I saw Terminator 3 this weekend and thought it was pretty good. Plot holes and contrivances abounded, but the pace kept you from thinking about them too much.

Upon reflection though, one of the weirdest things about this third installment in the series, it seems to me, is the philosophical shift it has taken.

The first two films were built on the assumption that the future was not set. The second film really hammered home this idea of free will and a fluid future: The future is what you make of it.

In T3, our hero learns this is all a big lie. Everything's inevitable. Sure, you can postpone it for a while, but you can never escape fate. Your destiny is written in stone. Very Oedipal.

I guess, for one thing, it wouldn't make much sense to keep sending these goddamn cyborgs back from a peaceful and happy future. They might have explained this with the notion of multiple futures. Though the handling of timelines isn't very sophisticated in the Terminator series (most characters talk as if there's only one future).

Anyway, it seemed like a much more fatalistic attitude, compared to the first two films, which actually, in their own way, seemed optimistic about the future.