Ross-17

At his inevitable big encounter with the ape Caesar, Woody Harrelson's Colonel launches into a helpful exposition while carelessly giving up secrets in a fact dump sure to be useful to his enemy's leader. At least we get to understand the Colonel a little. He explains the reasons for his take no prisoners approach (of course he later makes that exact mistake with predictable consequences) to the war. He unlike his liberal superiors, hoping against evidence for a solution, can see that a new emerging threat must be sterilized before the human race completely dies out.

Was this film needed? No. James Cameron wrapped up the story at the end of T2, the only way the story could be continued is to reverse the logic of the first two films, There's no fate but what we make ourselves becomes you cannot change your fate only postpone it. No matter how many terminators travel back and fail there'll always be another one coming.

Accepting it wasn't needed this film does stand up well against the usual action fare. Make no mistake though it isn't a patch on the original Terminator films. It lacks the bone crunching energy of the first two underscoring that Cameron is the master of action films.