Movie Review: Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines

Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines. (3.6 of 5)
Once I heard this was in the making-WITHOUT Cameron-I cringed. But my faith in Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger (opps-was I supposed to say that) was always solid, so I dropped my doubts and went in clean. Guess what-it was pretty good. A step down from the-Example of PERFECT Filmmaking- that was T2. But the story had merit and the characters grew and were fun to watch. I have gotten into discussions on whether the TX was an upgrade or downgrade of the T1000, and that alone told me there was something to this film. The camerawork so-so, but 10 years ago this would have been great. But with T2 and the Matrix films in the mix, visually it just seemed-well-so so. Arnold walked through this (but that-s OK) Loken didn-t bring much but boobs (that-s really OK) but Stahl and Danes brought quite a bit to the table. They grew the most and using their point of view to the movie kept it grounded. The-mine is bigger than yours- stuff was fun: bigger trucks,bigger helicopters,bigger everything. Hydrogen fuel cell destruction was kind of cool too; even paying homage to the way the first T101 bought it. And while I liked the ending-hint–It is inevitable- I wanted 10 or 20 more minutes to take it farther. So if a sequel comes cool-if not, this was by far the weakest of the three.