Terminator 3 Review Part 3: Are We Looking At a New Sarah Connor?

What made Sarah’s character work was her start as a simple waitress who turns into a strong, resourceful warrior. Can John pick up where she left off?

Last time, we left John and Kate having a heart-to-heart in the back of a truck. John concludes that he and Kate were originally meant to be together before the events of Terminator 2 changed his life forever. However, he’s not quite willing to admit that fate is guiding his life. But that’s clearly what the writers need the audience to believe in order to justify a script that has so far been sloppy to say the least.

The Terminator then takes John and Kate to a random graveyard, and the trio enters a crypt. The Terminator then pulls out Sarah Connor’s coffin.

Selling Sarah short

Introducing Sarah’s death after the fact was a stupid decision on the part of the writers. Despite Edward Furlong’s amazing performance as a young John Connor, the Terminator franchise has always been about Sarah. It has always focused on her growth as a character. Thus the third movie could’ve gone a long way in repairing some of the damage the second movie did to her role as a mother. It would’ve been nice to see her reaction to the news that Judgment Day was coming after all. We could’ve seen her living a normal life, only to choose to take on her role as a military leader—the shining example her son needed—once again.

What made Sarah’s character work was her start as a simple waitress who turns into a strong, resourceful warrior. The writers took the idea too far sometimes in the second movie, but it survived and it was great. Watching her pick up her mission again would’ve made for a better movie. It’s a shame we never got to see it.

Linda Hamilton is said to have rejected the role for this film, so I understand why the writers couldn’t do something like that. But to kill her offscreen seems unjust. They should’ve recast the character. People would’ve complained, but the franchise would’ve been better for it. Anyway, Sarah Connor—being who she was—had stashed a bunch of guns and weapons inside her “coffin,” just in case.

Enter the cops

While John and the Terminator are talking about Sarah, Kate grabs one of the guns and shoots the Terminator, which does nothing but force her to accept that John is telling the truth about him and their situation. But then the cops show up.

This was a clumsy development because it’s never explained how the cops found their targets in this random cemetery. It is also a little annoying because the audience knows that the film’s mission is going to be to stop Skynet, so the police are just kind of an aggravation at this point.

Kate runs out to meet the cops, and here was at least one moment of levity that I appreciated. The criminal psychologist from the first two movies, Dr. Peter Silberman, returns. He tries to comfort Kate, but it’s evident that he’s still traumatized by the events of the second film. When he sees the Terminator begin shooting at the police, he starts running. His appearance didn’t make a lick of sense, but it was good to see him again. Earl Boen died in 2023, and he will be missed.

Once the Terminator begins shooting his way clear of the cops—carrying Sarah’s coffin with John inside—Kate begins running as well. She is met by Scott, her fiancé, in the middle of the graveyard, but of course, “Scott” is really the T-X. Thankfully, just as Kate is, once again, about to be killed, John and the Terminator show up in a hearse and rescue her.

Nuclear holocaust looms

After the trio again escapes the T-X, the Terminator says he wants to help John and Kate survive the oncoming nuclear attack, which Skynet is set to launch in a few hours. Of course, John finds this unacceptable and threatens to kill himself because the Terminator refuses his direct orders to help them stop the war. The Terminator doesn’t buy the threat, but then Kate asks the Terminator to help, and he complies.

We soon learn why. The plan is to talk to Kate’s dad, who is in charge of the Skynet program. During the drive to his military base, the writers tell the audience that the Terminator was actually sent back by John’s wife, who turns out to be… Kate.

Selling John short

During this scene, I found myself getting the distinct impression that the writers were trying to replace Sarah Connor. Not only was this annoying because the writers had already killed Sarah off-screen, but this plot twist also didn’t make any sense. There’s simply no way that Kate—during this season of her life—would’ve known how to direct the Terminator. This character has just learned that these robots exist. How could future Kate reasonably expect her past self to know what she’s supposed to do with this killing machine?

John, by contrast, has already had military training. He already knows about Skynet and what the robots will do in the future. He may be strung out and not in his prime, but he already has the background needed to guide the robot. Kate might become a Sarah Connor in the future, but right now, she’s just an average person. So, why did future Kate order the robot to follow past Kate’s instructions instead of John’s? The truth is, there’s no practical reason for this. I think the writers chose to give the Terminator to her instead of John because they wanted to make Kate seem like the real protagonist. It was a cheap way to establish her as the new future hope for humanity.

To add insult to injury, the writers also tell us that John dies in the future, implying that John failed in his mission and Kate picked up his mantle.

Fortunately — and unfortunately — this prophecy doesn’t amount to much because the problem with time travel stories is that the dropped plot points and forgotten predictions become innumerable as new additions to the story forget what the previous stories had set up. The next movie in the series tried to fix this mistake in the third film, but even that wound up becoming irrelevant. Personally, I wish the franchise had stuck with the storyline created by Terminator Salvation (2009) but that’s a subject for another article. We’ll cover the conclusion of Terminator 3 next time.