I thought T3 was... ok, my ambivalence mostly because of the reasons you liked it, Pariah. The element of uncertainty - there is no fate but what you make - was removed by predestination. It erased the philosophy behind the first two movies (yes, there was one, amidst the explosions and blood) which was that you can determine your own future.
I never understood that. I know that Cameron pushed that as the philosophy, but his stories for both films contradicts it. John Conner is born because he sends Kyle Reese to the past to fuck his mom. If that doesn't happen, then he isn't born. Skynet sends a Terminator back to kill John Conner, but it is destroyed and used to create the technology that is Skynet. This, I guess, makes Skynet its own grandpa.
The paradox is unbreakable. If they stop Judgement Day, then John Conner will not send his dad back in time to fuck his mom. He can't. Not even if he finds the non-Judgement Day timeline Kyle Reese because the technology they used was created by Skynet, which they supposedly destroyed in T2. Cameron was talking out of his ass just like the time he denied that he got major story elements from Harlan Ellison even after already admitting that he had.
