Just saw it finally, and I'm glad i did not listen to the criticism.

Rating: 7/10 (18 December 2009)

I feel this film has been slash and burned as under-rated. It lacks the heart and soul and even brief humor of the first two, but its a different movie with different circumstances directed and produced over 15 years after T2. It has the "millenial touch" as I like to call it (but well executed)...that divergent break from 90s film-making. In response to the lack of characterization: If every city around me has been nuked, I'm constantly being hunted, and I'm eating table scraps (or not at all) to live off of, my personality is not going to be very colorful. This is the human holocaust...not much to smile about. The world created here is fairly accurate and truthful to the franchise...with some creative license to create additional machines. The CGI is mindblowingly good...to the point that you know it has to be CGI, but can't really tell in the majority of the scenes. There is a plot, its pretty good and original to some extent...and it is interesting. Yes performances are a little flat, but to me, the immersive (majorly immersive) world created here takes care of the rest. My bar is high, I have to give it a 7. But it deserves a better score than 6.9 on IMDb. Its a better film than that...and worth a second and third watch. Do I like it over T2? It may be a tie in my book, for entirely different reasons. Where one fails the other succeeds in other categories.