Right well this is a revisit to one of my previous posts, Terminator 2: Judgement Day as I wanted to add a few extra things to it just for fun and make one or two new points about it that I didn't before. I might also adjust the post a little and will try and not quote too many lines from the film like I haven done recently in a lot of my posts.
Anyway to quote Rob Reiner, enough of my yakkin, let's look at T2..... again..... and yes (as usual) PLOT SPOILERS ARE AHEAD!
STORY
OK starting with the usual stuff the story of the film begins back in 1995, where John Connor (Edward Furlong) is just a 10 year old boy, who at this time lives in Los Angeles with his foster parents. John's mother Sarah Connor (Linda Hamilton) however has been sent to an asylum after she tried to blow up a computer factory, and is monitored by Dr Silberman (Earl Boen) from the first film. Skynet in the future, still set on destroying the resistance, sends a new terminator back in time to kill the young John Connor, the terminator, a T-1000 model, is far more advanced than the T-800 model, which is composed of liquid metal and can imitate anyone it comes into contact with, as well morph its hands into stabbing weapons. The T-1000 (Robert Patrick) assumes the identity of a police officer, and starts to track down John, but at the same time, the future resistance send back an older T-800 model Terminator (Arnie) to protect John. Both terminators eventually track John to a mall, and they end both fighting each other, with John barely escaping on his motorbike. The T-1000 chases John in a truck along the freeway and before he is run over, the T-800 rescues him, and shoots out one of the truck's tyres, causing to crash and explode, but the T-1000 soon emerges unharmed, as it morphs back into its normal form.
The T-800 (or Terminator as I will call him from now on!) then explains to John that his mission is to protect him and that he was sent by the future John. The terminator tells John that the T-1000 in attempt to kill him, will wait for John to contact his mother, who he will assume her identity and kill her. John orders the Terminator to help him avoid Sarah from being killed, and they soon rescue her from the maximum security hospital, as she was in the process of trying to escape herself, but they are soon intercepted by the T-1000 who gives them chase, but they escape. John, Sarah and the Terminator then travel out south where Sarah meets with an old friend, who helped her during her resistance days. Sarah during their stay has a terrible nightmare about the nuclear holocaust of Judgment day and this pre-empts her to go after the man responsible for creating Skynet, Miles Dyson (Joe Morton). With the knowledge the Terminator has given Sarah, she travels out to Dyson's home and attempts to assassinate him, on entering his house however, on the verge of pulling the trigger, with Dyson's family around him, she can't bring herself to do it. John and the Terminator soon arrive once they realise what Sarah is doing, and they tell Dyson about Judgment day and the future. Dyson agrees to go to Cyberdyne labs with them to destroy his research, however they are soon surrounded by police, and as the police breach the building, they shoot Dyson, who holds the detonator, wired to blow up his research, on his dying breath he lets it go, and blows the labs up.
John, Sarah and the terminator manage to escape the Cyberdyne building, but they are pursued by the T-1000 who chases them on the freeway, and they eventually arrive at a steel mill, where they face the T-1000 in the final final confrontation.....
THOUGHTS
After the surprise success of the original Terminator, Terminator 2: Judgment Day had quite a bit to live up to, and for the most part it delivers on its promise in doing so. At its time it was easily the most expensive film ever made, budgeting at just under $100 million dollars, and CGI just in its infancy, it proved to be one of the most groundbreaking visual films in the last 20 years or so, which paved the way for computer imaged based films since. In fact its probably safe to say that alot of films CGI have paled in comparison ever since this film was released so that is saying alot for how good the effects are. Terminator 2 also is definitely one hell of a thrill ride as there are plenty of great action set pieces throughout the film, of which some of the highlights are the first scene where John confronts the two terminators at the mall, the scene where Sarah tries to escape the hospital and stumbles into the Terminator coming out the lift. And of course one of the biggest set pieces is the police seige at the Cyberdyne building, with the Terminator using a mini-gun to take out the police cars (with zero human casulaties measured down to the decimal point! (i.e. 0.0).
And if there is one thing that has changed in the terminator universe in the 2nd film then that is the added morality of the T-800 terminator being re-programmed to protect John Connor, and John ordering it to not kill anyone, and all of a sudden the terminator has become a tamer version of its former self. But that's not to say the terminator still doesn't do a fair amount of damage in the film, as he certainly does that, with him throwing people through windows, stabbing them in the shoulders, or kneecapping them with a gun, as well as blowing shit up. The terminator also takes on a father figure for John in T2 where its mission is to protect John, comes like a paternal one, which helps bridge the gap of not having a dad in John's life, but in the end the Terminator admits to John that its something he could never do, in which is one of the film's rare poignant moments at the end when terminator gently consoles John, before he sacrifices himself by lowering himself into the lava pit in the steel mill.
CAST AND PERFORMANCES
As for the cast well things are pretty good here, with the new inclusion of Edward Furlong as John Connor, he does a pretty good job as the young cocky upstart, who despite his mischievious youth, realises the importance of his future existance and he also starts to take on a commanding position later in the film. Admittedly though at times Furlong can be a bit annoying little dick when he is being cocky, and telling the Terminator how to talk and sound cool among people, "and if you really wanna shine them on, then its "hasta la vista, baby!", but overall he does his part well. Furlong also has some amusing moments such as the scene where John twigs that the Terminator has to obey his commands and after he calls the attention of two nearby jocks he tells them to "take a hike". And one of the jocks says "Fuck you, you little dipshit!" and John says in response "Dipshit?! You called "moi" a dipshit?" and he turns to the Terminator and says "grab this guy!" and the Terminator grabs the jock by his hair, lifting him off his feet and John says "NOW who's the dipshit, you jock douchebag?!". Then there is the scene where John and Dyson at Cyberdyne enter the safe and retrieve the Terminator cpu and its hand and John smashes the containers open and takes them saying to Dyson "We've got Skynet by the balls now, don't we! Come on, let's book!".
Robert Patrick as the new and improved T-1000 model terminator is perfect, as he plays the terminator almost like a cat, who is very cool and detached, and his ability to move in a smooth and stealth like manner, suits his ability to play the part perfectly in the film. I quite like the scene where he attacks John, Sarah and the terminator just as they escape the hospital in a police car, and he tries to swipe at them with his liquid metal knive shaped hands, and he get's shot off the car, and a piece of a metal lies on the boot of the car, which John throws off, and the T-1000 walks up to it, as the piece of liquid metal slides back into his shoe. Patrick also has some good lines such as the scene where a police officer riding a bike stops to ask him if he is ok and the T-1000 says "Fine" and looks at the bike "Say.... that's a nice bike!". And then there is the scene which is actually a joint effort between Patrick and the actress Jennette Goldstein (who you would know better as Vasquez from Aliens) where John calls home to his foster parents but twigs something is amiss as his foster mother is way too nice to her. And in the scene the foster mother moves her hand out of shot and we hear what sounds like the sound of shutting the door, but after John passes the call to the T-800 it twigs the foster parents are dead and we then see the foster mother's arm has assumed the shape of a large sharp knife which she has stabbed right through the foster father's mouth.
Linda Hamilton also gives a fine performance once again as Sarah Connor, who by now has become half crazed by her nightmares, and being imprisoned in a maximum security hospital, when she desparately wants to protect her son and try and end the nightmare that would become Skynet. And she is a far cry from the Sarah in the first film, as she has become a more hardened, physically stronger woman, Linda's most amusing moment in the film comes in her first scene where she is doing pull ups in her cell and Dr Silberman, who is giving a tour of the hospital to some guests, say good morning to her through the speaker com, and she says "Good morning, Dr Silberman, how's the knee?". And then there is the powerful scene which albeit is basically a retread of Reese's rant in the original film where we see a playback of a video tape of Sarah telling Silberman of her nightmare of Judgement day. And in the scene forewarns "Its not a dream its real! I know the date it happens and on 29th August 1997 its gonna feel pretty fuckin real to you too!". And she continues by shouting "Everything you see this whole place is GONE! You're the one living in a FUCKING DREAM, SILBERMAN! BECAUSE I KNOW IT HAPPENS! IT HAPPENS!!!". And another good scene comes when Sarah tries to escape from the hospital and she knocks out one of the guards and hits Silberman's arm with a trunchoen. And Silberman painfully says "You broke my arm!" and Sarah spits back "There are 215 bones in the human body, that's one! Now don't move!".
Earl Boen also makes another appearance as Dr Silberman, and he provides a fair bit of amusement as the smarmy criminal psychologist, who does everything he can to keep Sarah down. Boen's best scene probably comes when Sarah pretends to agree that she no longer believes in the prophecy of judgment and the terminator never existed. And as Sarah tries to reason with Silberman by saying "I have shown improvement, haven't I?" Silberman replies "Well Sarah, here's the problem. I know how smart you are and I don't think you really believe what you are telling me today and I think you are just telling me what I want to hear. And if I put you in minimum security wing I think you will just try and escape again". And after Sarah fails to convince Silberman she tries to throttle him, and he gets away as the staff move in to restrain her he looks to the video camera recording the interview, and he says sarcastically "model citizen!".
And finally we have of course Arnie as the terminator (or T-800) and once again he is terrific at playing the cyborg, and his terminator in this film becomes a more humanised version of the remorseless killer in the original. And there is plenty of room for humour in this film, where the terminator learns from John Connor how to adapt and ape human behaviour, as well as pick up phrases from him such as "hasta la vista baby" and "chill out, dickwad". His opening scene is great where the T-800 walks naked into a bar and analyses the customers and spots a biker who is a perfect match for his clothes size and he simply asks the biker "I need your clothes, your boots and your motorcycle". And as the whole room erupts with laughter the biker says "Hey, you forgot to say please!" before making the mistake of stubbing out his cigar on the T-800's chest. Another good scene is when John asks the T-800 to swear to promise not to kill anyone, which he does, just as they arrive at the hospital gates, the terminator kneecaps the security guard at the gate, and he says afterwards to John "he'll live". Then there is the scene where the T-800 drives his bike with John on the back and he tells him about the T-1000 and the T-800 warns John not to go back to his foster parents house. "Negative. The T-1000 will definitely try and reacquire you there?" and John asks "Are you sure?" and the T-800 almost sarcastically says "I would".
Then we have the scene where the T-800 subdues a bunch of armed cops at the Cyberdyne building while taking heavy gunfire he caps them in the knees with his gun, but before he does he says to John and Sarah "Stay here. I'll be back". And later in the scene the T-800 takes a grenade launcher loaded with gas grenades and fires them out at the police cars outside and he steps up to one of the police vans and says to a cop "Here hold this" and gives him the launcher and removes the cop's gas mask! And in a nice touch just before the T-800 is about to hotwire the car he looks for the keys underneath the sunflap and he finds them. And last of all there is the final showdown at the steelworks plant which starts with the T-1000 suffering the effects of colliding into liquid nitrogen its body starts to freeze and crumble and the T-800 aims his gun and says "Hasta la vista, baby!" and shoots, blasting the T-1000 into a thousand pieces. And.... (SPOILER!) after the T-800 finally destroys the T-1000 by firing a grenade launcher shell at it, blowing it apart it falls into a pit of molten lava and dissolves. And the T-800 afterward wearily says "I need a vacation" but then says "There is still one more chip and it must be destroyed also" pointing to his head. And as John tearfully begs him not to go the T-800 says to him "I now know why you cry. But its something I could never do".
DIRECTION AND MUSIC
Finally getting onto the film's director, there is not much doubt that James Cameron has done an excellent job with T2 and he keeps the film zipping along at a fairly quick pace and he is no stranger on how to shoot a great action sequence and T2 has plenty. Cameron also confidently handles for the most part the story's characters and manages to elicit some pretty good performances from the cast although I've already mentioned them so I won't need to again. Music wise the film also features a fine score by Brad Fiedel who of course did the music for the original Terminator film and in this film he expands on the score from the original and manages to make it sound bigger and better than the first one.
FLAWS
As for T2's flaws...... well yeah OK it has a few and to start off it has to be said that one of the main ones for me is Linda Hamilton mostly cringeworthy narration, which is for the most just embarrassing to listen to. An example of which is the scene where Sarah watches John with the terminator who tries to make him learn human phrases and give a thumbs up, and she says "in an insane world, without a father, the terminator was the sanest choice". Also the her final line is probably the worst where she says "because if a terminator can learn the value of human life, maybe we can too!". God!!!!!!
The tone of T2 is also alot more cheesy overall than the fairly straight dramatic tone of the original, and it allows for some pretty corny moments, especially with the young precocious John and his young friend with the mullet hairdo (despite the fact this film was made in 1991, they still hadn't quite yet got out of the 80s!) saying "cool, piece of cake!" etc etc. And in regards to the director's cut of the film while most of the additional scenes are good there are some corny ones too such as the one with Dyson's family, as he is so obssessed with his work, his wife comes in and reminds him "why don't you make time for your other babies!" as his kids peep their heads round the corner and race into the room its like something out of a TV advert!
The film also falls foul to that rather annoying tradition in action movies of its time where they keep referring to dialogue from the original film such as Arnie saying "stay here I'll be back!" or the T-1000 saying "Get out", which Arnie said in the first Terminator film when he tells a truck drive to beat it out the tanker. And I also can't forget the one line where the T-800 having rescued Sarah from the hospital guards and says to her that immortal line uttered by Reese in the first film "Come with me if you want to live". Yeah its a very bad trend and as the series went on it got worse by the time we got to the profoundly medicore Terminator Salvation it reached fever pitch!
Another issue stems from the casting of Edward Furlong which in terms of his age was a bit miscast as John in the film was supposed to be 10 years old, yet Edward Furlong was 13 at the time and clearly looked a bit too old to play the part. So in that respect Ed looks less than believable as a 10 year old boy and if he was 10 than he would clearly be pre-pubescent and his voice wouldn't have broken but this clearly is the case with Ed here! But this purely boils down to an issue with the age of Furlong himself and of course there are plenty of other actors who were cast in films who were much older than they were supposed to be, e.g. Malcolm MacDowell in A Clockwork Orange who at the time of making the film as 27 but he was playing a 15 year old.
Another problem I have with the film is to do with the Terminator's lack of understanding of human behaviour as on one hand it says it has detailed files of human anatomy but it also has to ask what is wrong with John when he sees him cry at one point during the film. Now this is a flaw because in the film the Terminator clearly must know something about human behaviour as it knows how to lie and that is pretty much without any of John's future tutelage for the T-800 on how to do sarcastic putdowns etc. And a lie is of course part of human behaviour and if the T-800 knows that he/it must have some understanding of human emotion and crying, so clearly I think its bullshit in the film when the T-800 doesn't recognise this.
Also from a narrative stand point the whole time travel thing, while in terms of the events being changed by the actions of the terminators and John and Sarah it all seems fairly plausable, it just makes me wonder, when they help make the change in the film, i.e. when Sarah is rescued in the first film, is the future John Connor ever in threat, ala Back to the Future style, in how Marty nearly vanishes when his dad meekly walks away from Lorraine on the dance floor on prom night??? Or have I just confused everybody???? Basically what I mean is, if the events that take place change the future, when these events happen in the present, how soon will they impact on the future, based in the future time, will it be instantenous???? Who knows???
This also raises a continuity flaw within the series, as when at the end when the T-1000 is destroyed and the T-800 sacrifices itself by being lowered into the steel mill lava pit, doesn't this mean that Skynet will no longer exist? As if the only two surviving terminator cpus, are the one which came from the first terminator as well as the remains of its skeletal arm, which Dyson used for his research, and the one inside the T-800 in this film, once they are destroyed along with Dyson's research at Cyberdyne, does this not change the timeline and thereby Skynet will be pre-emptively aborted? Because if Terminator 3 is anything to go by then this certainly isn't the case, as it would appear the destruction of the two cpus and the cyborg arm, would only postpone judgment day, and the hellish future world will still remain the same. And this is where the whole logic of the timelines becomes blurred, and in that regard it was something that was done that bit better in Back to the Future!
But further to this point if you look closer at the scene where the T-800 and T-1000 fight each other at the steelworks plant and the T-1000 pushes and thereby jams the T-800's hand into a large gear in the next scene the T-800 uses a crowbar to snap off his hand to free himself from the gear. Now.... by doing this the T-800 had left his severed mechanical hand behind and in doing so he ensured that Skynet will still exist in the future as he had neglected to pick up his own hand and throw it into the lava himself. So this means that investigators searching place were sure to find the T-800's hand and from there it would doubtless find its way into the hands of more government scientists and before you know it, voila!.... we have Skynet once again. So in short, thanks T-800, you failed in your mission to prevent the creation of Skynet and from the worldwide genocide of Judgement day as it was always ensured that it would happen! Either that or James Cameron was doing a sneaky little manoeuvre to keep the critics and analysts on their toes, similar to Harve Bennett and Leonard Nimoy coming up with the sneaky idea of Spock's ressurection worked neatly in at the end of Star Trek II, when Spock gives his Katra to McCoy before sacrificing himself. So if that was the case then Cameron knew all along what he was doing and he really was a sneaky and rather clever bastard!
SUM UP
And that's it for my revised look at T2 which is still a very entertaining sci-fi action film which remains a landmark in the genre primarily for its groundbreaking special effects which are still amazing to this day, plus it nicely reintroduced the original characters and even dared to humanise the terminator itself.
So on that note I shall bid yee goodnight.
Later dickwads!
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