Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991)
Director: James Cameron
Cast: Arnold Schwarzenegger, Linda Hamilton, Edward Furlong, and Robert Patrick Rated: R
Runtime: 154 min.
by Brian Eggert
Reviewed:
05/17/2009
Original Release Date:
07/03/1991
In its day, there was hardly a better action movie than Terminator 2: Judgment Day. What size this production has; what crowd-pleasing excitement. Marked by its bravura special effects and unending series of action sequences, the production sells itself: Arnold Schwarzenegger plays the good guy this time around and exudes as much personality as his minute acting chops can muster. Linda Hamilton shocks all with her transformation into a wacked survivalist. Breakthrough shape-shifting CGI renders an iconic movie villain. And director James Cameron, then in his prime after The Abyss and Aliens, takes the scope far beyond what he achieved in the first, and offers surprising emotional value.
But that terminal qualifier “in its day” is truer than some fans want to admit. Every entry into the Terminator franchise thus far has aged badly, and here we have some dreadful early-1990s signifiers that are unintentionally funny upon revisitation. Consider the kitschy Bart Simpson-like phrases such as “No problemo” and “Hasta la vista, baby” that serve as the film’s comic relief and way of appealing to Generation X youngsters. Then again, how else does a time travel film work if not by identifying very specifically the time to which it travels?
In terms of story structure, the basic outline follows its predecessor almost exactly. Two time-travelers, one bad and the other good, return to fight over John Connor’s eventual rebellion against the super-computer Skynet. Lots of stuff is blown up in the process. The Terminator says “I’ll be back,” almost as if delivering the line exclusively to gratify the viewer. And in the industrial plant finale, all evidence of time traveling robots is disposed of quite conveniently. Despite these exactitudes to The Terminator, the story is tweaked just enough to keep it interesting, with the similarities written off as dramatic irony. These moments wink at the audience, and in turn we roll our eyes.
The story, as if you didn’t know, follows rebellious teenager John Connor (Edward Furlong), whose mother Sarah (Hamilton) is now locked up in a mental institution raving about Judgment Day—supposedly coming in 2029, when artificially-intelligent defense system Skynet wipes out most of humanity by launching a nuclear attack. A liquid metal-based Terminator, dubbed T-1000 (Robert Patrick), who can morph his body into blades and change his appearance at will, goes hunting to kill John, the eventual resistance leader against Skynet’s army of machines. Pulling the old switcheroo, the film places the now-archaic cyborg Terminator (Schwarzenegger) in the hero role of protecting John from the T-1000. Through melodrama wherein the Terminator becomes John’s father-figure, together they spring mom from the loony bin, stop Cyberdyne Systems from inventing Skynet, and melt their opponent in a steel mill.
While the story could be discussed more thoroughly, best to leave it alone or ignore it altogether. Once the viewer starts thinking about it, this yarn begins to unravel, beginning with Cameron’s sloppy time-travel logic established on The Terminator. Why, for example, does Cyberdyne engineer Dyson (Joe Morton) claim that the leftover chip and arm pieces from the first Terminator back in 1984 inspired his work on Skynet? Just to recap theoretical relativity, time is sequential and moves in a forward line until altered by time travel, so Dyson would’ve had to initially invented Skynet without the benefit of Terminator leftovers. Therein resides the paradox of this series, but why bother complaining about holes in Cameron’s application of science-fiction, when clearly he’s more concerned about the action, no matter how implausible.
With Industrial Light and Magic animating one of the most memorable movie villains of all time, and effects guru Stan Winston again constructing the Terminator’s robot skeleton, the film looks wonderful and backs up its appearances with nonstop thrills. Cameron has always excelled at building momentum and then not slowing until the end credits. Away we go from the moment the Terminator rescues John at a mall, through a series of massive multi-vehicle chases involving dirtbikes, helicopters, tanker trucks, and everything in-between. Reprieves come in sappy moments between the Terminator and John, high-fives aplenty, leading up to the final “thumbs up” that lets John know everything’s gonna be okay after the machine is lowered into molten steel.
However cheesy such displays of the central boy-cyborg friendship prove to be, the performances wash over the excessively sentimental script. Patrick’s intense running face amplifies the suspense of those chase sequences where John barely keeps away, and Schwarzenegger lightens up his robo-acting with some much-needed humor, even if moments where he utters “I know now why you cry” in his brutish tongue induce a cringe. Hamilton goes beyond the limitations of her 1980s-babe role originated in the first, straightens her shaggy hairdo, and retains the physique of a wiry soldier. And though Furlong, who has since disappeared from Hollywood, can’t contain his cracking voice, he serves that vital pop-culture relevance through which viewers enter into the material.
Upon first viewing, the picture wows like few others, but time has been cruel to this product, rendering it obsolete. And as blockbuster-sized as Terminator 2: Judgment Day remains today, its appeal and substance have faded with every passing year. Perhaps a result of the film’s overexposure and much-referenced imagery, not to mention Schwarzenegger’s lingering “Governator” persona, the film has become a cliché within itself, almost unwatchable without evoking a sense of irony. Moreso than other actioners from its era, the film is anything but timeless and that remains its unavoidable flaw.
More from this series:
The Terminator (1984)
Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines (2003)
Terminator: Salvation (2009)
