RogerBW's Blog: Terminator 2: Judgment Day

1991 science fiction, dir. James Cameron, Linda Hamilton, Arnold Schwarzenegger: IMDb / allmovie. Two more soldiers from the future, and a different target to kill or protect.

(A field of skulls is evidently a Clear terrain hex for giant tracked war machines, though I suspect it would count as Rough for wheeled vehicles and infantry.)

I wonder what it would have been like to see this film without the advance publicity that made it clear that this time Arnie was the hero? Last time he, as the villain, arrived first; this time he arrives first. Unless you're paying close attention, he doesn't seem much less violent than the other guy. Ideally we should still be as much in the dark as John by the time we get to the corridor scene. But I suspect that very few people have ever gone into the film cold.

The liquid-metal Terminator was something Cameron had wanted to put in the original film, though effects technology wasn't up to making it look plausible in 1984; that and an argument over the rights kept this from being made for a while. (It seems hugely more advanced in-universe than the actuators-and-wires of the original, but never mind.) Indeed, while the computer graphics are impressive for the day, it's very clear to a modern viewer where the short-cuts are being taken: this shape pours through the elevator roof or into the helicopter, while that slightly separate shape turns into Robert Patrick. The chequered floor rising up into a guard is great, but we still pick an actor with a twin brother to do the face-to-face scene. (Hamilton's twin sister also makes a few appearances.)

Schwarzenegger still has the physicality, of course, but this time he's called on to act more conventionally: Cameron's harping on Parenthood! that we saw in Aliens is even more manifest here as Sarah contemplates the Terminator as the only possible substitute father for John. Linda Hamilton of course is great, the fanatic with a genuine cause who's had to be her own moral reference for so long she finds it hard to accept that other people can also be part of the fight. Edward Furlong… is OK; a lot of child actors are worse. (And his inevitable drug problems only started when his career began to fade, unlike many child actors for whom the drugs are why their careers drop off.) Robert Patrick isn't stretched hard, but rises to the challenge. And Joe Morton does a fine job with a simplistic part: his job is in effect to be a young Hitler, the guy who will do the terrible thing if we don't kill him now, but to load a finger on the scales he's a good guy who won't even be doing it consciously. (He has a wonderful face, too; I wonder why he hasn't been in anything else that was good.)

Of course I do wonder why this hugely profitable research project has no off-site backups.

But the action still works, still feeds back and forth with the plot. And every time I see the first phase of the final chase overtaking the tanker, that same tanker that later will come up on the wreck to let the second phase happen, I feel a small spark of joy: they didn't need to do that, it only matters on a repeat viewing and only if you're paying attention, but in that rare situation it makes the whole thing seem better.

(Nitrogen is a great asphyxiant, though: you really don't want to stand near a load of it that's boiling off.)

There are problems: the Brad Fiedel score, apart from the theme, seems facile, too much cued to what's happening on screen. The whole thing lasts perhaps a bit too long. But my overall impression is still very much a positive one, and I hope that's not just the nostalgia (or my own profit, admittedly at some removes, by being able to write RPG material for a GURPS setting inspired by this among a lot of other material).

If you want more of my witterings, you should listen to Ribbon of Memes.

Comments on this post are now closed. If you have particular grounds for adding a late comment, comment on a more recent post quoting the URL of this one.