TERMINATOR 2: JUDGMENT DAY Review

"Hasta la vista, baby."

Terminator 2: Judgment Day was one of the more revolutionary films made at the time, seeing as CGI wasn't used as often as it is nowadays. In fact, I'm pretty sure this and Jurassic Park were one of the early films that showcased a lot of groundbreaking visual effects work. As for the film itself? Well, I personally loved it back when I first saw it and still love it to this day. Not only is it a great continuation of what James Cameron did on the first installment, but it's also one of the best sequels around. It might even be my favorite film of his catalog.

The film takes place ten years after the original and this time we have Sarah Connor locked up in a mental ward and her rebellious son and future leader of the human resistance, John Connor, in foster care. As they're stuck in their respective lives, a reprogramming T-800 is sent back in time to protect the child from Skynet's own terminator called the T-1000. Once John and Sarah reunite with his new protector, they decide to stop Skynet from ever existing all while being chased down by the dangerous terminator.

As if you couldn't tell, this sequel has a similar structure as the previous installment but plays around just enough that it isn't a carbon copy sequel like most franchises would do. Even if this does some repeating, I'd argue most of it gives these characters a chance to redeem themselves and save humanity. By having them redo these moments, they're not just jingling keys in your face to show how much they recognize the "classic" moments. Rather, these moments have them fix the choices they made in the first film, especially having the same killer machine from the first one now protecting Sarah and John. Even if you haven't seen the original, these moments still work on their own enough to make it feel like its own film.

I also love the action set pieces, as they're not only creatively done but even crafted these stunts as real as possible. Sure, there's some obvious rear projecting here and there, but you still see real trucks flip over and a helicopter flying underneath bridges which were all done in front of the camera. For as groundbreaking as the CGI in the film is, the filmmakers had to mix new techniques with old ones to keep the audience's eye from adapting and becoming too accustomed to the digital effects. The visual effects team that worked on this got themselves an Academy Award for Best Visual Effects, and rightfully so. A special shoutout also goes to the makeup team, who did equally deserving Oscar-winning work tracking Arnold's injuries as the film progresses.

All of the performances are terrific, especially Edward Furlong who is really good at playing a believable kid without making him too annoying. Whenever I see a kid giving a bad performance, I usually attribute that to the director not knowing how to work with kids. With this film, James Cameron definitely knew how to work with Edward on giving a solid performance. Other actors in the film such as Linda Hamilton and Joe Morton are also great in their respective roles.

I even love how Arnold Schwarznegger's performance becomes more human as he interacts with other characters, as while he is still a machine, he's able to adapt to human behavior. And yes, Robert Patrick is still really intimidating as the T-1000. He's not trying to replicate to a beat what Arnold did in the first film, but he's still a threatening character because of how frightening he can be. Unlike Arnold's character where it took time for him to act like a human, Robert's character can be charming from the beginning. And as stated in the first film, you can't reason or bargain with a guy like him, making the T-1000 an even scarier villain.

It is ironic how James Cameron took two popular sci-fi horror films, The Terminator and Alien, and directed their sequels as full-blown action films. While that genre bend can fail in lesser hands like say the M3GAN series, for some reason he's able to make them work. Granted, some of James' writing may not be the most memorable dialogue in the world, he's still able to get us to care about these characters while creating an amazing action spectacle of a movie. Unfortunately, this wouldn't be the end for the franchise, as we got more underwhelming sequels and spin-offs. But as we saw in the Alien franchise, it's hard to top what James Cameron gave us with this astonishing sequel.

🍿SCORE = 90 / 100