I saw very few movies at the cinema this year, but one I did see was Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines. As you’ll all know, this is a Cameron-free sequel, but Arnie returns in the part he was made for. Nick Stahl is a big improvement on Edward Furlong in the part of John Connor, but Claire Danes is a fish out of water as the romantic interest and Kristanna Loken is blandly attractive as the Bad Robot. Amazing how the T-range robots of the future are developed to match today’s special effects trends…

Anyway, I wasn’t expecting much but I found this to be a surprisingly good sequel, in particular the last 10 minutes which set up a fourth installment with a great deal of dignity.  WEll done to new director Jonathon Mostow on the whole, even the stupid low-brow jokes are handled relatively well.

As for the disc, this is a fair stab at a pre-Christmas release (and the Region 2 version contains a welcome DTS track so get that) but there’s a big multi-disc version in the pipeline for next year so you might want to wait. For now there’s a commentary track with all the above names, one with Mostow on his own , an interesting deleted scene, effects featurettes (hate that word) and a short blooper reel. Roll on T4 without Arnie.

Mild Peril Rating:

Twitter