Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines is a 2003 science fiction action film that is the third installment in the Terminator franchise and a sequel to Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991). It is directed by Jonathan Mostow and stars Arnold Schwarzenegger, Nick Stahl, Claire Danes, and Kristanna Loken. In its plot, the malevolent artificial intelligence Skynet sends a T-X (Loken)—a highly advanced Terminator—back in time to ensure the rise of machines by killing top members of the future human resistance as John Connor's (Stahl) location is unknown. The resistance sends back a reprogrammed T-850 (Schwarzenegger) to protect John and his future wife, Kate (Danes).
While Terminator creator James Cameron was interested in directing the third film, he ultimately had no involvement with Terminator 3. Andrew G. Vajna and Mario Kassar, who had produced Terminator 2: Judgment Day through their company Carolco Pictures, obtained the rights for the franchise through both Carolco's liquidation auction and negotiations with producer Gale Ann Hurd. In 1999, Tedi Sarafian was hired to write the first draft of the script. Mostow joined the project as director in 2001, and he brought on John Brancato and Michael Ferris to rewrite Sarafian's script. The $187 million budget included a $5 million salary for Mostow and a record $30 million salary for Schwarzenegger. Filming took place in California from April to September 2002. Industrial Light & Magic and Stan Winston created the special effects, as they did for the previous film.
Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines premiered in Westwood, Los Angeles, on June 30, 2003, and was released on July 2, 2003, by Warner Bros. Pictures in the United States and by Columbia TriStar Film Distributors International in worldwide territories. It received generally positive reviews and earned $433.4million worldwide, finishing its theatrical run as the seventh-highest-grossing film of 2003. A sequel, Terminator Salvation, was released in 2009.
Plot
Ten years after destroying Cyberdyne Systems, John Connor has been living as a nomad following the death of his mother, Sarah, and fears that the malevolent artificial intelligence Skynet is still hunting him despite a war between humans and machines not happening in 1997, as foretold.
Unable to locate John in the past, Skynet sends the T-X, an advanced prototype Terminator made of virtually impervious shapeshifting liquid metal covering a metal endoskeleton, back in time to John's present in Los Angeles, to instead kill his future allies in the human resistance. The human resistance sends back a reprogrammed T-850 Terminator, a less-advanced model covered in living flesh, to protect John and his future wife Kate Brewster.
After killing other targets, the T-X locates the pair at an animal hospital where Kate works. John becomes the T-X's primary target, but the Terminator helps him and Kate escape, taking them to a mausoleum where John's mother is supposedly interred. Inside her coffin, they find a weapons cache left at Sarah's request in case Judgment Day was not averted and the Terminators returned. They escape from an armed battle with the police and fend off the pursuing T-X.
The Terminator reveals that John and Sarah's actions only delayed Judgment Day and that Skynet's attack will occur that day; the Terminator intends to drive John and Kate to Mexico to escape the fallout when Skynet begins its nuclear attack. John orders the Terminator to take Kate and him to see her father, U.S. Air Force Lieutenant General Robert Brewster. The Terminator refuses, however, when Kate also demands to see her father, the Terminator obeys. It is revealed that in the future, the Terminator killed John, after which Kate captured and reprogrammed the Terminator and sent it back in time.
Meanwhile, General Brewster is supervising the development of Skynet for Cyber Research Systems (CRS), which also develops autonomous weapons. The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff pressures him to activate Skynet to stop an anomalous computer virus from invading servers worldwide.
General Brewster fails to discover that the virus was Skynet becoming sentient, and John and Kate arrive too late to stop him from activating it. The T-X fatally injures General Brewster and controls the CRS weaponized drones, which kill the employees. Before he dies, the general gives Kate and John the location of what John believes is Skynet's system core. The pair head for the tarmac to take General Brewster's single-engine plane to Crystal Peak, a facility built inside the Sierra Nevada.