Uninvolving And Dumb Franchise Movie

Rating: 4/10 (31 May 2009)

The original TERMINATOR showed what can be done via a relatively small budget and a very tight script and even today remains one of the finest thought proving films in the sci-fi genre . TERMINATOR 2 : JUDGEMENT DAY showed one of the problems with Hollywood and that is milk an idea for all it's worth . I can understand why many people enjoyed the sequel - everything is bigger , bolder but not better since sequels usually jettison things like intelligence and characterization , things that made the original so involving . With TERMINATOR 3 RISE OF THE MACHINES we see a very good example of why intelligent , involving films should never become a franchise
First off we see the set up which is absolutely no different from JUDEMENT DAY . A new super dooper terminator ( T-X ) is sent back to the past to kill future resistance leaders so the human race send Arnie back to stop it . Bad enough Arnie is introduced in a humorous way in the sequel but here it's done in an entirely camp manner , almost self parody . Not only that there's ridiculous plot holes involved such as why wait hours before the nuclear war before killing the resistance leaders or having an obsolete terminator protecting John Connor and co ? Perhaps the lack of internal continuity is worse where the T-X steals a gun to kill its victims when it's later revealed that the T-X has the capability to shoot people with a ray-gun . It's one of these films where you're left with the impression that the screenwriters are making things up as they go along
This is Summer blockbuster entertainment which unfortunately comes across as being very old hat . There's car chases , explosions and stunts . However between the release of films two and three in the franchise blockbuster entertainment had changed . No longer had films to rely on star power , not that Arnie was much of a big name in 2003 , nor did they have to rely on explosions . HARRY POTTER and LORD OF THE RINGS had become the new event movies , Anglophile films with literary sources . Watching overlong , loud chase sequences filled with explosions and zero plot and character development might have worked in the 1980s and 90s but had obviously become extinct at the turn of the century . When you're watching set piece action sequences whilst glancing at your watch this can only be an unmitigated failure
There is one set piece that does work and that is when Skynet comes online and the newly developed weapons systems start exterminating their human creators . Indeed watching this sequence I was instantly struck as to how well the film could have worked if this had been the central core of the film . Don't bother writing iT-X or Arnie in to the movie , get rid of chase sequence and make a much darker , smaller budget film that contains drama . But I guess that would have been beyond the intelligence of Hollywood studios