Terminator 3

Terminator 3: There sure has been a whole lotta bitching about this movie. Guys, what did you expect? No James Cameron, no Eddie Furlong, and no Linda Hamilton! My expectations were dragged way low for this one, and in that context I was pleasantly surprised. The story was fairly well thought-out, if you can ignore some of the goofier plot elements, like the new Terminatrix's ability to control other machines remotely. (Nanobots might have been a better explanation than computer virii.) I didn't mind so much the idea that a war between artificial intelligence and humankind was inevitable, but extending that idea of fate to the particulars of who marries whom was a bit silly.

Scott complained bitterly about the humor in T3, and I'll admit some of it was over the top. But trying to out-do T2 would have been a mistake, and I'm glad the creators of this film chose a different path. A little self-referential humor can be a good thing, so long as you don't overstep your bounds to make it an out-and-out parody. Leave that to the makers of Scary Movie, who can suck in isolation.

Finally, the complaints that the Terminatrix was a step down from the T1000, technologically speaking -- remember the bit about the T1000's inability to create mechanical weapons from its liquid metal body? The T-X had built-in mechanical weapons and the ability to mimic people. Even without the computer virus thing, it seems like the next logical (if somewhat unimaginative) step to take.

Anybody remember the Terminator comics, in which Terminators were disguised as children and dogs? Now that was scary.