Day 72: Terminator 2 (1991)

Movie #42 – Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991) - 137 min, cert 15.

Years have passed since the events of The Terminator. Sarah Connor has had the son, John, that she knows will grow up to lead the resistance against the machines, and she has brought him up in readiness for this. He has spent his childhood around gun-runners and freedom fighters, learning how to hack into computers and strip down guns. The authorities have caught up with Sarah, though, and she has been committed to an asylum for speaking out about her knowledge of the future. Another Terminator cyborg comes back from the future, played again by Arnold Schwarzenegger, only this time he has been captured and reprogrammed by the resistance to protect John Connor. John needs this protection because another machine, a T-1000, has also come back and is trying to kill him. The T-1000 is much more advanced and is made of liquid metal that can adopt any shape at will. They break Sarah out of the institution where she is being held, and decide to try and alter the future by destroying the research that they know will eventually lead to the rise of the machines.

This is James Cameron doing what he does best – big budget, effects-laden, action movies. And there is certainly plenty of action here. The budget for this movie was way bigger than the budget for the first one, and it shows. The fight sequences are more explosive, the sets more expansive, and the effects more expensive. The CGI that Cameron used to good effect in The Abyss to create creatures made entirely of water, gets used to even better effect here to create a creature made of liquid metal. The switches between CGI & live action are so seamless as to be unnoticeable.

For once, I actually agree with the list in that this film is indeed better than its predecessor. There is a lot more to this film. The first one was about the relentless pursuit of the cyborg and Sarah Connor’s desperate attempts to escape, and very little else. This film contains much more character development, and much more humour in the interplay between John and his Terminator.

Score – 9/10

Next up is Saving Private Ryan, Spielberg’s Second World War epic. Another excellent movie.