For John Connor, the nightmare is about to begin all over again, and sure enough he soon finds himself confronted by a familiar figure in black leathers. The original terminator is back - but who has he been sent to protect, and does he have the power to stop the deadly new Terminatrix that has set John Connor in her sights?

The most noticeable thing about Terminator 3 is that it has an entirely different mood to its predecessor. Terminator 2 was dark and brooding, filled with visions of a nightmarish future and as the story progressed things seemed to go from bad to worse. Terminator 3 has a rather different feel to this. The story is similar - nasty robot comes from the future to assassinate unsuspecting human - but the whole feel of the thing is much more light-hearted. The change in creative team seems to have led to a notable injection of humour, which, although certainly quite enjoyable, does rather leave the audience feeling slightly less charged by the whole experience. The cynic in me also thinks that the overall "dumbing down" of the movie was motivated more by the need to secure a family-orientated certificate than the two previous films, which were certified 18. This is certainly the case with some of the more violent scenes, where the camera quickly cuts away just before another victim is despatched in some gruesome fashion. I couldn’t help feeling a little cheated by all this - I felt as though I was watching a sanitised version of something that could have been better. That aside, T-3 doesn't strike me as a film that I would want young children to go and see. There are a couple of fairly gruesome moments, and the overall idea behind the judgement day scenario could possibly give younger ones the odd nightmare. But if the kids aren't too sensitive then I'm sure they will enjoy the other compensations.

It has to be said that Arnie really feels as though he was made for these films and he slips back into the character with ease. It's almost as if he has never been away. I always feel that Arnie's success and failure in films generally relates around the type and quantity of dialogue that he is expected to manage, so he is bound to excel in a film where his character is capable of no more than wooden one-liners. There are some great funny moments - in T-3 he obtains his leather gear from a male stripper rather than a hardened biker and you can't fail to laugh. The "I'll be back" line is starting to wear rather thin now though and I couldn't help thinking that the comedy appeal was strictly limited to the 'Allo 'Allo school of comedy anticipation.

Terminator 3 is shorter than its predecessor with a running time around the hour and a half mark. This allows far less time for dialogue and character development and the film is largely driven by the need to get from one action scene to the next as soon as possible. The whole Judgement Day story line has never filled me with a sense of plausibility - time travel is conceptually rather hard to pull off convincingly and in part three many details are glossed over. The trouble is that the series relies not only on the idea of time travel but also the consequences of using time travel to change the course of history and this is ultimately where it falls down. To continue things from where part two left off certain assumptions are made and details are often plainly ignored, so my recommendation would be that you leave your brain at home and just come along for the spectacle of the whole thing.