They needed more flesh for the hyperalloy combat chassis

Rating: 7/10 (6 July 2003)

Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines is a storyboard, not much more. They sketched out the basic plot and brought in the artist for concepts. The characters were drawn with colored pencils with explosions in the background with great detail. That all translated directly to the screen. Each character had the right look. All of the action sequences were shot from the right angles. But, they forgot to add the dialog that was necessary to take this from a long action sequence to a good movie.
What's important about the first two Terminator movies is the development of the killing machine sent back in time, the panic and fear of the one or several characters who know what the Terminator can do and the denial of those who won't believe them, and the apparent indestructability of the Terminator, until a novel strategy is employed. This movie neglects the first two and makes it just a chase to the grand finale. But, since you don't know the characters, except what you already know about John Connor there's more than one thing missing.
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The movie starts and the T-X begins assassinating young people throughout Los Angeles. How much extra time would it have taken to add some police investigation of the serial murders. What do these teenagers have in common? Maybe something that reveals all of the teenagers will be outside the Los Angeles area within the next 48 hours. That's integral to the long-term storyline, but it's neglected.
Then the T-X just shows up at the Animal Clinic where Brewster is at 5:30am. Why wouldn't she go to Brewster's home rather than the Clinic. Unexplained. Obviously Brewster told T-101 that she would be there that night with Connor, so that makes sense.
There isn't the build up, like in Terminator or T-2, where the main characters are hunted by their would be mechanical assassin, and it's really necessary, not just to build tension, but also to build the character of the Terminator. In this case, there is no personality nor inevitability of the T-X.
The secondary characters are also neglected. General Brewster is hardly explained. He doesn't want to give up control to Skynet, but why not. Give us a little more about him, his program, his staff. Let us connect to him a bit. Why does he do what he does at the end?
Introducing Dr. Peter Silberman back into the story was a fun idea, but they really gave him nothing to work with. That could have been much more useful.
In T-2 the Terminator is used well to advance the future plot and to give background to the audience through narrative about Judgment Day. Since Brewster is a totally unknowledgeable character, such narrative would help here too, but it's only done in scant detail. Stretching things out over several days, instead of packing everything into one could have given this freedom to advance the plot. Adding another important character could have done this as well. In T-2, the T-101 explains Judgment Day to Sarah Connor and Myles Bennett Dyson. It adds weight when he tells the story twice, but differently. The longer time period could have given more chance to advance the story that way, and it would have allowed the background police investigation I proposed above.
The definition of Skynet at the end doesn't make much sense at all. Perhaps the supercomputer becomes aware and takes control of all networked systems, but for all computers to be part of it, because of software, is foolish.
Finally, "I can't help you with what you must soon face, except to tell you that the future is not set... there is no such thing as Fate, but what we make for ourselves by our own will." I guess the free will idea Cameron created in the first two Terminator films was thrown out with the bath water.
Since the film was only about 90 minutes, these things could have added flesh to the hyperalloy combat chassis without over burdening the microprocessor.