en years after he and his mother averted Judgment Day, a young adult John Connor (Stahl) now lives "off the grid"—no address, no credit cards, no phone—so that he can avoid the machines he fears may still be out there trying to kill him.
That's because Connor's not entirely convinced that "there is no fate but what we make," as his mother so firmly believed. He worries that he may still be called upon to lead the rebellion that saves humanity against the machine onslaught. "I feel the weight of the future bearing down on me," he says. "A future I don't want. So I keep running."
Turns out he might be correct. In moonlit Beverly Hills, a naked woman (Loken) materializes in a time bubble in a boutique window. Striding across Rodeo Drive to a Lexus, the woman tells the flummoxed driver, "I like this car." Next thing we know, the woman is dressed in a red-leather pantsuit, piloting the Lexus through Los Angeles and using a cell phone to locate a series of people.
Out in the desert, meanwhile, another time bubble appears, this time with a massive, naked man (Schwarzenegger) inside. The man, a T-800 terminator, walks into a bar and steals the leather jacket right off the back of a male stripper.
Not too far away, Connor wipes out while speeding on his motorcycle. He breaks into a nearby veterinary clinic to purloin painkillers. At about the same time, Kate Brewster (Danes) gets a call in the middle of the night to come down to the clinic to receive a sick cat.
Kate surprises Connor and locks him in a cage. Seems she remembers him from West Hills Junior High as a delinquent. But there's no time for reunions. The red-clad woman shows up, armed and ready for mayhem. She's the machine Connor's feared all along: the TX, the most advanced terminator cyborg ever. And she's hunting ... Kate?
Third time's a (mixed) charm
Hard to believe, but it's been 12 years since viewers last encountered Schwarzenegger in his signature role as the killer cyborg-turned-protector of humanity, and expectations run high for any film that would attempt to extend the seminal SF saga created by master filmmaker James Cameron. Terminator 3, whatever its considerable merits, alas does not live up to the admittedly high standards set by Cameron et al.
It may be unfair to judge this perfectly adequate genre movie against the remarkable achievement of the first two installments, but it's unavoidable. And the truth is, Mostow and his pack of writers, as able as they may be, are not James Cameron.
That said, T3 doesn't suck. Schwarzenegger manages to convince viewers that he is the same rock-solid robot that he was in 1984, the year the first Terminator hit theaters, and it's hard to imagine any other 55-year-old man in as good shape. Stahl (stepping in for Terminator 2: Judgment Day's Edward Furlong) and Danes (conscripted at the last minute to play a role originally set for Sophia Bush) bring surprising emotional depth and complexity to their action-hero roles. The Amazonian Loken proves a capable successor to Robert Patrick, who played a similar role in T2, and is believable as the only woman who could kick Arnold's butt.
The movie's visual effects and set pieces are also top-notch. It's terrific to see the Terminator universe updated with state-of-the-art visual effects. After all, 1991's T2 marked one of the first uses of extensive computer imagery, in the form of Patrick's mighty morphin' T-1000. Mostow also demonstrates that he can mount a demolition derby as well as The Matrix Reloaded, with a chase involving a crane, a fire truck and any of a number of other vehicles (one of the movie's apparent running jokes is that no one actually drives a normal car).
The movie's main problem is that the filmmakers have tried a little too hard to remain true to the previous two films, and T3 often feels like more of the same. The basic plot mirrors T2 a little too closely, and scene after scene echo the first and second films. At times, this works well, as when T3 lampoons some of the franchise's conventions. But at other times viewers are reminded of just how good the first two movies were, to this film's detriment.
