Just a big disappointment

Rating: 3/10 (29 January 2011)

I'm going to admit director Jonathan Mostow had some balls to make this, your making another entry in the Terminator series, two of the greatest films of all time! Many people call this an astonishing summer action flick, but to me a hardcore Terminator fan this is just a big middle finger insult. The plot is it's 20 years later John Connor is moving across the world so that no more Terminators an find him. BUT! They do find him the T-800 (Schwarzenegger of course) and The T-X then it's basically the same plot as Judgment Day. James Cameron tied a knot so hard at the ending of Terminator 2 that they had to cheat the source material in this one Judgment day is not preventable and so the T-800 has to get them to a safe zone. You know for the T-X to be the newest unit it's really no where as advance as the T-1000 in the second one. The T-X might be more flexible and can still morph into people but the T-1000 can do that also he can form knives and stabbing objects to which to me is pretty badass. Nick Stahl is the new John Connor. I don't like him as John Connor at all. For one thing I thought John Connor would be this complete bad ass of a kid when he gets older, but he just seems like some wimp, plus his foul mouth language is gone, his advice to The T-800 well I don't remember him giving anything remember able to him. I mean Edward Furlong created the personality for John Connor and there was deep character development, for me Nick Stahl didn't really give me any personality for the older John Connor, I didn't feel like I knew John Connor at all, unless John was just suppose to grow up awkwardly, sure he seems less annoying then Edward Furlong but he just doesn't fit as the older John Connor, though I will admit I thought he was better than Christen Bale is Salvation. I'm glad Schwarzenegger did The T-800 again; if he did not choose to do it again then I would have never wanted to be made. He still doing what he does best, playing a badass machine, but his character kind of takes a step down because there is no character change. In the second one he went from a machine doing his mission into a father like figure for John. In this one he's just doing the mission. But he is still humorous and still fun to watch which is still good for me, but I was disappointed he didn't say "I'll be back", but with out a doubt he is the best part of the movie. There is also a new character; Claire Danes plays Kate Brewster essentially going to be John's husband in the future. Honestly I just thought she was awful. The T-X killed her husband and morphed into him. When they find each other the T-X morph back into itself, the expression on her face isn't what I expected, it looks like she saw a ghost, plus I thought she was just super annoying and I never felt she was actually scared plus she never really created a personality and the one thing she a John had in common is that they went to the same high school together and the more they spent time together I never felt they could ever get along with each other. I never saw a relationship for them. When I first rated this I gave it a 0% but I felt like I was being too harsh. To me the biggest flaw was the acting. The Claire didn't give her character a personality and Nick did awful as John Connor. In the first one everyone had a personality even Miles did and it made the movie incredibly suspenseful, you want them to stop Judgment day. In here there was no suspense and I honestly didn't care if the made it or not. Also I didn't like how it's basically the same plot as Terminator 2. They made me think that they didn't care about anything except the action in this. Now The Terminator is known to have great and I mean great action sequences make that many great action sequences. In this one for me the very best action sequence is the one where the terminator is hanging from the crane, I thought that was completely bad ass, also the part where the Terminator is carrying John in the coffin I thought that was pretty original. The other action sequences to me were just boring and didn't live up to the hype that I expected. Back then I had a lot of complaints about the action but today I just realize it was just nick-picking (if I said that right). Director Ang Lee was actually offered to direct this but he turned it down to direct the Hulk film, I'm not sure how it would've turned out if he directed this, he probably would have done a better job with the action sequences, well considering what he did to The Hulk maybe, but he is still a better director than Jonathan Mostow. Besides from Schwarzenegger still being a delight to watch and a few memorable action scenes Terminator 3 disappointed me with a lazy script, bad acting, many bland action scenes and awful character development. With being a hardcore Terminator fan if they called this anything else but Terminator 3 Rise of the Machines, I might have liked it more, otherwise I think the world would have been better without this.