I prefer Terminator 3 to Terminator 2

There. I've said it.

Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines got a pretty bad rap when it came out. The fact that James Cameron, who created the franchise, wasn't returning spoke volumes about how good the film would be - or such was the wisdom during production. The absences of Linda Hamilton and Edward Furlong were also perceived as bad omens. When the film was released, the responses ranged from a bored 'that was okay' to livid anger from James Cameron fanboys.

I'm not going to try and present an argument here for T3 being a better film than T2. Because it isn't. Whereas T2 ends with the human spirit triumphant (even in Arnold Schwarzenegger's titular machine), the narrative of T3 winds down despairingly, with John Connor sealed off in a bunker helplessly watching nuclear devices detonating across the globe, signaling the coming of Skynet and the oppression of humanity.

But there's something - and it's an important something - that Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines gets right. It has a B movie energy and a more sensible running time (a full half hour shorter than the theatrical cut of Terminator 2) that brings it closer in spirit to James Cameron's original 1984 low budget flick. Terminator 2 is so assured that it's going to bludgeon the audience with staggering visuals that notions of storytelling economy seemed to have been thrown out the window. For all the technical prowess on display, the narrative of T2 is bloated, the screenplay (in true James Cameron fashion) belaboring the obvious subtexts such that even the most inattentive viewer cannot fail to pick them up. And maybe that's the point, but it does leave the sharper members of the audience sometimes waiting for the film to catch up.

The published screenplay by Applause Books.

Applause Books published a terrific book of the screenplay for Terminator 2, which included the shooting script illustrated with hundreds of photographs from the film and superbly annotated with details of which scenes or lines were re-worked during the shoot, or dropped during the edit, and why. Of course, James Cameron had to go and produce a director's cut of the film, and if nothing else, it is the best possible demonstration that the reasoning behind deleting all those scenes was quite sound.

Maybe I should never have watched that director's cut. I am incapable of re-visiting T2 without it seeming flabby now, even in the shorter version. Or maybe it's something about the inflated sense of self importance that seems to emanate from everything James Cameron has done since Aliens - the last time he had less than fifty million dollars to play with.

In any case, Terminator 3 sure is a fun ride. And one that never overstays it's welcome. Nick Stahl is a good John Connor (and hotter than Edward Furlong) and Claire Danes does her best to make sure we don't miss Linda Hamilton too much. Ah-nuld does his thing as usual, and Kristanna Loken's T-X is a worthy follow up to Arnold in the first film and Robert Patrick in the second.

It was released in 2003, the year we all got stiffed by the second Matrix film. Remember the hype over the car chase in that film? The months of filming on a specially built stretch of freeway? The extensive CGI? And then the boredom of sitting there for twenty minutes (or however long it was) watching the most soul-less car chase committed to film? Terminator 3 contains a car chase that was not hyped at all, and not only shat all over the one in the second Matrix, but is also one of the best such chases in recent memory.

So when I feel like watching some Terminator action, it's this film that's most likely to be popped into the DVD player. It effects haven't dated like those in the first film, and I never feel like I'm being lectured to like I do when watching the second film. It's 100 minutes of balls to the wall action that's dumb fun without insulting the viewer's intelligence.

Poorly received or not, you can't keep a good franchise down. Come to think of it, you can't keep any franchise down, as films such as The Howling VI: The Freaks, Children of the Corn 666: Isaac's Return, and Scary Movie 4 attest. So Terminator 3 has been duly followed by a television series - Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles, which conveniently ignores Sarah Connor's off screen demise between the second and third films - and the forthcoming feature Terminator: Salvation, which has Christian Bale stepping in as John Connor, continuing to  fight the good fight after the apocalypse.