Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991)

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Dusty: Read my review if you want to live!

Rating: R
Director: James Cameron
Writers: James Cameron, William Wisher
Stars: Arnold Schwarzenegger, Linda Hamilton, Edward Furlong, Robert Patrick
Release Date: July 3, 1991
Run time: 2 hour, 17 minute

THE PLOT:

via wiki:

In 2029, Earth has been ravaged by the war between the malevolent artificial intelligence Skynet and the human resistance. Skynet sends the T-1000—an advanced, prototype, shape-shifting Terminator made of virtually indestructible liquid metal—back in time to kill resistance leader John Connor when he is a child. To protect Connor, the resistance sends back a reprogrammed T-800 Terminator, a less-advanced metal endoskeleton covered in synthetic flesh.

In 1995 Los Angeles, John’s mother Sarah is incarcerated in Pescadero State Hospital for her violent efforts to prevent “Judgment Day“—the prophesied events of August 29, 1997, when Skynet will gain sentience and, in response to its creators’ attempts to deactivate it, incite a nuclear holocaust. John, living with foster parents, considers Sarah delusional and resents her efforts to prepare him for his future role. The T-1000 locates John in a shopping mall, but the T-800 intervenes, coming to John’s aid and enabling his escape. John calls to warn his foster parents, but the T-800 deduces the T-1000 has already killed them. Realizing the T-800 is programmed to obey him, John forbids it from killing people and orders it to save Sarah from the T-1000.

The T-800 and John intercept Sarah during an escape attempt but Sarah flees in horror because the T-800 resembles the Terminator sent to kill her in 1984. John and the T-800 persuade her to join them, and they escape the pursuing T-1000. Although distrustful of the T-800, Sarah uses its knowledge of the future to learn that a revolutionary microprocessor, being developed by Cyberdyne engineer Miles Dyson, will be crucial to Skynet’s creation. Over the course of their journey, Sarah sees the T-800 serving as a friend and father figure to John, who teaches it catchphrases and hand signs while encouraging it to become more human-like.

Sarah plans to escape to Mexico with John, but a nightmare about Judgment Day convinces her to kill Dyson. She attacks Dyson in his home but realizes she cannot kill a person and relents. John arrives and reconciles with Sarah while the T-800 convinces Dyson of the future consequences of his work. Dyson reveals his research has been reverse engineered from the CPU and severed arm of the 1984 Terminator. Believing his work must be destroyed, Dyson aids Sarah, John, and the T-800 to break into Cyberdyne, retrieve the CPU and the arm, and set explosives to destroy the lab. The police assault the building and fatally shoot Dyson, but he detonates the explosives as he dies. The T-1000 pursues the surviving trio, cornering them in a steel mill.

Sarah and John split up to escape while the T-1000 mangles the T-800 and briefly deactivates it by destroying its power source. The T-1000 assumes Sarah’s appearance to lure out John, but Sarah intervenes and, along with the reactivated T-800, pushes it into a vat of molten steel, where it disintegrates. The T-800 explains it must also be destroyed to prevent it from serving as a foundation for Skynet. Despite John’s tearful protests, the T-800 persuades him its destruction is the only way to protect their future. Sarah shakes the T-800’s hand and having come to respect it, lowers it into the vat. The T-800 gives John a thumbs-up as it is incinerated. As Sarah drives down a highway with John, she reflects on her renewed hope for an unknown future, musing if the T-800 could learn the value of life, so can humanity.

MY REVIEW

Terminator 2 is one of the greatest movie sequels of all time. It’s also one of the best sci fi movies ever made. The special and visual effects, which were groundbreaking in 1991, remain excellent decades later. The acting performances – ESPECIALLY Linda Hamilton – are outstanding. The screenplay and dialogue are so good that they continue to be quoted in pop culture more than thirty years later. The movie is quickly paced, with almost no moments that drag, and its emotional moments are powerful.

The movie starts with both Terminators arriving from the future at roughly the same time, looking for John Connor, and it’s a close run thing as to whether the T-800 gets there before the T-1000. The movie lasts more than thirty minutes due to this kid:

As good as Arnold, John Patrick, and Edward Furlong are, the star of this movie is Linda Hamilton’s Sarah Connor. I’m not one for ranking things, but her performance in this movie is the best sci fi performances of all time. I mean, how would you act if you knew nuclear annihilation faced the world and only you could stop it? Would you give up if nobody believed you and if authorities locked you up? Sarah Connor is who everyone hopes they would be under this unlikely scenario. She is fierce, unrelenting, undaunted, and incredibly formidable. Linda Hamilton brings this person to life in a realistic way. It’s just a tremendous acting performance and and makes the movie worth watching by itself.

This type of movie works as well as its villain. The T-1000 ups the stakes from the original movie. Patrick gives a cold, machine-like performance that works perfectly as a machine-villain. His method of killing – using his own body as a stretchable knife – is terrifying, and a great leap forward (at the time) in the realm of special effects. There’s a pretty famous quote from The Terminator that applies just as well, if not better, to the baddie from the sequel:

It can’t be bargained with. It can’t be reasoned with. It doesn’t feel pity, or remorse, or fear. And it absolutely will not stop… ever, until you are dead!

You feel that quote echoing throughout this sequel.

In my opinion, Arnold Schwarzenegger gives his best performance in this movie. His physique combined with his lack of emotion create the impression of an almost idealistic man. It’s a perfect balance against the fire and fury of Hamilton’s Sarah Conor. As much as he is a machine that does what must be done (protecting, remaining focused on the mission, etc.) he is also a creation who learns, grows, and seemingly loves. There’s a quote from Sarah Connor that plays perfectly into Schwarzenegger’s more-nuanced-than-it-seems performance:

Sarah Connor: [voiceover] Watching John with the machine, it was suddenly so clear. The terminator would never stop. It would never leave him, and it would never hurt him, never shout at him, or get drunk and hit him, or say it was too busy to spend time with him. It would always be there. And it would die to protect him. Of all the would-be fathers who came and went over the years, this thing, this machine, was the only one who measured up. In an insane world, it was the sanest choice.

The movie is essentially an extended chase, with the good guys just barely eluding the bad guy, over and over, right up until the very end wherein they finally mange to fight and kill it. In that sense, the plot mirrors the original. The thing that makes this sequel better than its original is the injection of powerful emotional moments throughout. Some of the best of those include Sara Connor’s desperate pleas with her jailors to get out, her and John’s argument about whether he should have come to save her, her inability to bring herself to kill Dyson when she has the opportunity, and ultimately the T-800’s self-sacrifice after its victory over the T-100. Throughout the movie, the T-800 seems to become increasingly human, due to its learning-programming, a change that adds emotional punch to that goodbye moment at the end. Sarah – who has become almost robotic in her desperation to stop the apocalypse – also gets a lot of her humanity back throughout the film as well, and her sense of hope just before the credits really resonates for that reason.

The movie score is a revisiting of the original, but less bombastic and more strategic. In that sense, it’s better. I loved the score from the original and the main theme works just as well in T2.

Terminator 2 is an R rated movie and it absolutely earns that designation with extreme violence throughout. The movie is also replete with the type of bad language you might expect to hear in the midst of this type of violence. The point is that just because you watched this movie when you were ten, and you shouldn’t have, don’t expect that it would be okay for someone just as young today.

Overall, I am definitely old enough to handle the material and I love this movie. It forces its audience to think about technology, the nature of life itself, the future of humanity, and it’s just a really fun and tense two hour long action-ride. I highly recommend it.

Have you seen Terminator 2: Judgment Day? If so, what did you think?