You can’t stop the end of the word from happening. Just ask John Connor. You also can’t stop a studio from making unnecessary sequels. Just ask anyone who saw this movie. Arnold Schwarzenegger is back for another installment, but James Cameron is missing. Linda Hamilton is missing. Edward Furlong is missing. It seems like a very empty class reunion with a bunch of imposters standing in for your friends.
T3 starts off with John Connor (played by Nick Stahl this time) recapping his life story. Judgment Day didn’t happen when they said it would happen, Sarah Connor is dead, and now he lives off-the-grid, doing construction work and dropping beer bottles off bridges.
Skynet sends back a T-X model terminator (Kristanna Loken) to track down John Connor’s future lieutenants because they can’t find John Connor. It pays to live off-the-grid. The human fighters send back another Terminator (Arnold Schwarzenegger) to protect the lieutenants and John. One of the lieutenants is Kate Brewster (Claire Danes), who works at an animal hospital. John crashes his motorcycle and breaks into the animal hospital for some animal medication, and he has a reunion with Kate. It turns out that John and Kate shared a kiss the day before the events of the second movie. John was just too busy running around avoiding death to mention that he got some loving the night before.
The T-X crashes the party and tries to kill them. But then the Terminator shows up and saves them. And then there’s a huge chase scene with driverless cop cars and fire trucks and a big ass cranemobile and utter destruction.
John and Kate plus the Terminator escape and go to visit Sarah Connor’s gravesite. But it’s not a gravesite. It’s a weapons cache. The cops show up and the T-X shows up and there’s a huge gun battle in the middle of the cemetery. Our trynamic trio escapes in a hearse. Its really impressive symbolism, staging an explosive firefight in a place associated with death is an affirmation of life (that’s meant to be sarcasm, not to be profound).
The Terminator spews out a bunch of facts he was withholding until now, because now it’s time to advance the plot. John and Kate get married in the future and they have a couple of kids. And John got killed in the future by the same Terminator that is protecting him now. Oh, and today is Judgment Day.
Kate’s dad is in the military, and he’s in charge of a bunch of computer programs and projects, one of which is Skynet. Skynet has already become self-aware and is now slowly taking over. John, Kate, and Arnie show up to warn him about Skynet but the T-X shows up and shoots him. He tells John and Kate to go to an old military base to stop the inevitable.
The Terminator gets corrupted by the T-X and almost kills John, but he doesn’t cause that would end the movie and any chance for a sequel. Instead he shuts himself down and lets John and Kate escape. They get to the military base and there’s one last robot fight before John and Kate realize that they are in a fallout shelter. Kate’s dad sent them there to save them from the nuclear attacks. Judgment Day was unavoidable after all.
It’s kind of weird that the third movie is all about Judgment Day and that was the name of the second movie. It’s like if they spent a bunch of time talking about the Empire striking back in Return of the Jedi. What’s really weird is that the first three movies in the franchise are built around an actor who doesn’t play the main character or even the same character. Terminator is about Sarah Connor. T2 is about John and Sarah Connor. T3 is about John Connor. Arnie doesn’t even play the same robot in all three. He plays the same model robot, but each one is a new character.
The movie makes a lot of references to the first two movies. There are a few inside jokes and recreated shots. But they also ignore a lot of the rules that the first movies established. Important rules too, like not being able to send back explosive weapons. The T-X has built-in blaster guns. She can also control machines and change her appearance. She is so technologically advanced she is magic.
This is not a bad movie. It’s just a bad idea to make another sequel without the majority of the cast from the earlier installments returning. And excluding key characters like Sarah Connor. Sarah Connor is the heart of the Terminator franchise. The general plot is good, but it’s missing the characters that you care about and the cast that you care about. You can’t make a Terminator movie without Arnold, but you can’t make one with just him either. And he looks old as fuck in this one.
Critically Rated at 11/17
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