T2 Rewatch

Post your Terminator 2 rewatch thoughts here, if you want to live. /Ahnold

Terminator 2 totally rules ass. Sorry Barb.

Absolute pinnacle of movie-making effects, despite all the amazing stuff that followed. I’ll take the two Terminators grappling in the mall back-hallway and the steel mill sequence over all the Jurassic Park movies and the Matrix Reloaded highway sequence combined. “What about Transformers?,” you ask. You’re fooling yourself if you think that was filmed with fake Transformers.

Cool machines kicking ass and making loud noises. Ho yeah.

Robert Patrick, the T-1000, he acts his [sorry Barb] off. I’m sure this can be said for many an actor, but one day, he’s gonna get the right role, and people are gonna be all “Oh wow dude’s one helluva actor.”

Having Ahnuld reprise the T-800 role, but as a good guy, was a stroke of genius that’s hard to appreciate now. Try to keep in mind: This was the big action blockbuster of 1991, following the summer of 1990, when Robocop 2 and Schwarz’s Total Recall had sent all-new records for body counts. So having a Terminator with no body count was a huge deal.

Trivia: Linda Hamilton and the security guard have twins featured in the movie. The twins also pop up in Gremlins 2. That morphing stuff was groundbreaking and way expensive at the time.

If you’re not checking out Geek Deathmatch, there’s a “Sarah Conor vs. Starbuck” question. I’m torn. I’m leaning toward Sarah Conmor, who’s just un-frak-with-able.

Creepiest scene, for me, is the one where with the T-1000, the foster parents, “Wolfie,” and the milk.

Since we just watched the Matrices, I feel I need to say: James Cameron makes movie exposition fun and enjoyable again.

My two favorite techniques in T2:

  1. John Connor - Here we have a juvenile delinquent explaining why life is so busted, because his mother was a afraid of Terminators. In reality she has PTSD, but because they don’t exist, she’s just crazy to everyone else.

  2. Sarah Connor - Everyone knows that Terminators are real by the time we catch up with Sarah again, even if you’re only just watching T2 and never saw the first. We just SAW two robot men come back in time and wreck shit. So as Connor lays it all down and the psychiatrist is tsking, we’re wringing our hands waiting for the bullets to fly saying “You’ll be sorry!” and knowing it’s true.

Ordinarily, exposition is the most boring part of any action film. The Matrix is no exception, and actually, the action got dull in places as well, but Cameron constructs this nightmare world that appeals on such a primal level that we’re dying to know how to survive in it.

My God that kid (whoever played John Connor) was such a terrible actor, he came so close to ruining one of the all-time great sci-fi flicks. To this day the special effects for the liquid metal Terminator get me hot & bothered.