--- title: "Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines" year: 2003 kind: "film" canonical: "https://film.one/film/terminator-3-rise-of-the-machines" fi1m_score: 61 critics_score: 66 critics_reviews: 17 published: "2026-09-19T17:08:27.477310+00:00" updated: "2026-09-19T17:08:59.456581+00:00" region: "US" licence: "© Fi1m Ltd. Written by AI under a human editor; checked against sources before publication. Quote with attribution and a link to the canonical URL." --- # Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines (2003) Directed by Jonathan Mostow · 1h 49m · MPA R · Action, Thriller, Science Fiction **Fi1m score: 61** · Critics 66 from 17 reviews *In a sentence:* A crane the size of a house, a woman in red leather, and Arnold hanging off the hook like a coat > Jonathan Mostow’s third Terminator is an honest, well-built chase film with one tremendous set piece and a final reel braver than anything around it. It is also a retread of the first film, and it knows it. Worth an evening; do not expect Cameron. ## Synopsis Los Angeles, some years after 1997. John Connor (Nick Stahl) is in his twenties, sleeping rough and paying cash, because the nuclear war he was raised to survive was due that year and never came. After a motorbike crash he breaks into an animal hospital for painkillers and is found there by the vet, Kate Brewster (Claire Danes), who knew him at school. The same night a T-X (Kristanna Loken), a new model with a weapon in her arm and a liquid-metal skin, arrives from the future and begins working through a list of names, Kate’s among them. An older Terminator (Arnold Schwarzenegger) arrives to keep the two of them alive. Kate’s father, Robert Brewster (David Andrews), a senior Air Force officer, is being pressed to switch on a defence system called Skynet to stop a computer virus. ## Review Twelve years after [*Terminator 2: Judgment Day*](https://film.one/film/terminator-2-judgment-day), and without James Cameron, the series comes back with a new director and the old machine. John Connor (Nick Stahl) is in his twenties and living off the grid, because the nuclear war he was raised to survive was due in 1997 and did not come. A new model (Kristanna Loken) arrives from the future to settle the question, and an older one (Arnold Schwarzenegger) arrives to stop her. Jonathan Mostow’s film is not the disaster many feared and not the equal of what came before. It is a sturdy, loud, often funny chase film with one tremendous set piece and a final reel braver than the rest of it. John Brancato and Michael Ferris’s script, from a story they wrote with Tedi Sarafian, follows the shape of the 1984 original almost beat for beat: a killer, a protector, a target who believes none of it, and a great deal of running. The film does not hide this, and makes jokes about it, half of which land. Schwarzenegger’s Terminator walks into a bar on ladies’ night, takes a stripper’s leathers and comes out in star-shaped sunglasses, and the film has the sense to let him take them off. When he announces that he is an obsolete design, Schwarzenegger says it without a flicker, and it is funnier than it has any right to be. The crane chase is why you watch. The T-X steals a mobile crane the size of a house, snags the Terminator on its hook and drives through Los Angeles with him swinging behind her, through the glass front of an office block and out the other side. Don Burgess shoots it from street level, so we always know where the crane is, where the fire engine is and where John is on his bike, and Nicolas De Toth and Neil Travis let each collision finish before the next one starts. We grinned through the whole thing, because nothing in it asked to be admired; it simply kept happening, and kept getting bigger, for minutes on end. Schwarzenegger is heavier and slower than he was, and Mostow uses that rather than hiding it. Stahl plays John as pale and twitchy, a man who has been told he will lead the human race and would rather not, and his fear reads as fear rather than sulking. Claire Danes’s Kate Brewster is dragged out of a veterinary clinic, engaged to a pleasant man (Mark Famiglietti) and not remotely interested in saving the world, and Danes plays exasperation better than anyone else here. Loken, in April Ferry’s red leather, has a model’s stillness and a sneer she can hold for a minute; she is less frightening than the liquid policeman of the last film, but she does the job. Earl Boen returns as Dr Silberman for one scene, and it is the best-written thing in the film. The trouble is everything between the set pieces. The T-X is a T-1000 with a gun in her arm and the power to boss other machines about, which is a list of features rather than an idea. Jeff Mann’s Cyber Research Systems facility is anonymous corridor and blue-lit server room. Marco Beltrami’s score is brass and drums telling us to be tense, and it holds the old theme back until almost the end. David Andrews’s Robert Brewster, Kate’s father, carries the plot’s one thought about how the machines take over, that a computer virus is the excuse the military needs to hand everything to Skynet, and the film hurries past it. Then there is the ending, which we will not describe. We will say that the last ten minutes go somewhere the rest of the film gave us no reason to expect, and that we sat quite still, colder than we had been all evening, while the credits began. Cameron’s films earned their dread over two hours; this one buys it in a lump at the close, but it does buy it. *Terminator 2* was about a boy, his mother and a machine learning to be a father, with the end of the world as backdrop. Here the end of the world is the whole story and the people are along for the ride, and it is a smaller film for it. It runs 109 minutes and carries a 12A, which softens things so that machines and people go through walls and stand up unmarked. See it for the crane, for Schwarzenegger’s timing and for the final reel; the rest is furniture you have seen before. *Fi1m score 61, published 19 September 2026.* ## What the critics say Most critics like it, though few love it. Twelve of seventeen reviews are positive, and the praise lands on the same things: the action set pieces, the long crane chase in particular, and Arnold Schwarzenegger, whom several reviewers find on better form than expected. Jonathan Mostow gets credit for pace, for a lighter comic touch than the series has shown before, and for an ending that more than one critic calls surprisingly dark and bold. The reservations cluster just as tightly. The commonest complaint is that the film retreads the plot of the earlier entries without their dread or ideas, and that Mostow, however capable, lacks James Cameron’s gift for making an audience fear for the characters. The spread runs from strong approval to outright dismissal; The New Yorker finds it a numbing spectacle and Time Out a cheesy retread. Later reassessments from Den of Geek and Collider are kinder than most of the 2003 notices. ### Reviews we read (17) - **Variety**, Todd McCarthy (85/100, inferred): McCarthy calls it a hard-hitting straight-ahead actioner that delivers the goods without pretension and balances urgent drama with eye-popping violence. He singles out the scale of the crane chase and Schwarzenegger's return to form. [Read](https://variety.com/2003/film/awards/terminator-3-rise-of-the-machines-1200540754/) - **Los Angeles Times**, Kenneth Turan (80/100, inferred): Turan praises the film as an expertly paced sci-fi thrill machine that marries impressive action with persuasive storytelling and unexpected darkness. He singles out the crane chase sequence and the ability to make audiences worry about the characters. [Read](https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2003-jul-02-et-turan2-story.html) - **RogerEbert.com**, Roger Ebert (3/4): Ebert finds the film a skillful piece of work that will entertain action fans but dumbs down the sci-fi ideas of its predecessors. He singles out the wall-to-wall action sequences and the ending's perfunctory quality as key elements. [Read](https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/terminator-3-rise-of-the-machines-2003) - **Empire**, Kim Newman (70/100, inferred): The review finds the film a sleek, satisfying return to the series' supercharged B-picture roots that avoids the disaster many feared. It singles out the machine-like efficiency of the action and the genuinely surprising, affecting finale for praise. [Read](https://www.empireonline.com/movies/reviews/terminator-3-rise-machines-review/) - **Evening Standard**, Neil Norman (70/100, inferred): The critic calls it a serviceable but lesser film that recycles elements from prior entries while delivering set-piece action and metal-on-metal violence. He singles out the balanced humour and the courage to embrace an unremittingly bleak theme for praise. [Read](https://www.standard.co.uk/culture/film/droll-but-deadly-arnie-7435846.html) - **Screen Daily** (70/100, inferred): The review notes that the film delivers entertaining action, drama and humour that will appeal to fans and new audiences, though it lacks the dark intensity and groundbreaking effects of Cameron's entries; praises the action set pieces orchestrated with skill. [Read](https://www.screendaily.com/terminator-3-rise-of-the-machines/4014018.article) - **Slant Magazine**, Ed Gonzalez (70/100, inferred): While no scene matches the apocalyptic intensity of Judgment Day, the film compensates with exciting over-the-top set pieces like the elongated road chase. It reimagines the Adam and Eve myth with a post-industrial edge and a distinctly feminist slant. [Read](https://www.slantmagazine.com/film/terminator-3-rise-of-the-machines/) - **The AV Club**, Nathan Rabin (70/100, inferred): The film succeeds as an irreverent exercise in sly self-parody, with Schwarzenegger's Terminator used effectively as a comic figure. Mostow displays a welcome light touch and flair for big set pieces, resulting in an overachieving mercenary sequel that's surprisingly long on laughs. [Read](https://www.avclub.com/terminator-3-rise-of-the-machines-1798198763) - **Total Film** (70/100, inferred): The critic describes a fun, crowd-pleasing action ride from Mostow and Schwarzenegger that gives the franchise a new spark. It singles out the visceral set pieces, especially the crane-rig chase and toilet smackdown, while noting some reliance on formula. [Read](https://www.gamesradar.com/terminator-3-rise-of-the-machines-review/) - **The New York Times**, A. O. Scott (60/100, inferred): Scott notes that Mostow films the explosions and chases with professionalism and wit but lacks Cameron's gift for human drama. He highlights the lengthy action sequences and the film's struggle with its own obsolescence. [Read](https://www.nytimes.com/2003/07/01/movies/film-review-a-monotonic-cyborg-learns-to-say-pantsuit.html) - **The Times**, James Christopher (3/5): The stunts are bigger and the robots meaner but it is otherwise business as usual for the world's wittiest cyborg. It is great fun with smashingly expensive truck chases and shoot-outs. [Read](https://www.thetimes.com/article/james-christophers-choice-2vz5btwptg6) - **The Guardian**, Peter Bradshaw (50/100, inferred): The film is a knackered old sequel that retreads the plot of the first Terminator with some twists. Director Jonathan Mostow does an honest job but the action lacks James Cameron's zip. [Read](https://www.theguardian.com/film/2003/aug/01/4) - **The New Yorker**, Anthony Lane (40/100, inferred): Lane views the film as a numbing spectacle that prioritizes loud set pieces over the dread and imagination of the earlier entries. He singles out the battle-of-the-sexes choreography between the Terminators and the reliance on truck chases. [Read](https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2003/07/14/metal-guru) - **Time Out**, TCh (40/100, inferred): The critic finds the film a shamelessly cheesy retread that rips off the earlier Terminators, with the nuclear theme feeling hollow, but praises Arnold Schwarzenegger's presence and the feeble jokes. Mostow is seen as a proficient hack. [Read](https://www.timeout.com/movies/terminator-3-rise-of-the-machines) - **Collider**, Robert Jordan Hunt (80/100, inferred): The critic argues that Terminator 3 succeeds by carving out its own identity rather than trying to copy James Cameron, delivering solid big-budget action sequences whose effects remain impressive. It singles out the film's self-aware approach and Schwarzenegger's performance for praise while acknowledging it falls short of the originals. [Read](https://collider.com/terminator-3-rise-of-the-machines-good/) - **Den of Geek**, Simon Brew (75/100, inferred): The critic defends the much-maligned film as a solid summer blockbuster that stays true enough to the franchise, with Jonathan Mostow proving a capable director. The ending is singled out as remarkably bold and the one element that fully justifies the movie's existence. [Read](https://www.denofgeek.com/movies/terminator-3-rise-of-the-machines-blu-ray-review/) - **Eye for Film**, Stephen Carty (70/100, inferred): The film is inevitably not a patch on the first two Terminator movies but is also not the disaster many feared; Mostow delivers a third instalment with more brains than the average blockbuster, plenty of action set-pieces and a surprisingly dark, chillingly affecting ending. [Read](https://www.eyeforfilm.co.uk/review/terminator-3-rise-of-the-machines-film-review-by-stephen-carty) ## Details - **Director:** Jonathan Mostow - **Director:** Jonathan Mostow - **Screenplay:** John Brancato, Michael Ferris - **Story:** John Brancato, Michael Ferris, Tedi Sarafian - **Cinematography:** Don Burgess - **Editor:** Nicolas De Toth, Neil Travis - **Music:** Marco Beltrami - **Production design:** Jeff Mann - **Costume design:** April Ferry - **Producer:** Hal Lieberman, Joel B. Michaels, Mario Kassar - **Cast:** Arnold Schwarzenegger as The Terminator; Nick Stahl as John Connor; Claire Danes as Kate Brewster; Kristanna Loken as T-X; Earl Boen as Dr. Peter Silberman; David Andrews as Robert Brewster; Carolyn Hennesy as Rich Woman; Jay Acovone as Cop - Westside Street - **Runtime:** 1h 49m - **Certificate (MPA):** R - **Release (the US):** 2 July 2003 - **Genres:** Action, Thriller, Science Fiction - **Budget:** $200 million - **Box office:** $435 million - **Trailer:** https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ysQizA7Una8 ## Where to watch in the US - Amazon Prime Video: rent $3.99, hd - Amazon Prime Video: buy $12.99, hd *Checked 2026-09-19.* Also available in: AR, AT, AU, BE, BG, BR, CA, CL, CO, CZ, DE, DK, ES, FI, FR, GB, HR, IE, IN, IT, LT, MX, NL, NO, NZ, PL, PT, RO, RS, SE, TR, US. Add `?region=XX` to this URL for another country. ## If you liked this - *Terminator 2: Judgment Day* (1991), Fi1m 88: The one this film keeps looking over its shoulder at, and with reason — [Fi1m page](https://film.one/film/terminator-2-judgment-day.md) - *Breakdown* (1997): Mostow’s earlier thriller: one man, one truck, no fat on it anywhere - *Mad Max 2* (1981), Fi1m 88: Vehicles as weapons, shot so you always know where everyone is — [Fi1m page](https://film.one/film/mad-max-2.md) - *Westworld* (1973): The unkillable machine walking after you, done first and done cheaply - *Hardware* (1990): A British killer robot in one flat, made for the price of this film’s catering --- © Fi1m Ltd. Written by AI under a human editor; checked against sources before publication. Quote with attribution and a link to the canonical URL. Canonical: https://film.one/film/terminator-3-rise-of-the-machines