T3  The first action movie of the new millennium worth seeing.

Rating: 9/10 (4 November 2003)

I was lucky enough to get a ticket to the Maryland premier of T3: Rise of the Machines'. WOW! This is the best action film since the first Matrix'. Maryland residents, SEE THIS AT THE SENATOR. It will blow you away.
The film works on every level. Good story, acting, action and just enough humor result in a film that lays the 2nd installment to waste. I am personally glad that James Cameron passed on this project. His access to unlimited resources will forever tarnish his filmic vision. Cameron's version of T3 would have been as bloated and worthless as every movie David Selznick made after Gone With the Wind.' Jonathan Mostow created a sequel that is true to the original and less than 2 hours long.

Yes, the budget was huge for T3, but it works and has the most plausible plot of the three films. After accepting the existence of nearly indestructible terminators, everything else falls into place. Controlled, limited CGI and muted special effects made every sequence believable (note to the Matrix 2 screenwriters  even though it was really cool, you will never, ever see two tractor trailers worth of Ducatis on the highway at the same time). The action sequences were not to long (hello Matrix 2 writers). The resulting realism fuels total viewer immersion. Suspension of disbelief was never pushed too far. As a result, the audience reacts positively to what was happening on the screen.
Less CGI places a greater role on the actors and they did not disappoint. The characters related to each other in a believable manner. There were no huge plausibility issues (John Conner doesn't send his dad back in time to impregnate his mother a.k.a. T1). The writers developed a great inevitability of fate' angle to help the story along. Sarah Conner reaches out from the grave to lend support and the annoying psychologist from the first film returns for a cameo. The Terminatrix, who attacks with the tenacity and brutality of a woman scorned, is the perfect foe for Arnold. Arnold's one-liners are nicely spaced, a riot and help balance out the insane barrage of destruction the terminators leave in their wake.

T3 also stands on it's own. It needs no help from its predecessors (unlike Matrix 3'). The machines rise, as the title suggests, so if there is a T4, it will either be a prequel or take place in the post-human, Skynet world. There is no need for a prequel as T3 provides a perfect conclusion to the `human-controlled' portion of the saga. Don't expect a cheesy thumbs-up, into the smelter T2 ending. The audience I was with applauded the movie as the credits rolled and I was right there clapping along side them.

Don't cheat yourself. Find the movie theater near you with biggest screen (the Senator in Baltimore has a 40'one), best sound system (Lucasfilms certified the Senator's THX) and see this movie today! You will not be disappointed.