Cyberpunk Cinema: Terminator 2: Judgment Day

Bigger is better…always the case? Not necessarily, but no one told James Cameron that when he went about filming the sequel to his highly-acclaimed smash hit “The Terminator”. While that movie was produced on a budget smaller than the diet of your average Hollywood starlet, the sequel would command financing of $100 million, making it the most expensive film ever produced (at the time, of course.) With Cameron returning, actors Ahh-nold Schwarzenegger and Linda Hamilton would be reprising their roles as well, with newcomer and future drug addict Eddie Furlong stepping into the spotlight as John Connor.

Since this is an extremely popular and well-known movie, I’ll spare everyone an in-depth recap but will just say this. Since Skynet in all its infinite wisdom failed miserably to kill Sarah Connor in 1984, they figured they would give it the old college try some 10 years later and try to kill her son John, the future leader of the resistance, directly. Skynet would send a T-1000, an updated prototype of the infiltrator unit composed of a mimetic poly-alloy (liquid metal in non-geek speak) to assassinate Connor, while the human resistance would again send back a protector, a reprogrammed version of the Terminator from the first film. Again, the catch being that only one of them could reach John first. When some hardcore fans first heard this scenario, they blanched at the idea of their favorite Austrian killing machine being put into the “good guy” role, however the final product shows that those same fans really underestimated the star of “Kindergarten Cop”.

Initially, there’s just one problem: Sarah Connor. She managed to get herself involuntarily committed to a mental ward and lost custody of her son in the process, failing to live up to her own described status as “mother of the future”. Even though the relationship at the beginning between mother and son flat-out sucks, John breaks with the plans and goes to enact a good, old-fashioned jailbreak, which is successful. Unfortunately, during all that time locked up with fat, sleazy security guards licking her face at night and administering intermittent shock therapy, Sarah forgot how to be a mom. So them getting used to each other is one subplot that would prove crucial later on in the movie. As seen here, she is far from the near-helpless waitress she was upon her introduction in the series.

Meanwhile, the T-1000 (played by Robert Patrick) is in hot pursuit of the heroic trio. Being able to imitate anything he touches, he makes sushi out of various police officers and even John’s foster parents just to hunt him down. Now that’s commitment! Part of what made this film important was the titanic (pardon the pun) leap forward in computer graphics technology that brought the T-1000 to life. While Phil Tippett and Stan Winston did the best they could in 1984 to bring the original Terminator to cybernetic life, to say those stop-motion effects have not aged well would be the understatement of the year. In contrast, though the film was released 17 years ago, the effects hold up fairly well – Industrial Light & Magic deserves an extra big bowl of cheesy poofs for that. On a random note, it is said that when Spielberg saw how well the T-1000 came off in the movie, he realized that CGI had come forward enough where he could attempt to realistically portray dinosaurs on film, leading us to “Jurassic Park”.

In the midst of all this chaos, obsessive Cyberdyne lab tech Miles Dyson (Joe Morton) works feverishly to unlock the secrets behind the CPU chip and cyborg hand that were recovered from the first Terminator in 1984. Allowed to go unchecked, he would actually bring Skynet to life, causing Judgment Day, yadda, yadda, yadda. That being said, Sarah actually tries to take him out, but her human compassion comes into play, and she ceases to be the always-cold bitch she was for most of the film. An awesome action sequence follows with the destruction of the Cyberdyne lab, but I won’t spoil that for the 3 people in the world who haven’t seen it yet. Dyson of course, falls on his proverbial sword (of C-4) for the cause of humanity. What a hell of a guy!

In the end, it comes down to a final showdown in a steel mill, and just when you think the good guys are about to be made into human fillet, Ahh-nold comes through and makes a liquid barbecue of the T-1000. Seeking to also prevent Judgment Day, he destroys himself as well, with the unknown future rolling ahead. Now, THAT was the way to end the story, and as far as I’m concerned, that’s where these films ended. My faith in part 3 was totally fragged when Arnold said this sentence. “Judgment Day is inevitable”. WTF? So then why did you have 2 awesome movies dedicated to the heroes preventing something that would eventually happen anyway?!!! ARGH!!! Needless to say, Cameron and the main cast (except Ahh-nold) weren’t involved at all with that monstrosity, and as you can see above, even the T-1000 is wagging the finger of shame at the crew of T-3. Then again, that could just be at himself for starring as the main villain of “Double Dragon”…Good Lord, that sucked.