Number 2 all over again

Rating: 6/10 (12 June 2017)

There was a period of time between when I was at university and when I started writing reviews for films again that I had become somewhat distracted. In fact there was a period of time when I didn't see all that many films at all, with the exception of some really big name ones that I absolutely had to see – Terminator 3 was one of them. I guess the reason was because ever since Terminator 2 I wanted to see a version set in the future where they are fighting the robots, and a part of me was expecting the third installment to be that movie. Unfortunately, as it turned out, this wasn't to be the case. In fact it seems, in many aspects, simply a remake of the second film – pretty much more of the same.
This time we are ten years in the future and John Conner is now in his early twenties. He is a drifter, his mother is dead, and it seems as if the world has been freed from Skynet. Well, the problem is that John still seems to be having these nightmares, so he is wandering whether he can actually relax. It is clear that he can't because he is simply drifting, off the grid, simply trying to survive while hoping that the world doesn't blow itself up. Unfortunately that isn't going to be the case because two more terminators come back from the future, one to protect him and one to not only attempt to kill him, but to also kill his lieutenants.
As I suggested, this film is basically just a rehash of the plot of the second film, which boils down to the simple line of two robots slugging it out. Sure, we have Arnie returning to reprise his role as the T800 (actually it is the T850 now, which is somewhat better than the previous two), but we also have another terminator come back, this one being a more advanced version that can now create energy weapons as opposed to simply knives and stabbing weapons. Mind you, it felt a little contrived since it seemed that the T-1000, that was pure living metal, was somewhat more advanced than this new one that happened to have an endo-skeleton.
I have since discovered that the second movie was supposed to be the end of the franchise, but obviously the demand for sequels was just that little too high, which is why we have had it resurrected in this third, forth, and fifth movie. However, the idea behind the film, in that while Cyberdyne was destroyed, the idea of Skynet wasn't, does hold a lot of water. For instance, the suggestion is that Miles wasn't the only person that worked at home. The other thing is that the movement of technology was inevitable. All we need to do is look about us today to see how the movement towards AI is progressing, and more so, despite the warnings that are given to us in not only movies like Terminator, but also Isaac Asimov, we seem to be blindly charging into the future once again. Who knows, one day we may wake up under the rule of our robot overlords.