Impressive

Rating: 8/10 (14 February 2005)

While I had been hoping that James Cameron would be back to repeat his fine work with the 'Terminator' series, I was not disappointed with Jonathan Mostow's version of the latest installation. The only thing I would have added was the start of the future war - in the post-nuclear-attack world, where the human resistance starts to fight the horrifying machines of Skynet.
In this latest addition to the Terminator series, the CSM-101 (Schwarznegger) returns again to protect John Connor (Stahl) - now invisible & untraceable - from Skynet's latest assassin droid, the T-X (Loken), a frightening machine with multiple onboard weapons and the ability to control other machines from a distance. Additionally, Skynet has already begun its stealthy takeover of computer systems, in the guise of a computer virus. In a series of frightening and near-lethal encounters, John meets up with his future wife and co-leader in the resistance, Kate Brewster (Danes). With the T-X unable to locate John, she starts by going after future prominent figures in the resistance, one of whom is Kate's dad, an Air Force General in charge of Cyber Research Systems - which includes Skynet. They also discover that it is too late to stop Skynet from starting the horrible nuclear war that is the prelude to the war between Skynet's machines and the human resistance. However, they decide to try to at least protect General Brewster from the T-X, as the Terminator reveals he is an important resistance figure - making him a main target of Skynet's assassin droid. When they reach CRS, they discover that General Brewster's bosses in the Pentagon have lost all control of their military, courtesy of the Skynet virus that has cut them off. The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs has ordered Kate's dad to uplink Skynet in the hopes of killing the virus. Despite Brewster's reluctance to do so, he complies - and Skynet takes control of ALL the U.S. military, including the nuclear subs and missile silos! The T-X appears and guns down General Brewster, but he escapes along with John & the others to his office, where he warns Kate & John to head to Crystal Peak - supposedly the system core of Skynet. John & Kate escape to the hardened facility and enter, aided by clearance codes carried by Kate's dad. After a narrow escape from the T-X, in which she meets an ugly end, they descend several hundred feet into the mountain to discover it is nothing more than a command center for General Staff and VIPs. The President, Congress, Cabinet and Joint Chiefs never got the warning, however, and John & Kate are alone in the structure. Seconds later, alerts pour in from all over the country, as Skynet launches the USAF's ICBMs against targets in Russia & China. In a frightening end sequence, missile trails criss-cross the sky as Russia & China launch their counterattacks, and all over the world nuclear mushroom clouds erupt. Judgment Day has come - and soon, the war against the machines will begin.
Despite the lack of an 'opening' sequence about the future war, it still leaves open great potential for a Terminator 4. The characters of the future war are introduced to us in a way that makes them believable and real. It will be interesting to see how the CSM-101 Terminators figure in the future war - we are given some hint of this in future war sequences that show huge platoons of CSM-101s deploying from Skynet bombers against the human resistance. Bring on Terminator 4!