The moral of T3 is the exact same as the moral of the first Terminator movie - that we're going to have to face our destiny (hence Sarah's blind determination in the sequel)
A fair response. Though I would argue that having to "face" one's destiny does not necessarily imply that one cannot *alter* their destiny. Most of the first film's "message" is delivered through a man who has, arguably, been quite jaded by war. I don't think he *can* see it any other way. Sarah, by the end of the second movie, however, does see it another way. Her, and our, expectations have changed. In fact, one alternate ending of the film was set years later with John and his kids on a playground and Sarah musing about how the war never came. The filmmakers opted to go with the ending that kept the past uncertain, alterable.
It may be personal preference, but I prefer the message of Terminator 2, and I think that was the ultimate message of the series until T3 came along.
This is explained in T3 as that while the details change, everything is inevitable. Equally, you can say that James Cameron screwed everything up just as much with the end of Terminator 2 - while they destroyed the processsor and the arm found at Dyson Labs - there was another Terminator arm and chip left behind by the end of the second movie anyway.
I'll admit it has been a while, but where is the other arm and chip leftover? The T1000 is melted, the original arm and chip are melted, and finally, that movie's T-800 is melted. I'm not sure of any other arms or chips.
The problem here is, those *specific* details changing seriously rearrange the entirety of the films. Unfortunately, we're dealing with time travel here, so everything gets sticky and annoying, but T3 essentially invalidates not only itself, but the first two movies as well. Like I noted, Kyle Reese specifically says that the terminators are sent back in time as a response to its core being threatened (and ultimately, destroyed).
I'll bite, there can be ANOTHER reason why terminators would be sent back, but ultimately, as I said above, I think it contradicts the point of it's most direct prequel.
While I cannot speak for Terminator continuity as a whole - I've never, ever heard of any respectable franchise allowing a video game to be any part of "offical canon". Even Star Wars, which is known for having the worst canon system, puts video games at the botom most tier.
Beaten to it- The Matrix *did* do it. That (unfortunately) said, this was back in the very small time window where things like that were considered "cool." I'm struggling now to dig up the original interview (I'm fairly sure its in an old issue of Gamepro somewhere), but the game did indeed have the official stamp, and was, interestingly enough, being designed at roughly the same time as the writing for the film was taking place, giving me pause as to why there are such contradictions.
Nonetheless, you are right. Game canon is indeed below film canon, and thus is subordinate, but as I said before, SkyNET was already described as hardware in the film.
I think the *reason* that the hardware/software thing bothers me so much is that it was a completely unnecessary change. They could have said "SkyNET has multiple cores" or this T-800 didn't think you could destroy it, so he dropped you in a bunker. Anything would have been acceptable, really. They didn't *have* to alter established movie-level canon, but they did. That's my problem.
As for the pilot: my mistake, I understood that it might have been released early intentionally.
Edit: forgot that last bit.