The Terminator is back. The No. 1 film at the box office this week is none other than “Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines,” earning a whopping $72.5 million and proving Arnold Schwarzenegger is still the man.
Ten years after the last “Terminator” hit the big screen, Schwarzenegger’s character is back, once again traveling back through time to protect John Conner (played by Nick Stahl) from the assassins of Skynet.
August 29, 1997 (the original date of Judgment Day) has passed without incident, and Skynet, the futuristic weapons control system that becomes self-aware (thinks for itself) and starts nuclear war, has not been activated.
Robert Brewster (David Andrews) is Skynet’s military controller, and is reluctant to turn over control of the United States’s weapons systems to a computer.
When a computer virus begins to attack the world’s computer systems, the president and his advisers press Brewster to activate Skynet, not knowing it will bring on Judgment Day and the end of the world.
Skynet is constantly trying to kill Connor because after Judgment Day, he leads the remnants of humanity to victory over the machines.
“Terminator 2: Judgment Day,” led the audience to believe Judgment Day had been averted by the 12-year-old Connor, his mother and the Terminator. The series was over; the day was saved.
But the plot of “Rise of the Machines” reveals it was merely a delay of the inevitable.
As “T3” opens, we find that Connor, now 22, lives apart from society. He is a homeless drifter with no ties that can allow Skynet to track him down.
Enter the new, voluptuous villain T-X (played by Kristanna Loken), who appears in the buff on Los Angeles’ Rodeo Drive and immediately begins to terrorize the city.
Unable to track Connor down, Skynet has sent the T-X to kill off his lieutenants, hoping their deaths will deter Connor’s impending victory.
Kate Brewster (Claire Danes), an unsuspecting veterinarian, soon becomes caught up in the T-X’s wake of destruction and must flee with Connor and the Terminator. As they speed away in her truck, the T-X takes control of a fleet of police cars and a fire truck, bringing about a city-streets chase scene that puts “The Matrix Reloaded” and “2 Fast 2 Furious” to shame.
The Terminator, “an obsolete model” in his own words, must defend Connor and Brewster from the physically superior T-X, taking them on a whirlwind ride through the West in an attempt to save their lives and stop Skynet from becoming self-aware.
Taking over for James Cameron, director Jonathan Mostow, of “U-571” fame, delivers not just another science fiction shoot-em-up, but a poetic story with a somewhat surprising ending.
Although Schwarzenegger’s character in “T3” is physically similar to the Terminator in ‘T2,’ this T-101 Terminator is a completely different machine. Starting off as a cold, determined robot, the Terminator re-learns all that his predecessor had from John Connor.
At 55, Schwarzenegger looks like the same man who took theaters by storm almost 20 years ago. With his almost divine muscular build and trademark one-liners, the Terminator truly is back, and with a welcome return.
The open ending of “T3” makes one wonder whether he will be available for a “Terminator 4.”