This time, a fembot fatale is Arnold's foeSchwarzenegger's newest cyberfoe is lethally blond

It's been 12 years since John Connor, the teenage savior of the human race, helped thwart the apocalypse aided by a relentless metal dude from the future who looked and talked like Arnold Schwarzenegger.

In Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines, Connor and his cyborg father-figure are back again, a decade older and, in Connor's case, not looking a whole lot like Edward Furlong. That's because our reluctant hero is now played by Nick Stahl, who's scruffier, tougher and more brooding, as befits a guy who's been living "off the grid."

Since preventing global annihilation in Terminator 2: Judgment Day, Connor has slipped into anonymity, working construction jobs, sleeping on the street and meditatively tossing beer bottles off bridges as he obliges audiences with plenty of voice-over narration to bring us up to speed.

Directed by Jonathan Mostow, who takes the baton from Terminator paterfamilias James Cameron (he was only prince of the world back in those pre-Titanic days), T3 embraces the 1984 original's unabashed B-movieness. And that's a good thing and a bad thing.

Good: There's little pretension here, just slam-bang car chases (and fire trucks, semis and giant cranes), blazing displays of firepower, and the obligatory what-hath-we-wrought musings about the danger of rampant technology.

Bad: Dialogue such as "I feel the weight of the future bearing down on me" (Connor); "We need a new vehicle" (Arnold, the Terminator and reckless driver); and "Ohmigod!" (Claire Danes, playing a hijacked veterinarian fatefully linked to Connor). Schwarzenegger's clipped would-be catchphrases fall conspicuously flat this time.

As T2 pitted good Terminator against bad Terminator, so, too, does T3. Arriving through a time portal in the window of a Beverly Hills department store, the nude, mannequin-like Kristanna Loken puts her runway scowl to good use as T-X, a newer, deadlier killing machine. Loken's robo-babe quickly finds a sporty ensemble, and a sportscar to go with it, and then she's off wreaking havoc and hunting prey - Connor, Kate Brewster (Danes), and a kid who works the drive-through at a fast-food franchise. (Honest. Earth's future rests in the hands of a guy who asks customers if they want to super-size their fries.)

Loken has, maybe, three sentences in the entire film, and they're short ones. But she looks lean and mean, appears to be double-jointed, and has loads of hardware at her disposal - lethal lasers and rotating saws extend from T-X's wrist. And her main frame, as they say, is fabulous.

As for Schwarzenegger, he returns to Terminator mode with ease, arriving naked from the future (you'd think these mega-automatons would be able to call ahead for a wardrobe), scoring a buff leather biker outfit from a male stripper and roaring off to catch Connor and his veterinarian girlfriend before the blond techno-vixen gets them.

Terminator 3 moves at not-quite-breakneck speed, and the shape-shifting, metal-melting special effects aren't exactly spectacular. Whether Schwarzenegger saves the day, and saves L.A. (which would be a good thing to do if he hopes to be governor of California), is something that isn't answered until T3's finale. It's not much of a revelation, but it does hold out promise for the future - as in Terminator 4.

Contact movie critic Steven Rea at 215-854-5829 or srea@phillynews.com.

Produced by Mario F. Kassar, Andrew G. Vajna, Joel B. Michaels, Hal Lieberman and Colin Wilson; directed by Jonathan Mostow; written by John Brancato and Michael Ferris; photography by Don Burgess; music by Marco Beltrami; distributed by Warner Bros.

Running time: 1 hour, 50 mins.

Terminator. . . Arnold Schwarzenegger

John Connor. . . Nick Stahl

Kate Brewster. . . Claire Danes

T-X. . . Kristanna Loken

Parent's guide: R (violence, profanity, end-of-the-world despair)

Playing at: area theaters

Movie

Terminator 3:

Rise of the Machines

(** 1/2 out of

four stars)

Opens tonight in area theaters