Stale Recipe

Rating: Null/10 (3 September 2003)

Ever tried to cook something, following the same recipe faithfully, only to have it turn out different every time? Apparently the makers of this movie had no such problems. The standard ingredients are all present, in pretty much the same quantities, from Terminator 2, and voila! the results are startlingly similar, and the plot is similarly half-baked. But this is not brain food. This is a Terminator sequel.
Some of the ingredients are better, it's true. Fx have come a long way even since T2, and there has been some attempt at least to spice up some of the chase and fight sequences a bit, with Terminators being dragged through collapsing buildings, crushed under vehicles and so on all pretty convincingly and generally spectacularly. As you'd expect, with so much of the production team's focus on fx and stunts, the story seems even more sadly neglected than previously - like a cake that has been left out in the rain far too long.
We're introduced to the T-X (the thoroughly gorgeous Kristanna Loken) and informed that she is an anti-Terminator Terminator. Wow. Impressive. Except, well, she spends an entire movie demonstrating that she is completely unable to take out an obsolete T-101. Show, don't tell, they say, is the rule of good story telling. So why couldn't we at least have been treated to the sight of several Arnie-class Terminators turning up, all to get pulped by this little lady - except of course for our 'hero'? Oh well, missed opportunity there guys, but don't worry, you only spent a few million dollars on your movie, so no great loss.
Anyway, this metallic minx battles Arnie (unsuccessfully) across the city, destroying much of said city in the process and these two Terminator models break into into their constituent components faster than a girl and boy band respectively. Arnie gets to fire at the cops without hurting any of them, the bad Terminatrix gets to kill a few people, morph into other people, and check her hair in the occasional reflective surface. The temporal mechanics of the story are about as well-crafted as the prototype Terminators that look like a cross between vehicle assembly line robots and that mechanical monstrosity from the Lost in Space movie. In a final desperate flight, young John Connor and his girlfriend are handed a particle accelerator to effect their getaway and it's all a bit convenient and sloppy in the plotting department. All of which culminates in what is a predictable climax that, I think, badly wanted to be a 'clever twist'. Unfortunately, you can't have a clever twist in a circular plot, generally speaking, because otherwise the ends won't meet.
For all the metal flying around, the performances are surprisingly wooden, even from the human contingent. And Arnie, sending himself up, is playing a caricature of a machine and you can almost hear the gears grinding. Or is that your teeth?
Only Kristanna Loken escapes too much criticism in this department, because after all we all forgave Arnie the first time out, when we generally thought, hey, he was pretty good in the Terminator, only to realise later that a machine incapable of expression was all he was cut out to play with any degree of credibility. So the jury is still out on Ms Loken's general acting ability, and she certainly has a screen presence that is always welcome.
In fact, she is the one ingredient in the Terminator 3 recipe that could definitely be described as yummy. And if that sounds at all shallow, it's probably because I eventually discovered the best level on which any of this unsatisfactory hokum can be enjoyed.