Why I think Terminator 3 doesn't deliver! - Spoilers

Rating: 6/10 (27 November 2004)

I am a HUGE Terminator fan. I have seen both the first two movies inside out and backwards. Here is why I do not believe that Terminator three belongs on the same level as the first two. Forgive me if I leave out any information in my arguments and should anyone feel the desire to argue my points, then by all means you're more than welcome. The first thing that got me about the third movie was the emotion both the terminators showed. The terminator was set up as a relentless killing machine that doesn't show pity, remorse or fear, simply systematic destruction. Ironically, during the scene when the terminator is reprogrammed by the T-X he explains to John (rather emphatically) that he is a machine. That line would have been much more effective had it been delivered with the cold, hard apathy we saw in the first two terminators. Another emotional moment for the terminator was the T-X this time. *(This shouldn't be a spoiler but use discretion anyway) Just before the T-X is defeated she shows fear! If the terminator can't cry in the second movie after all he's been through, I find it very hard to believe that this T-X can be afraid.
*(Potential Spoilers in the following paragraph) That whole thing with the power cell really annoyed me. In the first terminator, he is crushed under a hydraulic press. He didn't blow up! In the third, they suddenly make it that if he suffers a massive blow to the chest he is in danger of exploding. Further more, I understand that this next comment could be taken as being a little nit-picky, but I believe it has to be said. At the end of the second movie the terminator specifically states that he cannot self-terminate, yet at the end of the third movie he decidedly drops the door on himself and the T-X, knowing it would destroy them both.
OK, John Conner is a wimp in this movie. By the end of the second movie he is supposed to be half ready for the war, and before Sarah died, she was supposed to have taught him to be a "Great military leader". How much of this showed in the third now that Judgment day was right around the corner? Also, Cyberdyne Systems was destroyed in the second movie, along with all traces of the terminator. This should have prevented the war. OK, so it never, it only postponed it. *(Spoiler alert) Skynet turns out to be a virus, that becomes self aware, and will construct the terminator (Cyberdyne Systems model 101) based on what? Huh? Military records? How did they get them if Cyberdyne systems was destroyed? Even if Skynet developed this model of the terminator through some kind of cybernetic evolution, he still wouldn't have been developed in the short amount of time they gave in the movie.