How many times does he intent to say "...back."?

Rating: 6/10 (13 August 2015)

Terminator 3, what can I say... It's probably one of the most difficult movies to have humble expectations first time around after seeing the previous movies of the franchise. How can you not expect it to be great as the prequels were - this is The Terminator we're talking about, right? Right?
Ever since seeing Terminator 2 I always wondered if there would be another entry. How would they follow it up and possibly top them? As time passed there were various rumors here and there, but never anything concrete for a long time. James Cameron was involved, then he was not and so on and so forth. There were comics that I found to be quite interesting and served as tie-ins to both T1 and T2, in which you would for example see where the T1000 got his look from and what happened in the future war with its own twists and turns of events. I found it to be solid material that could be used for reference when making a third movie. After all, the future where the war with Skynet is happening and both Kyle Reese and the terminators are send back in time is the least covered part in the previous movies, and at one point did happen either way, wherever it was avoided in T2 or not. So to me it was the only logical way a third one would've been made, if at all, and it sort of would be both a prequel and sequel.
Then, after a too long time when the hype kinda laid down, Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines came along, and right of the bat it looked like they didn't have any new ideas. Even from the trailer I could tell that they were playing it safe and pretty much rehashed the second one. Watching the movie for the fist time was like playing the waiting game, when would something wow me? We're still stuck with the same, old characters that are supposed to be humanity saviors only this time completely without any notable development towards it. And when the end-credits rolled I was left unimpressed and thought to myself "well, that's just a so much weaker version of T2". It didn't do anything new, at all. At that time I couldn't even point out a single thing that stood out to me. It was just one giant "meh".
Thrill and fear - completely gone. Creativity - huh, what!? Character development, emotions, purpose - not much here. Moving and powerful music - absent. Fear inducing and horrifying villain - nope, you just get this sort of T1000 with T800 parts and gimmicks tacked on that's here just for the action. No message, no meaningful conflict, no nightmares, no deeper meaning, nada, niente.
Instead of everything mentioned you get: good action with some notable scenes and enough oomph. Campy humor that is often too much on the nose and more than once feels like a spoof of the second movie, almost reaching Scary Movie-like levels in some scenes. And a overabundance of the same one-liners now with slight variations. Seriously, people loved them in T2, but that wasn't by far the main thing. It was rather the cherry on top and way better implemented in small amounts and way more natural. Here it seemed that everything happening is for the purpose of forcing as much as possible of them down your throat and blowing sh*t up for the sake of blowing sh*t up. It's like they misunderstood or didn't bother to understand the appeal of the Terminator movies and just went with the f-yeah action.
But after watching it a few more times I came to appreciate it for what it is. Had it been completely unrelated to the Terminator saga it would be much easier to enjoy it and pass it as a decent popcorn action flick. The main problems are the truly giant steps it has to fill in and the pressure while making it must've been immense. Jonathan Mostov actually does a fairly competent, sans the humorous parts, job and at certain times it does feel slightly like a Terminator movie. Its the writing that is just so incredibly lazy. Maybe it was indeed the smarter move in playing it safe as the perfection the previous movies achieved is truly something that does happen very rarely, so it may have underwhelm either way. It's not a bad movie, but it just tremendously pales in comparison and is hindered by having to live up to two of the greatest movies of all time. The ending is solid and a good way to lead into the dark future - it fits surprisingly well into the whole saga, however anything before that was, sadly, completely unnecessary and spread thin to the movies run time.