Disappointing; Shocking Lack of Originality

Rating: 6/10 (28 July 2003)

If you want to see T3, just watch T2 again and then add on five minutes worth of plot mythology development. Basically, T3 seems to exist to make money, instead of make money and take us meaningfully forward in the Terminator franchise.
Let's see ... Terminator sent back in time to kill John Connor (and a few others, given lip service but no meaning)? Check. Other Terminator (older model) sent back to protect Connor? Check. War between humans and self-aware machines coming? Check. Car chases involving big, destructive trucks? Check. Bar scene where naked Terminator gets clothes? Check. Organization that will unwittingly allow self-aware machines to control nuclear weapons? Check.
I mean, what was new? Very little. A minor philosophy change involving fate (Sarah Connor turns out to be wrong after all). A very brief bit of reprogramming that causes a good guy to be a bad guy for a few minutes. Even the fancy new Terminator is very similar to the new one in T2. It has an additional weapons ability and one minor wrinkle where it can control machines, but really, who ever thought a Terminator couldn't do that?
That's just the beginning. This movie raises many questions about its own story. For instance, if it is so easy for the machines and humans to send machines back in time, how can this ever end? Why not send a Terminator back to 1961 and kill Sarah Connor as a child? Or kill her parents back in 1930? The franchise really needs to point out that this process is terribly difficult and limited.
Also, John Connor knows how he will die. So now that he knows, why can't he prevent it? It's not like it is a random bomb. There is a very specific set of actions that must occur for Connor to die, and Connor himself must OK one of them. So why would he ever do it?
T3 is very disappointing, and one of the most crass cash grabs I have ever seen from Hollywood.