Arnold's back.... again.

Rating: Null/10 (19 July 2003)

Arnold's Terminator comes back in time again to thwart Skynet's attempts to change the future... again. The first sequel, T2, had great special effects, but unfortunately that was all it had going for it. The premise was good, but the story execution was poor, the acting substandard, and was plagued by an annoying John Connor character who had you wishing he'd get killed even before the movie ended.
This third installment has great special effects and I think they even improved on some things. 1. It would have been better if they could have come up with something different in the story and still make it good, but that's pretty hard to do. So it seems like this time they didn't take themselves too seriously, and even poked fun at themselves in some ways. They rehash some of the previous movies one-liners, some with a twist ("She'll be bhack!"), and throw out some new ones. But they kept in check and didn't let it get lampoonish. 2. The totally liquid metal terminator of T2 made for some great special effects, but being totally liquid metal was stupid. Not taking into account the improbable physics involved, you had the feeling that if Arnold Schwarzenegger wasn't the hero, his butt would have been stomped way in the beginning of T2. This time, the evil terminator has a solid skeleton frame with a liquid metal skin, and that's a lot easier for the viewer to swallow. 3. The action is tremendous! And I think that's what they tried to spend most of their focus on, instead of getting to bogged down in a dramatic story that they had no hope of making work, as happened in T2. True, they had to do the obligatory dramatic scenes as the characters get to know each other and try to deal with their situation, but without too much time being spent on it. I think it was a wise choice.
The only really dumb part of the movie (and it was really stupid)was when the evil terminator supposedly infects several motor vehicles with a virus, enabling her to remote control them. I don't think you even have to be an auto mechanic to know just how impossible that is. It looked cool, but it was still massively stupid.
I won't give away the ending, (you can read other reviews for that)but it had a nice plot twist in the end. It didn't have that trademark James Cameron touch of making you think just when the movie is over, there's a finale waiting around the corner. The story could have been better, but I think the director did a pretty good job with what he had to work with. In the end, I was entertained.