I need to post the following so I don't forget what my position is on T3:
I don't agree with people saying they liked it because it was better than Hulk/Matrix/Monkeybone/etc or even better than their expectations. I tend to judge a film on whether it is as good as it could be, independent of whatever else may have been released recently. This evaluation is largely based on my admittedly uninformed guess of the filmmaker's intentions and also on whether the film properly uses the assets provided to it.
That having been said, I have an unfavorable opinion about the film overall. If the first two films didn't exist, I would have rated it as an above average action flick with some interesting ideas about time travel. When viewed as a part of "the Terminator films", the flaws become apparent to me.
I agree 100% with Seth's assessment of the film as excessively borrowing from the first two films. I described it as a "dance remix" of T2 in my first post in this thread. I'm bothered not only because of the borrowed elements that seem a) out of place or b) redundant, but also because the original elements of the plot of this film do harm to the characters and themes of the both T1 and T2. There are certain things that must be borrowed from the first two films - Schwarzenegger, time-travelling cybernetic organism(s) tearing or shooting up a building, and at least one amazing car chase. These are the cornerstones of the franchise. Other than those elements, the writers could have done anything with the film that they desired. The future
was unwritten after T2. They performed well with the crane chase, and the fight scene in the bathroom was visually and aurally interesting. But they didn't do anything interesting with Schwarzenegger's character at all - his protector Terminator in T3 was a flawed rehash of the protector in T2.
What did they choose to do with the rest of the inherited elements?
John Connor, the supposed future savior of humanity (even in the unknown future of the T2 timeline as reported by Arnie in T3), is still a reluctant hero in his 20s. He whines more than he fights in this film, an aspect of that character that I had hoped had gone away with Furlong. The audience laughed when Kate announced that she had trained on her father's plane, but I may have been the only one rolling my eyes when John confidently fired up the particle accelerator like it was no more complex than a toaster. John hasn't shown any notable strategic or tactical skills up to that point, surviving by sheer luck and Terminator intervention through the entire film. It was actually out of character for him to show competence at that point in the film. I suppose I'll have to wait for the fouth film for the amazing John Connor to do anything remotely beneficial to humanity.
I agree with MikeRS that the revival of the Skynet program (although vaguely altered in structure), the occurrence of Judgement Day, and the same basic man vs. machine conflict after Judgement Day smells of lazy writing. People drawing analogies to the inevitability of the light bulb seem to be equating a simple electromechanical device with the complex interactions of billions of hardware, software, and bioware elements. The revival of the same basic future is entirely too convenient, and when paired with the high number of unimaginatively recycled elements, leads the cynic in me to agree that the filmmaker's were thinking about the box office when they should have been thinking about the story. I suspect they started with Judgement Day and worked backwords from there to create the plot.
They added Kate Brewster, another whiny, reluctant hero who at least shows some guts later in the film. Despite what some have said, I saw no comparison between her and the Sarah Connor of T2. I also didn't feel that she was transformed enough at the end of the film to be compared to Sarah Connor from T1. Some of my other posts in this discussion have questioned the instructions that she gave to the Terminator that she sent back.
Frankly, with these two in charge, I'm rather concerned about the fate of humanity. If that was the goal of the filmmakers, then they at least succeeded at one thing.
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Sure he could. John could just have a different father.
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I have to address this. I have a problem accepting that the malleable future that lays before humanity at the end of T2 will still result in Skynet/Judgement Day/Man vs. Machine, but that is a minor leap compared to what you (and other posters) are proposing with the original timeline for T1.
Somehow mousy waitress Sarah Connor gives birth to John(presumably out of wedlock since he kept her last name) at an unknown time. She has absolutely zero knowledge of the future. At some point Skynet/Cyberdyne/et al blow up a bunch of stuff, after which John, who presumably has zero training in survival, becomes the great leader in the human resistance. Skynet sends a Terminator back in time to kill his mother before he is born. John responds by sending Kyle Reese back to protect his mother, creating a new future in which John is Reese's son who experienced a lifetime of hardcore survivalist training and ends up fighting in the same basic future.
No sir. There is no freakin' way that John Connor ever had a father that wasn't Kyle Reese. I love the circular timeline that the first film is based on, both on the side of humanity and the side of the machines. But the function of sending anything back in time only makes sense if those circles can be broken. We see the machine circle broken in the second film, an act which frees John Connor from his own predestined future. Having the third film suggest that the machine circle was just stretched by a few years is not a good thing, and I'm having difficulty understanding the statements in this thread that the third film makes the first two better. Not only does the third film negate the major themes of the second, but it also denies John Connor any understandable character development. He should either be living la vida loca in his unwritten future, or he should be training diligently for a future war and at least be aware of the presence of the Skynet Project. Instead they place him in this middle ground where he is ignorantly hiding out from his own destiny with only a paint ball gun for defense.
T3 has lots of glitter and flash, but it's rotten at the core.
Brad
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