Fish and Cherries Productions

Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines is a movie that raised a lot of questions. Such questions include, “Why would Skynet program a machine with such a pointless feature?” “How does this course of action make any logical sense whatsoever?” “Doesn’t this seem like a downgrade from the T-1000?” “How long is this chase scene going to go on?” “When did this become a spoof of itself?” and most importantly, “Can I please stop watching this dross now?” I would love to copy-paste “Terminator 3 is crap” 500 times, make that my review, and give this atrocity no more thought. However, professionalism dictates that I give you more than that, so let’s dive into why this movie is a bigger insult to a franchise than the Star Wars prequels.

Let’s start with the biggest sin: it makes all the previous movies in the series entirely pointless. All that talk about “no fate but what we make” and the future not being written in stone is shown to be utter crap as it is very clearly spelled out that the destruction of humanity and Skynet’s rise was inevitable. In other words, everything Sarah and John Connor fought for in the last two movies has been reduced to scrap. Speaking of Sarah Connor, this movie takes the ultimate spit at the franchise by unceremoniously killing her offscreen (she is, may I remind you, one of the most proactive and three-dimensional action women in film history) and replacing her with a shrieking damsel of no actual use played by Claire Danes, who I normally really like but was absolutely wasted in this role. Coupled with that is the obvious sex appeal of the female TX Terminator with her breast expanding technology… yeah, breast expanding technology. Skynet thought it would be a good idea to add that feature to its killer robots. That was a clear sign that this movie was taking a swan dive into the Bog of Eternal Suck. The only things that gave me some enjoyment were a few chuckle-worthy lines from Arnold, but that might just be because of his delivery.

I hate this film. I hate it with every bit of bone, flesh, and sinew in my mortal form. I hate the fact that it dragged such an amazing franchise into the mud in the most insulting way possible. I hate the idea that anyone’s childhood or view of cinema could have been shaped by this celluloid cancer. If I learned that a rogue AI decided that mankind was unworthy of survival after seeing this movie, I would sign right up for its death army. This shouldn’t even be viewed as a bad movie night showing because it’s not even entertaining. I haven’t even covered half of the inept filmmaking I saw in this dreck. It’s garbage and every copy of it should be tossed in the same junk heap as all the ET Atari games.

Put simply, Terminator 3 is crap.