Every Arnold Schwarzenegger Movie Ranked Worst To Best

23. Terminator 3: Rise Of The Machines

TERMINATOR 3
Warner Bros.

Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines is a film that really should not exist, with James Cameron's Terminator 2: Judgment Day so perfectly capping the story off. However, Schwarzenegger had wanted to pursue a third Terminator for years by the time Rise of the Machines was made, and as a sequel that exists just for the sake of it, it could honestly be a lot worse.

The biggest criticism against Rise of the Machines is that it undoes the happy ending of Cameron's saga, concluding with the activation of Skynet and the commencement of nuclear armageddon. It's a familiar story for a Cameron sequel, but while Alien 3 at least had the pageantry of David Fincher to fall back on, Rise of the Machines isn't so lucky.

As it stands, it's a perfectly okay action film elevated by Schwarzenegger's presence and that of Kristanna Loken as the T-X. Otherwise, it's pretty disposable. 

Content Producer/Presenter

WhatCulture's very own resident movie guy, Ewan has been working in the content creation biz for over 10 years now, having started as a freelance contributor to WhatCulture Gaming all the way back in 2015. After graduating with a First-Class Honours in History from Northumbria University in 2017 (where he won a prize for a totally killer dissertation on the Watergate years), Ewan took on the role of Comics Editor at WhatCulture and quickly developed WhatCulture Comics into one of the biggest superhero-focused channels on YouTube. He followed this with a brief hiatus at Screen Rant in 2021, where he worked across the Gaming and Film sections as a writer and editor, before returning to WhatCulture as a Senior Content Producer / Presenter in 2023. He started his own podcast, We Love Dad Movies, in 2022, and has contributed several written pieces to the Eisner-nominated comics website Shelfdust as well. In his current role, Ewan incorporates his love of cinema, comic books, and history into written pieces and video essays for WhatCulture's Film & TV channel, as well as WhatCulture Gaming and WhatCulture Horror, with a particular focus on nineties-era Dad Movies, old school Westerns, and Golden Age Hollywood Noir. John Carpenter is his fave, and he thinks Batman Beyond should never have been cancelled. If that's your vibe, you'll probably like his stuff.