Metallic hell on earth

Rating: 1/10 (24 August 2006)

OK, so critically i'm forced to accept that my one star rating could be seen as maybe a bit harsh, the action was OK after all, the film looked pretty enough and the story was genuinely not as slap-dash and floored as we all dreaded it would be. As a stand alone film i could've genuinely forgiven this movie it's quirky sense of humor and cartoonish action sequences (that comedy 'DUNK' noise when Arnie is hit by a truck whilst riding the forklift truck is pure Wylee Kyote).
However, that's where we hit the real meat of my problem with this movie, it's not just any random piece of action pie, it's the sequel to terminator 2, a film which even if you don't consider to be the greatest action movie of all time (which i emphatically do), everyone must agree had a certain iconic, macho appeal and tone.
Now i accept that for a fairly unknown director, resuscitating such a beloved and successful franchise after such a long time must've been daunting, and i thoroughly expected to sit back in my comfortable cinema seat and watch with joy as the third terminator strained with mighty, piston-like muscles in an effort to avoid being crushed under the weight of its prequels. So you can begin to imagine my disappointment when rather than standing up to its prequels with its chest puffed out, T3 seemed rather to make a camp hand gesture and prance away.
In short, my greatest problem with T3 is not that it isn't as good as its predecessors (i mean what is?), it's that it often feels like you're watching a spoofed remake, an impression not harmed by the fact that T3 'shares' most of its basic plot structure with T2. Case in point would have to be the scene in which the terminator seeks to acquire his trade mark leather jacket ensemble, although in previous films this simply seems to be the first outfit he found, in T3 it seems nothing else would do.
You can almost hear the writers laughing and congratulating themselves at their sparkling wit, as the terminator is forced to regurgitate his iconic "i need your clothes, your boots and your motorcycle" line... to a male stripper. And the icing on the cake, when the 'unstoppable killing machine' walks outside and puts on the pair of pink, Elton john-style, star sunglasses: and the writers laugh, and the producers laugh and i die a little bit inside.
However, the saddest thing i found, watching this movie was not the horrible, gimmick ridden plotting (ooo... lets make this evil terminator a girl!!!!!) that coated each scene, but the much broader plot-strokes that smashed into the terminator mythology like a certain hanging steel girder into a certain skull. Killing off Sarah Conner (the only woman ever created who could've kicked Lt. Ripley's ass) off screen no less, shifting the credit for saving mankind from John Conner (who's become a pussy instead of a super-soldier) to 'his wife?!?'. Its these massive blows that seem to have crippled a franchise that always seemed to have one last movie in it.
However, i must freely admit that to most people this movie represents a small slice of action escapism that should warrant at least an hour and a half of you time if not your thoughts. But for me, and anyone else who bothered to learn to spell 'mimetic polyalloy' it's like watching a once proud bear being made to dance in a dirty tutu for the mild amusement of its owners.
I always maintain that T2 was one of the saddest movies i've ever seen, at least in that way T3 managed to emulate it.