Probably better than Robocop3...

Rating: 5/10 (26 April 2004)

T3, "Rise of the Machines" is for me that rarest of films - one that I like less with each viewing. That's not to say that it is without redeeming features - it has for example one of the most breathtaking vehicle sequences I can remember seeing - but the writing is generally more like poor fan fiction than a genuine third installment in the series.
MAJOR SPOILERS FOLLOW
On the whole I don't obsess over details between franchise movies, but the abandonment of "no fate but what we make" in favour of an inevitable Judgement Day counts as something more than a detail. John Connor's newfound fatalism is neither particularly believable in view of his history - after all, he *knows* that JD can at least be successfully postponed - nor is it necessary to the plot, since the core of that was lifted straight from its predecessor anyway. This isn't a new movie, so much as a bad case of "well if *I'd* written T2, *I'd* have done it this way". The relentless series of joky back references don't help either, in a film that seems unable to decide whether it wants to be homage, parody or a new perspective on the Terminator story.
Once you start to dislike a movie, the plot holes start to annoy you out of all proportion. How does the T-X's ability to manipulate other computers translate to an ability to remotely control vehicles' steering and transmission? Why was the facility that Kate Brewster's father worked out of on such secure military projects, completely unguarded? Why did he have a private plane there? What happened to the laws of motion (particularly the bit about "equal and opposite reaction") during the cartoonish battle of the Terminators in the washroom? What inspired Connor to fire up the 'particle accelerator' and above all, how the hell did he know how to? How come the T-X, which was so badly affected by the (rather disturbing) external magnetic field from the accelerator that her metal was being stripped from her frame was able to wrench an arm away, form an apparently motorised (i.e. magnetic field dependent) saw with a small blade and damage the accelerator enough to escape? Why was an emergency bunker, apparently designed to protect the most senior members of government in the event of war, fully powered up but completely unmanned? How does Arnie manage to restrain the more powerful T-X with both his fuel cells removed? Eventually you start to ask "why did I just spend the last 100 minutes of my life watching this stuff?"
The answer is, just so long as you can disengage your brain and watch it for the spectacle, it's a pretty slick show. There's chases and explosions and a cute, blonde and decidedly female villain and just occasionally those back references are amusing. And at least it avoids the problems of franchises like Robocop, where the main character went from virtually indestructible supercyborg in the first movie to spending more time being repaired than fighting crime in the third. These terminators are still determinedly solid killing machines, even if the film does seem to think it has more to say than is really the case.