Not Very Good

Rating: 5/10 (23 July 2011)

I know I'm not the first to do this, but i feel it's necessary to mention T2. I recently watched it, and I can tell you now that this movie is unwanted. The ending to T2 (I won't tell you what it is) is one of the most satisfying movie endings I have ever seen, and is up there with films like Saving Private Ryan and the Star Wars saga. This film takes the main idea from the first two (the 'changing the future' theme) and simply throws it out of the window. When this came out we were like: "Hang on? Rise of the machines? But it ended in the last one!" And so begins one of the many problems with this movie.
1) James Cameron. I see why he avoided this; they basically got his work and flushed it down the loo; claiming their's was better.
2) Arnie. He was brilliant in T1, perfect in T2 (his smile at the minigun still goes down as pure genius in my eyes) but he has simply run out of steam. He was old, human and dull in T3.
3) It wasn't a Terminator movie. Sure, it has Terminator in the title, but so does Terminator Salvation, and that's about as far from a Terminator film as you can get (while still using the same setting). I actually didn't mind TS, because it didn't pretend to be a Terminator film. This, however, did, and failed. I mean, it's a 12!
4) The characters. I didn't feel connected with any of them. Sorry to bring it up again, but in T2 Sarah and John Connor were brilliant, with Sarah's slow realisation about the machines and her transformation into someone less crazy and John's childishness showing through his hard outer shell were brilliantly portrayed, both with acting and writing. In this though, both were lacking in style and substance, and I found myself actually getting annoyed with John.
5) A female Terminator. Don't mean to be sexist, but come on!
Watching this movie left me with a bad taste in my mouth. I am disappointed with the people behind this film for messing with such cinematic brilliance created by the first two. However, some action scenes pretty well directed, and the humour was quite funny in some places, but not T2 funny, like "He'll live". It was an uncool funny. for those reasons, it just wasn't very good.
5/10