7. Terminator 3: Rise of The Machines
I made a big mistake in the lead up to seeing this movie at the cinema when I decided to shun all reviews because I loved T2 so much. I genuinely anticipated this being a worthy follow-up. Had I not made this dubious decision, something I have seldom repeated, I would have had a heads up to the fact that T3 bore no relation to the previous movie. In fact, this movie had no intention of bothering with anything so trifling as continuity. There are many problems with this movie; these are two of the ones that bugged me the most: 1. Arnie is way too old, even a knowing reference to him being an older model is not enough to get over this fact. He is not too old to be in films, but he is too old to play a cyborg that doesn't age. 2. The scriptwriting is so lazy that they kill Sarah Connor, an iconic character by giving her "generic Hollywood cancer" and then just reference it briefly. Good grief. The whole thing is so transparently a case of the studio cashing in. Arnie even admitted the only reason he did the movie was that he needed money to run for office and it shows in the low quality of the writing. The Sarah Connor Chronicles showed what can be done with this franchise, on a considerably lower budget, with intelligent storytelling and good acting. Maybe something along the lines of the TV show can bring the franchise back on track, but please, no more films like T3 and please, for the love of all that is precious in the world, nothing like Terminator Salvation (writer goes off to lie down in a dark room to prevent hyperventilation).