Could be worse. Could be Brett Ratner.

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Or Mel Brooks could be doing his version of The Terminator ie Space Balls. Come to think of it, I'd like to see that.

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Mostow makes sense? WTF? Mostow's film was horrendous. Really without Cameron the series needs to die. From the very first scene the film feels forced and totally deprived of energy. Where’s the Terminator Theme we’ve heard for nearly 20 years? Where’s the sense of impending doom? Where the hell is the center point of these films: Linda Hamilton? Heck, even Eddie Furlong’s gone, replaced by the totally miscast Nick Stahl.

Mostly, it’s Connor’s target status that makes him seem so pathetic. In the first film, Connor’s mother, Sarah, started off as a simple, spunky woman in LA. By the end of the film she had lost much of her humanity and had started to accept her place as vessel and mentor to the savior of the world. In the second film Sarah’s gone whole hog into a survivalist mode. She’s lean, mean and ready for war. Not only that, she’s preparing her boy for the impending war. He has a special role in the future and she will see to it that he meets the world’s needs. There’s steely strength, sadness and weathered intelligence in the character.

Connor in the second film was a bit of a miscreant and an outcast. His mother seemed to be a paranoid delusional, spouting on and on about killer robots. By the end of the second film though he’d seen that his mother was correct and he was destined for something greater. Yet T3 opens and Connor’s not prepared to defend himself in the least. He’s a sitting duck over and over and is even disarmed by a lowly veterinarian. The messiah of the post-apoc world got punked by a little girl?

Some could contend that the Connor character simply regressed after T2. He and his mother determined they had averted the end of the world. Why train or prepare any longer for the end of the world if you know it won’t end now? That makes sense, except that T3 makes a point of Conner living "off the grid" or rather without a home, telephone, real job, family, friends, etc. If Connor truly believed the world was safe, then he’d have a normal life. That he chooses to avoid the trappings of the world confirms that he always suspected the machines would come for him again. So why did he stop training? Why is he a 30-pound weakling? Why is he totally without initiative, vision, and strength of character (things he had in T2)? Why is he totally unlike the man that his mother Sarah tried to shape him to be and the one that caused Reese (his father) to revere him? The inconsistencies make the character tough to swallow.

In Stahl’s character and under Mostow’s direction, John Connor is not, quite simply, the hero he should be. There is no hint that he’s anything like his parents, Sarah and Reese. The characterization makes Connor little more than a whiny boy scrambling from something he should be willing to fight at any second. If T2 didn’t make him man-up, then seeing a T-101 ten years later should send him into full survival mode.

Other characters fair just as poorly as Connor. Claire Danes slums through a tired role as the chick dragged along that finds toughness through adversity. Danes, who showed remarkable ability last year with several well chosen roles, regresses here to normal movie clichés. At one point someone mentions that she’s like Connor’s mother. No. Connor’s mother was destined for nothing until Reese saved her in the original film. Dane’s character is more of a typical over-achiever now placed into the predictable position of rising to the occasion she’s equipped to handle. This isn’t the brilliance of Cameron’s Hudson character, but the banality of his dumb whore lead in Titanic. Only Cameron can’t be blamed for this pandering because he didn’t touch this train wreck.

Newcomer Kristanna Loken poses through scenes, acting as the new PC-Terminatrix. That’s the extent of her contribution to the film. She’s the Charlie’s Angels answer to the Terminator. Gone are the strong, believable badass females Cameron populated his films with in the 80s (Ripley and Sarah Connor were uncompromisingly strong and smart). Instead we get vapid models posing as tough characters. Essentially, Loken is doing little more than a take on Natasha Henstridge’s part in Species. She’s about as imposing as Verne Troyer with a Katana.

And of course Arnie’s there but rather than sticking to his role as a cyborg, suddenly his T-101’s become a smart-ass. Gone totally is the menace. Gone also is the stoicism that made the original robot so damn threatening and the second one interesting. He’s not a machine analyzing the world any longer. The latest take Arnie has on the character involves making the audience laugh. Go make Junior 2 you washed up hack.

John Brancatto and Michael Ferris deserve a colossal helping of blame for this atrocious bastardization of characters and total disregard for quality storytelling. Gone totally is any hint of a connection to Cameron’s original work. No over-riding cautionary tale exists. No fully fledged characters move in this world. Even the cyborgs are poorly written. And the dialogue veers from flat to offering a one-liner. How many variations of Cameron’s classic, "I’ll be back" can these two writing whores steal? Then again, these two have never written a quality film in over a decade of screenwriting. That they would spit out something entertaining, even with great characters already made by Cameron, seems totally oppositional to their careers as the screenwriting equivalents of Milli Vanilli.

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THIS. WILL. SUCK.

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YouFaceTheTick: Best cinematical comment ever.

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More news on this from HollywoodChicago.com. Apparently Michael Ferris has put up a new Web site "where you can submit scripts and short films to him and he helps you get them to his agents and managers". Information is here:

http://www.hollywoodchicago.com/2007/11/mcg-to-direct-fourth-terminator-scribe.html

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