Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines Is Awesome, Shut Up

By Robert Scucci
| Published 16 seconds ago

The first two Terminator films are among my favorite action outings because of how perfect they are, and how they logically escalate from low-budget ($6 million) sci-fi horror to full-blown, big-budget ($102 million) summer blockbuster spectacle. It’s a progression that feels completely natural. As the threat of Skynet becomes ever more apparent, it only makes sense that the franchise would see an exponential increase in scope and scale between the original and the sequel. And then we have Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines, along with every movie that followed.

Here’s where I make the same kind of confession I always make: when I was younger, I naively trusted people who told me to trust their taste. I was told a couple of times by a few reliable sources that Terminator 3 sucked, and then I never thought about it again. Even worse, I spent the next couple of decades avoiding every subsequent Terminator movie for the same reason. Somebody said, “These new ones are terrible, and only the first two are worth your time,” so I only ever watched the first two.

Writing reviews for this site and hosting my own weekly bad movie podcast has taught me one lesson over and over again: follow your own taste and form your own opinions. I’ve lost count of how many times I’ve watched something with a terrible Rotten Tomatoes score and loved it, or at the very least wished I’d seen it sooner so I could come to my own conclusion.

The crazy part is that Terminator 3 has a 70 percent critics score on Rotten Tomatoes. It’s the audience that didn’t latch onto this one, resulting in a 46 percent Popcornmeter score. Honestly, I think they’re both wrong. The Terminator and Terminator 2: Judgment Day are perfect action movies. Terminator 3 isn’t nearly as classic as either film, but in my mind it’s a solid 80 percent.

The Next Logical Step

In the first Terminator film, the T-800 (Arnold Schwarzenegger) is sent back to 1984 from the year 2029 to kill Sarah Connor (Linda Hamilton), the future mother of John Connor, the leader of the human resistance against Skynet, the artificial intelligence network hellbent on eradicating humanity. John Connor’s right-hand man, Kyle Reese (Michael Biehn), is sent back to protect Sarah, and the result is an all-out nightmare chase that’s more reminiscent of a slasher than a sci-fi action thriller, which made perfect sense given the film’s budget and storytelling.

1991’s Terminator 2: Judgment Day goes bigger, badder, and pushes the logic forward flawlessly. Set several years after the first film, we’re introduced to a young John Connor (Edward Furlong), who’s growing into the destiny his mother spent his entire life preparing him for. Sarah Connor is now institutionalized after everything she endured in the first film, but she never gives up on her crusade to stop Judgment Day, the moment Skynet takes over.

Robert Patrick became the big bad as the indestructible liquid-metal T-1000, while Schwarzenegger pulled off the ultimate switcheroo by reprising the T-800, this time reprogrammed to protect our heroes instead of hunting them. It would’ve been a perfect bait and switch if the marketing hadn’t spoiled it before release, but it still blew everyone’s minds.

James Cameron wrote and directed both films, and as far as double features go, they can’t be beat. It’s the reason I put off watching Terminator 3 for so long. I didn’t think they could be topped. After finally watching it, I still don’t think they can, but I also think the movie is a lot more fun than most people give it credit for.

Produced for $187.3 million, it was the most expensive Terminator film ever made at the time, and I’m pretty sure every dollar that wasn’t spent on star power went toward blowing everything as sky-high as humanly possible. But that’s not why T3 is great.

Plays With The Timeline Without Erasing The First Two Films

James Cameron said before T3’s release that he had no interest in making another sequel because he felt the first two films told a complete story with a satisfying ending. I think he’s right, but I also don’t think Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines undermines his work. In the second film, we learn that the future can be changed as long as the human resistance succeeds in its time-travel efforts against Skynet.

Here, John Connor (Nick Stahl) is now an adult who’s barely holding his life together after his mother’s death. Judgment Day never happened because of the events of the previous films. That all changes when Skynet sends back its newest model, the T-X (Kristanna Loken), to eliminate him once and for all.

Her search for John, and for the people who’ll eventually help him defeat Skynet, leads her to Kate Brewster (Claire Danes), an old flame who’s only loosely connected to John at first. Her father, Lieutenant General Robert Brewster (David Andrews), just so happens to be leading the classified Skynet project.

We learn that fate can’t be changed, only postponed, when a reprogrammed T-850 (Arnold Schwarzenegger) is sent back once again, this time with orders to protect Kate. She’ll eventually marry John and become a key figure in the future resistance. From that point forward, the movie becomes one long chase sequence where everything in everyone’s path explodes in spectacular fashion.

While a common criticism is that T3 undermines James Cameron’s vision, I don’t think it really does. The first two films absolutely provide satisfying closure, but this expansion of the lore never pulls me out of the fiction. Sarah and John prevented Judgment Day when they destroyed Cyberdyne’s research, but it doesn’t seem crazy to me that the military would continue pursuing similar technology anyway. It’s simply too valuable of an idea for the powers that be to abandon forever.

Having Your Cake And Eating It Too

Speaking of logical progressions, T3 itself makes sense in its willingness to ante up. The first film was a low-budget slasher, and the second was a massive summer blockbuster. Logically, the third movie had to go even bigger. There really wasn’t another direction to take it, and Jonathan Mostow leaned hard into sci-fi action spectacle to prove the point.

There’s also a level of self-awareness that’s genuinely charming without turning into one giant slice of Member Berry Pie. There are winks and nods (“She’ll be back!”), and everyone gets a chance to inject some levity into the chaos. It only makes sense that the franchise would head in this direction because that’s where it was already going, whether James Cameron was behind the camera or not.

Is Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines a classic like the two Terminator films that came before it? No. It’s the inevitable result of a studio trying to capture lightning in a bottle for a third time. Is it a terrible movie? Not by a long shot. It’s a reliable sci-fi action thriller with a healthy mix of camp and carnage.

Don’t be like me and deprive yourself of things that bring you joy because someone told you decades ago there wasn’t any joy to be found in T3. Tell those people to shut up, because T3 is awesome.

As of this writing, Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines is streaming for free on Tubi.

TERMINATOR 3: RISE OF THE MACHINES SCORE