The one sequel too many - Spoilers

Rating: 5/10 (26 November 2003)

I think there is an unwritten law about Hollywood that goes somewhat like: "There can be only one good sequel." On most occations sequels rarely surpass the original and I have to say my expectations were pretty high for a second sequel like T3 when I heard about it. After all Cameron has managed to make some fairly good sequels. Then I found out Cameron was not on the job. My expectations dropped. Not that I'm a Cameron fanatic, don't get me wrong - it's just that I had never even heard of Mostow before.
Well let's make a long story short: I went to the movies and was at first pretty satisfied with the film. First impression good. However, the more I started analyzing it, the less I liked it. The plot was really just taken directly out of T2 and modified in a way to make it seem like new. Nothing new here, except this time the villain is in female form - that and John is older. By the time we get to the action (not too long) I started noticing how the pace of the movie has ruined it. The makers clearly thought that if there is enough action people forget about the plot holes. They had the inevitable car crashing bashing scene (please, haven't we seen enough of these already, they're in -every- action flick today!) and our heroes were so busy running around they didn't even have time to go over the situation. Character development: totally unbelievable (can't say more, I'd be spoiling). They couldn't make the story hold anymore, and what's worse it's still left open for a fourth episode.
The only part about this movie that I really enjoyed was Arnold. He is the sole reason to see the movie. His one-liners and cheesy accent are still worth a couple of laughs. And he does have a few new ones too.
All in all, the movie was ok, but that's just it. It wasn't great like it's predecessors. And I'm not going to say Cameron could have saved it, but I'm saying maybe Cameron had a reason for dumping the project. Compared to some other action movies today T3 is actually quite descent, but it doesn't even nearly live up to the greatness of T2 or the freshness of T1. If all you care for is action though, you could do a lot worse.
grade: C