An okay movie...unless you like the Terminator series

Hollywood loves cashing in on old franchises, and they've tried to do that again with a new addition to the Terminator franchise. The first Terminator movie took an ordinary woman and thrust her into an action environment as she found out that she was the key to the survival of the human race. The second film took Arnold Schwarzenegger's cold cyborg character and humanized him, while at the same time allowing the characters to avoid a horrible alternate future through their compassion and cunning. The third movie goes right out and nullifies the impact of those classic sci-fi films.

Terminator 3 has all of the cool action you would expect from a Terminator film. There are car chases, explosions, gunfire, and bad one-liners from Schwarzenegger. What hurts both the film and the franchise, however, is the fact that it takes away any achievements from the first two films. Sarah Connor is now dead, John Connor has become a worthless drifter, and the Terminators are back -- even though they shouldn't even exist due to the heroics of the second film. Ultimately, this movie is the complete opposite of the theme of free will that pervaded the older films. Instead, this one suggests that the future can't be changed significantly, which makes all of the sacrifice of the first two movies worthless. The characters might as well have just sat back and gotten drunk during those first two films, because their actions didn't actually end up changing anything anyway.

If you're looking for a dumb action movie, Terminator 3 is about as good as any others. It has explosions, clichés, puns, and a sexy female killer, just like so many others. If you're looking for a worthy addition to the classic sci-fi franchise, however, don't bother. This third installment is essentially a big middle finger to the fans of the first two films.

Fluffy but flawed

Compared with the utter drivel that's been out *this* year - Transformers, Beowulf, etc. - Terminator 3 is an enjoyable action to munch away the popcorn to. The special effects are decent, the action sequences memorable, and it's not too long.

The problem with Terminator 3 is that the first two set the bar so high that it fails as a successor in the franchise. The plot is a rehash of the second one, the female Terminator is a joke (although nice to look at, plot holes abound, and it just so feels so ... underwhelming.

Of course, the first two are legendary so expectations are high. Once Fox has danced all over the grave of quality with The Terminator Chronicles being released soon, maybe T3 will look like the best movie of the decade.

Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines

One day I was at a friends house for the night, we decided to watch a movie, we were going to watch "Meet the Robinsons" for the sake of the younger kids there. My friends dad also decided to go and T3, they are both fans of the first two. After I had seen multiple negative reviews on this film I didn't expect to much, but once I heard it compares to "Jurassic Park III" (which I greatly enjoyed) I decided I might like the film. After finishing "Meet the Robinsons" the younger kids were put to bed and we started watching T3, hopefully to enjoy it, and enjoy it I did. I personally enjoyed the films action sequences and story, which I felt was intense and carried out fairly well. My friend and his dad also enjoyed the film, they agreed it didn't match the first two but that it was still a good film. This being the first "Terminator" movie I had seen I didn't know what to expect, I believed this helped me. Too many people compared this to the first two films and excpected it to be the same, but it wasn't, it was actually a fairly good film, just not quite as good as (apparently) the first two fantastic films. Because I had not seen the other two, I was able to see this one as a film and not just a stack up to the first two, thus I honestly believe it was a fairly good film. The female Terminator (T-1000) was a truly terrifying and brutal machine, the girl scared me half to death! You had know idea where she was gonna jump out from, and the fact that she brutally killed people, each in various different ways (a.k.a, punching her arm through them, killing them with buzzsaws, or just plain out shooting them) was a truly scary concept that was carried out fairly well. The acting itself wasn't a perfect gem, but it carried the story like it needed to and there was no particular flaw in the acting.

Great action film, see it.