Far away, so close

Rating: 8/10 (25 August 2003)

I am a big fan of the Terminator franchise. I think T1 was brilliant, while T2 was an excellent sequel. That being said, I had very low expectations for the T3 film: there was no James Cameron, no Edward Furlong, the trailers were suprisingly unimpressive and I simply didn't think there should even be a sequel, since T2 seemed so conclusive.
What I did get was something maybe worse than a bad movie: an unfulfilled potential.
The special FX are OK, not impressive, but it should be noted that the bar is extremely high for the FX, so one can't expect to be blown away as easily as in, say, 1991. Kristanna Loken is a good T-X, Claire Danes is a solid addition and Nick Stahl is good enough not to think about Furlong.
What surprised me the most is that the story actually made sense. There really was room for this sequel to be made, and the ending really showed that T3 had the potential to be an excellent exclamation point to the Terminator series. However, it didn't go that way. Mostow's direction is simply not suitable for the Terminator atmosphere. Action sequences look as in any recent blockbuster, the jokes simply are out of place and there is no 'dark' feeling the previous 2 movies had. It seems as Mostow simply didn't take this movie serious enough to make it as good as it could have been.
In the end, I couldn't say T3 is a bad movie, but it simply should have been much, much better. Let's just say it didn't spoil the franchise for me, and I hope it will stay this way.
Arnie, don't make T4. Leave the legends at peace...