had real potential (should have had more sexy/gory scenes) but was ultimately derivative, as well. In addition, I didn't buy her upgraded terminator-ability of molting specific body parts into complicated machinery, and even less the idea that they could be permanently "damaged". (The story suffers when the writers don't follow their own rules.) God knows what unbelievable gimmick they'll come up with for T4, to try to out do the T-X!
The action scenes were impressive, but I've grown tired of chase scenes pretty much altogether, each one trying to out do the last... they're just silly (e.g. Matrix Reloaded)... try spending the same time advancing the plot! (The last time I saw a decent chase scene was Ronin.) On top of that, they must have had wheels on the crane spreaders for that thing not to completely tip over right away!
The only part that was really new and interesting was the end, at the military research facility, with the prototype robot tanks and planes running amok, but that was like only 10 minutes! There should also have been much more interaction with Colonel(?) Brewster, instead of killing him off as soon as they get to the research facility. It also made ABSOLUTELY NO SENSE that there were no military personnel manning that VIP bomb shelter... Very weak. However, I did like the CGI of nuclear missiles and explosions, but they didn't play up the Apocalypse enough... don't want to use up too much T4 material, I guess.
Since this movie does a complete 1-80 with the deterministic aspect of fate (I thought "Fate is what you make it"?), it is a lot less hopeful than T1 & T2 were. The only positive aspect about this new storyline is the relationship between John Connor and Kate Brewster, which everyone seems to like.
With the amount of money they spent and the potential of the Terminator/Skynet premise, I was very much disappointed. This movie has its moments and could have been great, but it felt more like an expensive pilot for a post-doomsday TV series, and ends too early, just as things start to get interesting. Hopefully, they'll hire some real storytellers for the inevitable T4 for which this movie appears to be a mere segue. Rating for this `genre', given T2 is a 10/10: 6.