Shocked By How Much I Liked This Twelve Years Later!

Rating: 8/10 (29 August 2015)

I remember being very disappointed when this movie came out. The first two Terminator movies have always been some of my favorite movies, or at least they were when I was more of a youth. Indeed, for many years I would have said that "T2: Judgment Day" was my favorite film.
I guess I've grown up a fair bit since then, because I've been watching the series this past week, and while I still have a great love for T1, T2 failed to impress me the way I imagined it would after not having seen it for several years. And then tonight I got around to "Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines". I prepared myself to be let down. This is, after all, the worst of the series (I still haven't seen Salvation or Genesis). So I settled in waiting to be unimpressed.
To my great surprise, twelve years after having first watched this film in the theater, I found this movie to be a lot better than anything I expected to find. Indeed, I'm rating it higher than I rated T2 (7 stars--after having given T1 a perfect 10).
So why did this movie work for me on a second viewing? Perhaps it was because when I saw it the first time my expectations were very high whereas today they were very low. Or perhaps my relative displeasure with how T2 has held up for me made T3 a better movie.
What I do know is that this film nailed its action sequences quite well--the long scene with the crane truck is pretty awesome if you ask me. And the female Terminator (whatever model number she is) was neater this time around. Clare Danes does a great job as supporting actress in this movie, and whereas I was expecting the plot and script to be weak overall, I actually felt that it arguably did a better job of advancing the story of the franchise than T2 did.
All that said, I'm giving this movie 8/10 stars. It greatly exceeded my expectations for a lazy day Blu Ray movie. Definitely worth giving another shot if you haven't seen it since it came out.