Why? Because it's the 4th of July, and John Connor is going to get murdered by the T-850 on July 4th, 2032, so it's barely relevant!


T2 left a big set of shoes to fill, and it took 12 years before they shat out another movie, so it had to be good, right? Well, sorta.

Since James Cameron and Linda Hamilton refused involvement (and Eddie Furlong was a junkie at the time), this one relies solely on Arnold's star power, which is enough to make it a passable entry. Surely, without our epic cast and crew from the previous entries, we needed to beef up our storytelling with this entry, so who better to write this movie than the guys who wrote Married with Children and Halle Berry's Catwoman?

Yeah, that's a real head-scratcher right there... what's even more confusing is how they hired these guys back to write the next movie too, but we're not talking about that piece of shit. We're talking about T3, Arnold's last big movie before he ran off to destroy California or whatever he was doing for 8 years.



So with Cyberdyne destroyed, our writers decided to demean the ending of T2 by saying those fuckers didn't do a good enough job and thus spawned a near identical company, Cyber Research Systems, to fill in. What we get is a total rehash of T2 with less humanity and more explosions.

With that said, it isn't all bad. I really hate how every subsequent entry creates an even more powerful and more ridiculous impervious killing machine, as if the T-800 wasn't enough, but she (the T-X) does alright I guess. I remember being at a Terminator panel in 2014 and Robert Patrick was hitting on Kristanna Loken. That was pretty funny. She's okay as the villain, but definitely overpowered and nonsensical. Her robot is also kind of horny, and you can see her getting off sometimes, which is pretty fuckin' weird for a robot.

Nick Stahl plays John this time around, and he bears a stronger resemblance to Michael Biehn than Furlong. I have no beef with him in the role since he's a pretty good actor. Claire Danes is shoe-horned into the role of empowered woman because the writers probably needed to rewrite Sarah's role for her.

Since history was "changed", our continuity is a bit off, but it's passable. Our 2029 "history" in which Skynet's defense grid was smashed and "we'd won" is now considered an alternate timeline, and our main travelers come from 2032. Whatever keeps the story going, right?

I'm also very stumped as to why this movie had so much comedy in it. Like seriously, wtf? The original movie was bleak and haunting, and this one feels compelled to throw in some comic relief every few minutes. Then part 4 didn't have ANY comedy, and then part 5 had even MORE comedy...

Fortunately, the movie redeems itself with a downer ending that paves the way for what must happen to avoid anymore paradoxes: Judgment Day. What's also unique about this movie is that is was still following the primary continuity. It wasn't part of that shitty trend of picking and choosing which movies you were going to follow and which ones you were going to ignore. It simply followed the previous movie, which is what sequels used to do.

I definitely feel that this movie lacked the depth and complexity of the first two movies, but as an irrational terminator fan, I overlook these things because I'm obsessive. It's not a great Terminator movie, but it is a great Arnold movie.