Pretty awful.

Rating: Null/10 (9 September 2004)

Judged on its own merits, this movie is as forgettable as a thousand other forgettable action flicks: They come, stick around for a few weeks and they're gone. Who cares. However, judged in relation to T1 and T2, this movie is especially bad.
Here are a few of the things that bugged me: Whereas the earlier movies were thought provoking, this was just action for the sake of action. Even as such it wasn't all that good. T1 and T2 had elements of real heroism in them. Here we have no one to look up to. It amazes me that even though this movie was made much more recently, aided by the latest digital technology, it just didn't look as good as either of the previous two: They had a certain realism about them (keeping in mind that these are fantasy movies) whereas T3, at times, had more of a comic book movie look, reminding me at certain points of Batman or Darkman. The early fight scene outside the animal clinic looked particularly bad, as if it were done on a soundstage (probably was). The acting wasn't very good. I felt kind of bad for Claire Danes whom otherwise I like. I agree with some of the other reviews, John Connor was rather irritatingly wimpy. Arnold looked a little too old and the sunglasses gag was wrong for the movie. TX did nothing for me. The design detail was not nearly as good as T2.
And so on. 2/10.