And here I thought the the third one was uncharacteristically bad. Maybe they saw this ending and were like, Shit we can make a whole movie that at least bumps against this bar.
I actually liked terminator 3. It felt very similar to the first two, and had some really great bits (particularly the ending). The antagonist was admitedly terrible, though.
Terminator 2 was blessed by a host of very wise cuts of incredibly lame and out-of-place schmaltz. James Cameron seemed to have an editor back then whose main duty was to chop out crap like this. Sadly, he must have been fired just before 'The Abyss'.