how they should have done it

Rating: 2/10 (2 May 2005)

What a piece of trash. It's nothing more than a film that tried to outdo the action sequences of its two predecessors. No characters development. In fact, it more features character un-development as we see Jon Connor go from amazingly cool kid with budding leadership qualities in "T2" to whiny 20-something wuss in this movie.
And it also seems that the director went to great pains to undo the time travel logic of the first two films. Time travel stories naturally have to deal with paradox, but you can't resolve paradox one way then turn around and throw that reasoning out the window in favor of another explanation. They did, and it completely undermined the reasons why we were told the first two stories happened. As it stands, Jon Connor had nothing to fear from the Terminatrix. If fate is after all inescapable as Arnold declared, then Jon could've walked right up to the Terminatrix and planted a big IL' kiss right on her lips and she would have still not been able to kill him because he was fated to be the leader of the future resistance having survived nuclear Armageddon with knowledge of how to fight the machines. Stupid.
If they'd wanted to keep in line with the idea that fate can be changed, then here is a much better idea that could have been a plot device to make an exciting "T3" movie:
Jon is in his 20s. A third T-100 comes back and informs him that new information uncovered AFTER the dispatching of the first two protectors is that one last Terminator was sent back, but its primary mission was to first protect Cyberdine's existence, then eliminate John immediately following the nuclear strike. Cyberdine executives, understanding how radical the research their company was doing, had made extensive back-ups of the information thought destroyed in the previous movie. After the destruction of the main lab in T2, further research was shifted to the military when Cyberdine reformed as an exclusive military contractor whose existence is classified so as to be protected from future "terrorist" threats.
The plot could have been just as exciting and action packed, but with a new formula. Instead of running AWAY from the enemy terminator, John, the T-100 and supporting cast would be on the offensive actively trying to bring Cyberdine down while the T-1000 or T-X or whatever is disguising itself as a military/Cyberdine big shot and doing everything to ensure Judgement Day and still try to eliminate John so he can't lead the humans to victory 20 years later.
Ah, what could have been...