James Cameron had nothing to do with this...and you can tell.

Rating: 1/10 (6 January 2008)

"The future is not set. There is No Fate but what we make for ourselves. I wish I could believe that...but I don't." The very opening words of this movie set up the attitude that it has towards the two movies that came before it: "Ya know those brilliant films that James Cameron created? We're gonna throw it all out the window." Action movies are often not very memorable. The reason behind this, I believe, is because those involved forget about character and story in favor of special effects. They regard character and story, the two most important elements, as an unfortunate necessity in story structure to give their filmed action sequences some semblance of coherence.
James Cameron did what only a select few action movie directors have done: he remembered that character and story are what make the action memorable. The best action sequences are ones where you care about who's going to win, who's going to lose, who's going to survive, and who's going to die. You have to get your audience to care about the heroes so that the action actually has meaning beyond showing off your sky-high budget.
Like I said, so few directors actually remember that, especially as time goes on. Michael Bay forgot about that when he made TRANSFORMERS. Cory Yuen forgot about that when he made THE TRANSPORTER. And Jonathan Mostow forgot it in TERMINATOR 3: RISE OF THE MACHINES.
The story's basic enough. John Connor didn't stop Judgement Day after all. He just postponed it.
There. That does it. Basically, the first two movies become meaningless with this movie around because they throw away the "No Fate" concept that was integral to the first two movies. But why is "No Fate" not true? Could they think of a logical, thought-provoking reason? No. The reason they came up with is, "Because we need another movie."
John Connor? Unlike Edward Furlong's portrayal, which showed a young, courageous, compassionate, intelligent, punk-attitude wiz kid who could easily be seen leading the Human Resistance years from now, Nich Stahl (a good actor with a bad script) shows a John Connor who cries and complains at every turn and does nothing remotely heroic throughout the entire movie.
The Terminator? Although Arnold once created one of the most menacing villains in the history of the silver screen, and later a computer-programmed killer capable of learning and caring, here he is reduced to a one-line spouting source of "comic" relief.
I prefer to think that this tarnish to Cameron's legacy was never made.