Terminator Retrospective: Terminator 3 Review - Featured

In honor of Terminator Salvation, I will be taking a look back at the three Terminator films as this is a franchise I've known since I could crawl and love deeply. Each day we'll bring you a review of all three films before capping it off with my full review of Terminator Salvation. Today brings us to the bastard child of the series; Terminator 3.

TERMINATOR 3: RISE OF THE MACHINES

If there had to be a Terminator 3, it should have returned Arnold as the villain and have him chase after John Connor. Already you have a great emotional conflict with John being forced to destroy what is essentially the only father he's known. Instead, the makers of this film decided they wanted to make Arnold the good guy, have a villain partially made of liquid metal, give John Connor a tough, brash female to have boss him around, and have one human responsible for mankind's destruction. Sound familiar? Well it should because Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines is select scenes from each of the previous installments to try to make something coherent. What's left is a film that's as soulless as it's main antagonist and as messy as the nitpicks at all of the time travel in this series.

The problems with this film begin at what has been a staple of the franchise in having a memorable villain. The T-X isn't anywhere near as threatening or as engaging as the T-800 or the T-1000 were. She's supposed to be "the most advanced prototype" but she feels like a downgrade from the T-1000 if anything. Seriously, how is throwing liquid metal over an endoskeleton an upgrade from an ALL liquid metal Terminator? The next screw-up comes in making everything the T-X says a one-liner and making her an outright parody. The first two terminators were based on fear and spoke softly. Kristanna Loken doesn't help matters by giving one of the worst performances of the whole series and portrays a villain more concerned at giving silly lines than wanting to maim her next target.

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Atomic Popcorn - Terminator Retrospective: Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines Review