Lacks direction, humanity and complex characters.

Rating: 1/10 (25 December 2005)

After over a decade of waiting, wondering what came next in the masterful Terminator franchise starring Arnold Schwarzenegger in his most famous and iconic role - Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines made it's premiere in 2003 but this time without James Cameron at the helm. In his place a competent action director in Jonathan Mostow (U571 and Breakdown) to continue the legendary mythology spelled out so meaningfully in the previous classics. No pity, no remorse - no fate but what we make, right? Wrong.
Terminator 3 works as a stand-alone action film or straight up popcorn flicks for teenage multiplex hoards but as part of the acclaimed Terminator franchise it's an insulting, unintelligent and insignificant re-tread lacking direction, humanity and complex characters. If anything this devalues the franchise beyond recognition essentially back-tracking, rewriting and corrupting the mythology painstakingly established by James Cameron before trying to compensate for its lack of creativity with explosions and poorly placed slapstick humour.
Its one thing to unnecessarily build upon another movie's story, but to rewrite the entire meaning behind another movie is just cheap and nasty. The story itself offered nothing besides the beginning of Judgment Day which was already the way we knew the series was headed and instead of moving the logical way, which is forward, the writers tried to implement bogus twists and instead took some rather pointless and dull steps backwards essentially reversing the entire mythology of the series.
The notion desperately put forth in Terminator 3 is ridiculous, not to mention a complete repudiation of the themes and ideals spelled out so eloquently in Terminator's one and two. This is bad writing, tailored to suit an uninspired little story. How the writers felt adequate about avoiding the questions everybody has been asking for over a decade but more importantly how is it they live with themselves after re-writing the entire meaning behind such a classic mythology? 'Judgement Day is inevitable' is not an explanation. This one line shows how little talent, vision or depth the writers really had when put up to the take of writing such a large-scale film on their own.
Now to character development and relationships. Terminator 3 missed so many opportunities to establish it's characters and established no atmosphere whatsoever. The score is as dry as a bone lacking little to no emotion like Brad Fidel's and if anything, anything at all the film should have emphasized even more on the character of John Connor. You know the saviour of mankind, the leader of the human resistance like Sarah in Terminator 2 but failed to because there simply wasn't any time to between the breaking of key scenes with slapstick humour by clown Arnold or more pointless action. The opening voice over with Connor was the only real development throughout the movie but can you really call that development? I'd call it an easy explanation. The opening voice over is all the insight you really get into the mind of John Connor (who gets his age wrong) and unfortunately its not enough to warrant a great character like Sarah Connor, though Stahl's performance was firm.
How we went from the Terminator in 1984 to this is beyond me and while they may have the rights to the franchise but you'd think in having the rights to create such a high calibre film they'd first take the time to understand it and its importance. The writers (Brancato, Ferris) were completely void of any real new ideas and basically had re-tread old information with one original idea in mind for the movie, the oh so 'shocking' conclusion which was just another tool for yet another 'inevitable' sequel by these hacks who forgot to hold dear what Cameron's films made so memorable. 1/10