Which means she spends the first half either screeching or blubbing.Īnd the big man himself? Well, it's good to see Arn back in black. Claire Danes does her best as the token gutsy female but, despite being told by John that she reminds him of his mum, she's more Sarah Connor in T1 than T2. But he quickly descends into a whining weakling.
Nick Stahl's John Connor is initially intriguing: a dropout who lives "off the grid" in case any other automatons are shunted his way. The human element doesn't fare a lot better. You can't ignore the shiver of anticipation that accompanies the Oak's reappearance in those trademark leathers and you can't help but punch the air with glee as the Arniebot piledrives into his electrorival for the first time. The similarities to T2: Judgment Day run deeper than that but there's no denying they provide a strong comfort factor for the audience.
You have a plot structured around a series of balls-out chase sequences, big explosions and brutal, 'bot-on-'bot smash-ups, punctuated by desert-set scenes of the main characters pondering their doom. You have two protagonists: one savvy to their destiny and prepped for survival, the other wide-eyed, terrified and forced to re-evaluate their life (in this case, Claire Danes' vet, who's dragged along for the ride). You have two Terminators - one state-of-the-art, the other "obsolete", as Arnie puts it. Terminator 3 ain't a sequel or a prequel.