Not Cameron

Rating: Null/10 (23 April 2004)

The one line summary says it all. I think a sequel should be more than a continuation of the plot. That is, not only should it be faithful to the previous film(s) in story, but in style, theme, innovation, intelligence, etc.
*spoilers ahead*
Terminator 3 seems to miss these points and comes out as basically a dumbed-down remake of Terminator 2. The plot is virtually the same: a shape-shifting robot comes through time to kill John Connor and "The Arnold" model is sent back to protect him. Can you say "seen this before"?
I don't know who was responsible for the design of the T-X, Mostow or Winston, but I gotta ask: why? Who in their right mind would think that if you stick a glowing endoskeleton inside a T-1000, you'd get a more efficient killing machine? What, pray tell, does the endoskeleton contribute? The T-X can't do half the stuff the T-1K did: melt into floors, walk through barred gates, fly into a million pieces and then reassemble. But man, oh man, how are we to destroy this "deadlier" model? Oh, wait, it was as simple as blowing it up! Kudos on the creativity there. So in the end, the T-X met a death that would only delay the T-1K.
It's things like this that insult the true fans of the Terminator films. Whereas T1 and T2 were fact-based science fiction, T3 steps over into live acton comic book world. The T-X can change her robotic arm to become a plasma cannon, a flamethrower, a pizza cutter for god's sake! What is this, Transformers? Or the 60's Batman where he's got a convenient tool for every occasion?
In another brilliant scene, the T-X transforms her finger into a long needle, injecting several police cars with some kind of electronic signal (or magic potion) that makes the cars obey her every whim. I know Mostow's not a complete idiot and knows that to control a normal car you need to turn the steering wheel, push the pedals, shift the gears MANUALLY (it's a mechanical process). So the only conclusion I can make is that he considers the average audience too dumb to actually know that. Sadly, maybe he's right. But many fans of the Terminator movies are drawn to it because of the films' intelligence. And that intelligence has always come from Jim Cameron. His design for the Terminator endoskeleton was credible: the joints, the muscles, the eyes; you could sit there and actually believe that such a machine could move, climb, simulate a human. Moreover, you could believe that when covered with flesh, such a machine could techincally exist.
But in T3, this same Terminator can get its head chopped off, left connected only by wires and then somehow stick it back onto its body like Frankenstein and move it around in subsequent scenes as if nothing happened. In T3, the T-X can remotely control a car. (But if she can do that, she might as well be able to remotely control a pair of scissors, a bike, or a pistol.)
Moreover, if Mostow really was as great of a Terminator fan as he claimed to be, he would not have screwed up such details that an Arnold is a T-800 model 101 (not a T-850, not a T-101). Moreover, he would have studied what it really was that made the first two films great, and that was intelligence and ingenuity, not just explosions, chases scenes, and comic book robots with superpowers.