Starring: Arnold Schwarzenegger, Nick Stahl, Claire Danes, Kristanna Loken
Directed by: Jonathan Mostow

More than a decade after the first, a follow-up is produced to the revolutionary Terminator 2: Judgement Day! Poor John Connor, this time played by Nick Stahl is being hunted by a very hot killer robot from the future (Kristanna Loken). And Claire Danes does stuff! John Connor (who I just noticed has the same initials as Jesus Christ) is supposed to be humankind's last hope against an uprising of intelligent machines who wish to wipe out the human race. So naturally people from the future send a robot (Arnie, duh) back in time to protect him from the hot robot so John can fulfill his destiny and save the world from damned dirty apes! I mean dinosaurs.... Or ghosts? No, he's trying to save the world from sexy killer robots.

What the movie has going for it is some decent acting along with some decent action. The story is also very interesting aside from the fact that it has simply been done already. We know the machines are going to take over the world one day. Mary Shelley wrote the story of Frankenstein long before Terminator became a household name.

What made Terminator 2 so successful was the fact that the Frankenstein story had been done in a different way with revolutionary special effects. For those of you who don't remember, when T2 was released it was just pioneering the special effects that are so thoroughly abused these days. The Hulk, velociraptors from Jurassic Park, Godzilla and Jar Jar Binks are all the descendants of the T-1000 from Terminator 2 when CGI effects were new and exciting.

Now CGI is mundane and overused and Terminator 3 does very little to try and outdo its predecessor, something which I think is very necessary for a successful sequel. The effects are good, but we've all been there and done that and the result is a normal action movie with a familiar plot. Maybe it's unreasonable to ask them to invent new technology to make the movie good, but if they don't have anything new to show the crowd then why bother making a new movie? Why now? Why me? (Oh yeah, they're going to make millions of dollars).

In my opinion, the Matrix franchise is very similar to the Terminator franchise. Both movies came onto the scene with ground breaking special effects technology, telling stories about the consequences of technology. Where the Matrix sequel succeeds is that the directors were still able to show the audience some really strange stuff, like the main character fighting a hundred bad guys who all look the same, or kung fu fighters passing through walls. Terminator 3 offers much of the same as Terminator 2. Robots getting broken and said robots breaking stuff... And people getting hurt and stuff. It's all good stuff, but not a worthy follow up to Terminator 2. It brings NOTHING new to the table.

The movie is lacking James Cameron's skillfull touch. Why don't directors these days understand the concept of suspense? It's impossible to be shocked when the entire movie is just one long action sequence after another. In T2, the suspense was created when the T-1000 picked up a phone and began asking simple questions. The enemy was a wolf in sheep's clothing milking Connor's friends and family for information in the guise of a police officer and often killing them after the fact. Tension was also created by the completely mad Sarah Connor, a live wire always on the verge of causing more problems then she could ever solve.

In T3, it's just one disaster after the next with no time to feel worried or tense. The scene begins, the villain murders someone and you move on. Then there are long (though entertaining) action scenes. Cool, but again not as admirable as the second one. I think this lack of tension may also be responsible for the less interesting characters, or maybe the uninteresting characters are responsible for the lack of tension. Or maybe I'm so thoroughly desensitized to violence that I'm unaffected by those type of scenes.

Saving the movie is a chance to see Arnie in action again and the chilling ending. The story was good, and in terms of a science fiction story it doesn't pull any punches. Like any good science fiction it deals with technology running amuck and shows the grim consequences. The dialogue is some of the least annoying I've heard in an action movie for a long time. Arnie had some pretty funny lines. Combine that with hot killer robot action and the potential for a sequel, and T3 still cleans up nice.

MastaCSG
10

DroopyMcC		We can all agree that T2 is a masterpiece. So any sequel to T2 would be inherently inferior. While T3 is really fun and well made, with great chase sequences and action, it's missing those "quiet scenes" of substance that made T2 not only a great action flick, but a great flick all-around. Be warned: time-travel stories always mess with the mind.
10