Now In Full Color, with a Happier Ending

Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines (2003)
(SPOILERS) A Terminator 3 was as inevitable as Arnold’s waning career. He was never going to stick to his pledge not to do a third without James Cameron (who had already made one too many, even if the second cemented his bankability and gave him a lavish box of effects tricks to play with).The ‘90s saw a steady downward career trend, not reversed by a second of the decade’s collaborations with Cameron and being sent to da coola in the debacle that was Batman and Robin. By the time Rise of the Machines arrived, Arnie was barely scraping by on the strength of international receipts. He needed its success; it at least allowed him to go off governating with a modicum of credibility. Which is about the amount of credibility Rise of the Machines possesses.

If T2 isn’t all its reputation cracks it up to be, it’s a masterpiece next to its 12-years-later very belated sequel. Which is a shame, as T3 has a few good ideas going for it, ones that are signifi…

Terminator 2: Judgment Day - Director's Cut (1991)
(SPOILERS) Is it really an “inviolable rule” that T2 is superior to the original? I well remember its feting when it was first released, as I was one of those blown away by it. And there’s no doubt that individual elements remain first rate. But aside from being bigger and more polished, Terminator 2: Judgment Day is inferior in almost every respect. 

Arnie has been turned into a good guy, which struck me then and still does as a cop-out. Worse, he effectively becomes John Connor’s pet dog (not so much the father figure). Revisiting the movie, though, what is most disappointing, in amongst the lumpy plotting (the Dyson storyline is never as compelling as it should be), is how slackly the picture frequently plays. Even the action sequences, as well composed as they are, lack the edge-of-the-seat charge of the first movie. With $100m to spend, Cameron was placed to indulge spectacle and effects at the ultimate expense of what made the f…