Healthy and well executed continuation of the series, not submitting to genre convention while exploring its leads in an impressive manner.

Rating: 6/10 (17 May 2009)

Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines seems to hold up for me, on subsequent viewings. I took to it the first time I saw it, and have since been quite surprised by the level of antagonism most people have toward it. The film is far from the disaster it could have been; it draws on inspiration from the previous two films and rather than aim to go bigger and better, it actually opts to go underneath them – this, it most certainly achieves. Drawing on the fast moving element of chase and the very bleak atmosphere the first film had, Terminator 3 delivers as a downbeat and briskly paced thriller with a science-fiction twist. It additionally works as a polished action film, something the second Terminator film was, with numerous action set pieces but with additional substance in the form of studies of individuals and their hardened bodies. Unlike the second film, however, which offered hope at the end of the narrative; Terminator 3 sticks to its guns and concludes on a downbeat tone, echoing the first film and setting up what will be a supposed number of sequels.
I think a lot of people dislike the film because they're told to dislike the film; almost as if people are frightened of reading too much into the text. Yes, Cameron had no input to its production; yes, the enemy Terminator is a female; yes, Schwarzenegger's 'good' Terminator is a lot less sympathetic and there's a smaller focus on man and machine co-existing, but so what? The film remains an interesting character piece, establishing would-be hard bodied heroes and fleshing them out. On the other strand, it tells the tale of a certain military individual by name of Lieutenant General Robert Brewster (Andrews) and his final developments, along with the United States Air Force, of a complicated new weapons system they inherited from Cyberdyne Systems following their destruction in the second film. Brewster jokingly, but ominously, talks about how he wants to keep humans and their decisions 'in the loop' when it comes to co-existing with machines.
The film begins with a now adult John Connor (Stahl), a nobody, an everyday guy whom does some work here and there; drifts on his motorcycle; rues the death of his mother Sarah and sits atop high bridges late at night with a beer, quite possibly contemplating suicide. The first glimpses of this individual goes against the more typical image of an action genre lead: John is weak and a relative nobody, whilst possesses very few skills. He will once again get put through the survival grinder as Arnold Schwarzenegger, in his third innings as his career defining role, is sent back to 2003 to protect him from a more advanced enemy robot named the T-X (Loken), a female super-assassin who is five times the antagonist the T-1000 was in terms of both power and ability. Like Robert Patrick's role, and to a degree Schwarzenegger's in the first film, the film opts for a relative unknown in Kristanna Loken who pulls off her role with the same anonymity and menace as her predecessors.
Going through the grinder with John and the T-850 Terminator is Kate Brewster (Danes), the daughter of the aforementioned Robert of high military importance. Kate is the film's secondary study of a would-be hard bodied character; she successfully goes from squealing, screaming veterinarian to miniature Hunter Killer destroyer-come-soldier in what is a moment of realisation by both characters that she is of that material – those that groan in disappointment at this occurrence are those that have completely missed the study in transition, thus going back to what I say about people being afraid to read too much into it. Much earlier on, she additionally displays a hardened attitude when she outsmarts John, mistaking him for a junkie breaking into the veterinarian hospital, and locks him in an animal cage. Kate advances, emotionally, as she looses those she loves and becomes more weary of the situation.
The T-X acts as an interesting element to the film. The filmmakers have not updated the 'role' of the antagonistic robot purely to be different and offer variation in the role. Rather, they have allowed the most powerful character in the entire film to be a woman, something that is relatively unheard of in today's action genre. Equally refreshing is the refraining from turning both the T-X and Kate into objects of desire, forever developing and fleshing out one as the other ponders a woman's role in the new world she been transported back to when she observes a bra advertisement board asking us 'What is Sexy?' For those out for the set pieces, the film includes a few scenes of great action: the initial coming together of the robotic forces and the ensuing escape/acquiring of Kate and John as well as a shootout and consequent escape at a cemetery, during which Earl Boen gets an amusing cameo. The Terminator and the TX have an additional hand-to-hand fight in a public bathroom.
The film is, essentially, a tragedy rather than a glorification of violence or a fetishisation of explosions. It documents mankind's inability to come to terms with the weapons they have at their disposal and modernity in general. I find Terminator 3 to be interesting in its own right, and worthy of a place on the mantle amongst the first two, but to echo Sarah Connor's words as she journeys to destroy the Cyberdyne building in Terminator 2: furthering the franchise into the future is 'a venture into the unknown, a making up of history as we go along'. It may yet prove to be futile and a bit of a miss-judgement and that, like judgement day, money-making sequels to established franchises "are inevitable".