Have we reached the Terminus yet?

Rating: Null/10 (17 October 2003)

If you want lots of fighting, special FX, CGI, explosions and noise cleverly cocooned in a contrived script that does not stand up to too much analysis then this film is for you. I personally reckon that, if this is the best that Hollywood can come up with, the Terminator formula has been milked dry; new ideas are just too thin on the ground to make this a serious sequel to the previous two movies. Who is to blame....the screenplay author? The director? Probably both. The inevitable one-liners and certain plot elements reduced this to a very tongue-in-cheek action film. Suspension of belief is what Hollywood movies are mostly about but this came as very much of a personal disappointment after the excellent T2. Okay, so we got eye candy in the form of a female Terminator, the T-X. Gorgeous to look at but hardly credible as a character. T2 cast Robert Patrick as the "latest model" terminator because the plot called for the menace to be manifest through superior technology and ability rather than sheer size and brute force. So T2 has a regular guy-sized bad Terminator and T3 then makes the bad Terminator a woman.
What can we expect next in the inevitable T4? Maybe an infant Terminator - the TOT?
The manner in which T3 ended blatantly left the door open for yet another sequel but this may depend on various factors, not least of which will be Governor Schwarzenegger's busy schedule over the next several years. If they leave it too long they will have to have serious rethink about how to develop the plot to account for Mr Schwarzenegger's advancing years as he is, despite the make-up girls' best efforts, starting to show his advancing years - God he looked old when he delivered that line "I am a machine" - but then he had been in in few fights by then and what we see is supposed to be living human tissue over a metal skeleton.....
If there is going to be a T4 I hope to God they get back to decent scripts otherwise they might as well consign the thing to TV as happened to Star Gate (good film, absolutely dreadful series).
Alternatively knock it on the head altogether as this particular gravy train looks to be approaching the terminus.