Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines: One of the most under-rated action movies hits 20

Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines (M, 109mins) Directed by Jonathan Mostow ****

Subtlety and nuance might not be its strengths, it lacks its immediate predecessor Judgment Day’s sense of true menace, shock of groundbreaking special effects and James Cameron’s superior storytelling, but there will always be a place in my heart for this – sometimes – unfairly unloved entry in the Terminator franchise.

Rewatching it two decades after its initial release, it feels like that generation’s War Games, another powerful, seemingly prescient warning of the perils of Artificial Intelligence (A.I.) that appears even more resonant today.

Yes, it’s wrapped in a cloak of wall-to-wall car-nage, barely contained pyrotechnic mayhem and an odd sense of humour (Arnold Schwarzenegger’s new T-1000 initially sports Elton John-style glasses, while the characters drive everything from RVs to cranes, a Scooby Doo-style van, planes, a hearse and a silver Lexus), but it all builds to one of the greatest rug-pulls in action-movie history – a shock ending that might have polarised audiences in 2003, but one that truly sends a shiver down my spine every time I watch it.

As David Fincher found with the Aliens series, following in the footsteps of Cameron is never easy. And while there are similarities in the stripped-back approaches of Alien 3 and Rise of the Machines, this perhaps suffers more from the killing off of a key character and having to reset the series’ central conundrum now that August 29, 1997 had passed.

While Nick Stahl (replacing Judgment Day’s much-troubled Edward Furlong) does a great job of bringing the rightly paranoid (“They tried to murder me before I was born. When I was 13, they tried again,” he intones in the opening voiceover) John Connor to life, he’s essentially a passenger, caught in the middle of the death-match between Arnie’s reprogrammed obsolete design and Kristanna Loken’s bronzed, adaptive, far more effective killing machine – the T-X (who conveniently sports tresses just long enough for the movie to avoid an R-rating on her arrival) – and being acted off the screen by Claire Danes (whose CV at this point was more classic literary adaptations than blockbuster action-fests).

As a vet who finds herself suddenly targeted for execution thanks to her former middle school classmate’s history (and future) and her military father’s top secret, untested automated defence system, Danes is what gives this tale gravitas and grounding, Kate Brewster arguably a stepping-stone on the way to Homeland’s magnificent Carrie Mathieson.

It’s hard to believe now that, for the first few weeks, her role was taken by One Tree Hill’s Sophia Bush, until Mostow finally realised she was just too young for the part and reached out again to his original target (in a parallel universe, Famke Janssen or Jennifer Lopez might have been the T-X and John Connor could have looked like American Pie’s Chris Klein or ER’s Shane West).

Really though, Rise of the Machines’ secret sauce is its last 25 minutes, which play out “almost” in real-time.

As with War Games, the groundwork had already been laid. A mysterious computer virus has infected half of the civilian internet, as well as secondary military apps. Someone in the military suggests rooting it out using their new A.I. software.

“That would be like going after a fly with a bazooka,” Lieutenant General Robert Brewster (David Andrews) warns, waving off the suggestion that it would only take a manner of minute to fix the problem. “During which time we put everything from satellites to missile silos under the control of the most intelligent computer system ever conceived. I still prefer to keep humans in the loop – I’m not sure Skynet’s ready.”

Cue THAT theme, a titanic battle of the bots and a haunting denouement that, for me, is up there with the end of the original Planet of the Apes, The Thing, Twelve Monkeys, Blake’s 7 and The Tripods (although really that was supposed to be a cliffhanger, not an ending) as one of the most devastating and memorable sci-fi finales of all-time.

Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines is now available to stream on Prime Video.