Review of Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines (2003) by Shayan S — 29 Jun 2015

Terminator 3 is a film so unnecessary and unneeded, that it lead a HUGE downhill for the franchise, but somehow it also lead critics to react to the film as ok and audiences to throw up at the sight of it (at least until Terminator Salvation made its way and made this sequel look like Picasso).

Which side did I choose? Uhhhh, I actually was in the middle on this one. Now just because i'm in the middle doesn't mean that I didn't find any problems. For example: the plot is a recycled tread of the last film, the characters are bland, the story doesn't feel as gripping or tensioned as previous films, the action seems to be dated and fake now thanks to its overuse of CGI, the "new" terminator just feels like the T-1000 rip-off, and overall needed the involvement of James Cameron in order for this to work (even if he didn't want to return for this sequel due to how he thought there wasn't more needed).

Though even with these flaws, I found myself to somehow get little enjoyment from this. Arnold managed to still be fun and robotic from previous films, the story while recycled from T2 had a decent ending, and little of the action keeps it from making me hate it or like it as critics or audiences did.

But hey, it's not Salvation at least.